Studio LERIAL

Too many empty books and don’t know where to begin?

Want ideas to help with your creativity, professional development, and artistic self-care?

Here are some ideas for that blank page.

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1. Create a diary of physical observations: What’s the saying? Show, don’t tell. People-watching is a great way to see how people move and communicate in the world with their bodies. Simply sit for five minutes and notice all the different ways people walk, how a person may deconstruct their sandwich before eating it, how a first dater opens and closes, then opens, then closes their mouth again under furrowed brow as they attempt to interject their dinner date’s monologue. Developing our observation skills can infuse our writing with the engaging specificity that can push our stories forward and give our readers insight on our characters. So make sure you have a pen and pocket-sized notebook with you to minute-take this magic.
2. Create an Artist Dates Scrapbook: In Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way she encourages each of us to go on a weekly artist date to replenish the artist within. Creating a scrapbook to record these artistic adventures with a few lines of reflection on how each date/activity supported our creative endeavours would be a great memento to look back on in a year’s time.
3. Create a character journal: From artists dates to dates with your protagonist, write a diary from the point of view of a character you want to get to know more intimately. Have romantic leads in your story? Write letters back and forth from their perspectives. What do they choose to say? What do they choose to keep to themselves? Want to know what’s bugging them? Try dedicating a few pages to a bit of dream journalling.
4. Create a mood board: Now this could be for a few pages in a notebook dedicated to your new project or it could fill a tiny sketchbook all by itself. This type of notebook is to collect visual stimuli that inspires the world you are building in your story. Don’t forget to label each inspiration with how it corresponds to your story’s characters, settings, and themes.
5. Create an ‘Art I Wish Was Mine and Other Inspirations’ Notebook: Capturing our sources of inspiration is vital for our creative well, so take note of the art you think is amazing. But don’t just stop at writing down the quotes from great works or gluing in some images of the pieces. Make sure you write a few sentences detailing what captivates you about the stimuli. If a piece of literature moved you for example, get into the weeds a bit. What section was it? What emotion was evoked inside you? What did the author do in the line or set-up to elicit this response? Is there a technique you could practice in a future creative writing session?
6. Create a career journal:  Last, but certainly not least, is a career journal. In this journal you can plan your projects, set artistic and business goals as well as map out your vision. Stay accountable by tracking your classes and developmental courses or use the pages to write your own manifesto and prepare for tough career conversations for example freewriting pitches and financial negotiations.

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There you have it: 6 ways to infuse your notebooks with creativity! Let us know down in the comments if you’ve tried out any of these ideas and share your own tips with our community. Until next time, happy scribing!