Mindful Sparks for Creative Writing
Smell is powerful. One whiff of cinnamon or cut grass and we’re pulled into memories we didn’t know we still held.
We often overlook smell, but it’s a shortcut to emotion. When you write with your nose, you unlock a different kind of memory.
Mindful Sparks for Creative Writing
Not everything we write has to be bright or obvious. Some stories live in the things left unsaid. In shadows.
Shadows aren’t evil; they’re just parts of life that don’t always get the spotlight. Memories we tuck away. Objects we stop noticing and feelings we don’t say aloud.
Mindful Sparks for Creative Writing
At first, silence can feel empty, but if you sit with it long enough, you’ll find it’s full of subtle sounds and unexpected thoughts. The hum of the fridge. The tick of a clock or the sound of rain as it taps against the window. We live in a noisy world, where we scroll, ping, and talk, but creativity often hides in the quiet. When we stop trying to fill the space, new ideas rise on their own.
Mindful Sparks for Creative Writing
Most of us walk without noticing a thing. Our feet move, but our minds are elsewhere. Today, try walking slowly. Walk twenty steps and try to notice everything. The air on your face. The sound of your footwear on the surface you’re walking on. The way your weight shifts from side to side. This is mindful walking, and it has a strange power: it empties the mind just enough to allow ideas to sneak in.
Mindful Sparks for Creative Writing
Week 1: The Pause Before the Pen
Before you begin to write, stop, close your eyes and take three deep breaths in through your nose, breathing out slowly through your mouth.
Writing Against the Echoes
'How do you expect to become a writer when you don't know what a paragraph is?' These few words have sprawled before me like the scattered pages of an unwritten novel for years. The years wasted enduring the idea that I was a talentless imposter. How many novels did I not write? How many ideas did I send to an early grave, hundreds? Thousands? Could I have made it as a writer then, when I was at the ripe age of thirty-four before I listened to those words?