I confess I was stuck for an idea for this month’s blog. Usually ideas start to come to me in the days before I need to write it, but this time, I was stumped.
Are you ever at a loss for words too?
I decided that being at a loss for words and rekindling the muse might as well be the topic of this June blog. So here goes.
1. Park bum on seat
My father used to say this phrase when I was stuck for ideas. He believed that it would help if I got into position, at my desk rather than walk around hunting for McVities Chocolate Digestives. So, I sat at the keyboard, fingers poised, waiting for inspiration. Nothing.
2. Get out!
My second choice muse magnet is always to go outside and just walk and look. Like my #walksleuth idea that I introduced to you on last month’s blog. – I went for a walk. But then my phone rang and you know as well as I do that being on the phone is a distraction. There was no way my walk was going to be a fount of wisdom until I rang off, which I did.
Being a #walksleuth means that I am constantly on the alert for new ideas I can set as daily challenges over at @joparfittwriter. I knew what @JacintaNoonan had lined up for me this week and it wasn’t long before I spotted the lion I needed for Star Signs Day in the middle of a polished door knocker. I saw the National Lottery advert that shows a hand with fingers crossed for luck that I was going to need for Hands Day… but where was my inspiration for this blog?
3. Bird box
Then I saw it. A china teapot hung halfway up a tree. A hole bored into its belly turned a junk shop find into a bird box. Ingenious. That’s quirky, I thought. That’s inspiring. It could be a good place to start a plot for a story. It could be the catalyst for an article for a gardening magazine on unusual bird boxes. What if teapots could talk? Would their voices sound as if they had a bubble in their throats and why are they so fat? What would a teapot eat? This bonkers bird box could kick start a poem or a painting. Daft ideas, yes, but learning to notice odd things, items in unexpected places or new thinking are great at getting your creative juices flowing.
4. Little boxes
After the teapot I began to look around my village for more things that could be the start of a piece of writing. Someone had put a pile of empty coloured plastic crates out for anyone to take. The owners usually sell eggs from a see-though plastic box outside their gate. Could the boxes they were giving away be related to the eggs perhaps?
5. Headless cone
Finally, I found a plastic orange traffic cone with its top chopped off, as if it had been used as a piping bag for icing. It was placed on the grass verge. What was its purpose? Again, my mind spun as I tried to work out its backstory. Might a sapling have been planted inside it, the cone protecting it as it grew? Could there be something underneath, hidden from view, that, like a clown’s squirty flower, would spray anyone with water whose curiosity got the better of them and peered inside?
6. Last message
I once attended a poetry workshop where the teacher asked us to look at the last message we’d received on our phones and use that as the first words in a poem. Two years’ later I can still remember my line. It was ‘Sid says he can’t make it today.” I imagined ‘Sid’ was a contract killer and began my writing there.
7. My muse motivators
A couple of years ago Cath Brew of www.drawntoastory.com and I created what we called Muse Motivators. I had some ideas for writing prompts and Cath turned them into cartoons that I put out on Instgram. Here are a few below for you. Maybe, just maybe, they’ll fire up your imagination.
Here are just seven ideas that I find useful when I’m stuck for ideas, but as any budding poet will attest, sometimes just writing about why you can’t write is food enough for thought.
