Creative life

As editor of a writing magazine, and as a writer myself, I’ve done a lot of thinking about what we can do in our everyday lives to foster the sparks of inspiration and help fan them into a blaze. A few years ago I distilled those thoughts and the accompanying reading into a series of short pieces in Mslexia with the generic title ‘Rewrite your life’. These ideas definitely helped me – I hope you’ll find them useful too.

Photo credit: Daniel_Kay/Shutterstock

3. Read something new

The poet Wendy Cope says she can always tell when she’s entering a particularly fecund creative period because she starts to read lots of poetry. If you never read a [...]

2. Learn to waste time

Psychologists have identified a stage in creativity known as ‘incubation’. This is the period between the first inkling of inspiration and its realisation in a piece of creative work. Many [...]

1. Create a writing realm

When my daughter is playing intensely, she always closes the door to her bedroom. It’s a way of ensuring no one breaks the spell of her imagination. Studies of successful [...]