This is my first post on this platform and would like to say hello to all of you this winter's night. I hope you all have a warm cup of coffee or hot chocolate.
About me: I'm currently writing a novel and hope to have it completed next year. I have written one before (and many short stories, poems, etc.) but this will be my first publishable endeavor. Writing is my life and my love and I hope to meet many new friends here.
My favorite writers are D.H. Lawrence, Henry Miller, Homer, John Cowper Powys, Knut Hamsun, and, of course, Charles Dickens (whose jolly-ass character I've used as my username).
From here on out I will post articles on creativity, the writing life, and very soon I hope to have a podcast to share with you all since I have a hard time finding writing related pods that interest me in the least.
And as to creativity I will suggest a few things that continue to help me out.
Walking - The number one attribute of all my favorite writers is that they took walks. Thoreau said in his essay on the subject, "We should go forth on the shortest walk, perchance, in the spirit of undying adventure, never to return." The great Friedrich Nietzsche wrote (in Twilight of the Idols, "Only ideas won by walking have any value."
The walk does not have to be long - although Dickens used to take 30 mile strolls through the London night - to have any benefit. The point of the walk is to move your body when the mind is stagnant and hope to shake all of yourself loose. The philosopher Søren Kierkegaard wrote:
Above all, do not lose your desire to walk. Everyday, I walk myself into a state of well-being & walk away from every illness. I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it. But by sitting still, & the more one sits still, the closer one comes to feeling ill. Thus if one just keeps on walking, everything will be all right.
I like to take a short but quick walk when I'm stuck on something. Sometimes I get nothing on the walk but right after when I sit down and breathe the cold air afterward.
Anger - This has always worked for me. I get hung on a scene and I'm completely at a loss. I write it. I rewrite it. I rewrite it again. Nothing goes for me. The characters are distant. The world is uneasy and wrong. And when all seems to be lost, and I figure I can never write a single thing again - I get pissed.
This cannot be fake anger. It has to be organic. There must be a turbulence inside. A volcanic activity.
And then it combusts. You throw things (I throw the largest book that is nearest me). You kick the wall. You hate the world. You hate how things have gotten. You hate until you can hate no more.
What is left is ashes and serenity. But along with that is a change, a complete change of mind, knowing that all is gone from before, and now you can begin to create on a new and cleared landscape.