Filling the Well

One way to look at downtime is that one is really filling the well; taking in new ideas, images, thoughts, sounds, feelings, sensations, quotes, colours, and inspiration. Always bringing one "back to the easel," "back to the canvas," say, "back to the monitor" to create, paint, write, take a new perspective for a solution to an old problem. I call it "Filling the Well" time. Julia Cameron calls it the weekly Artists Date. Refer to her books as well as Nat Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones and Wild Mind. Take time to "do something worth writing about," and/or prepare one to write about what is worth doing. Immerse oneself in an environment of sensations and ideas. Read your genre. Listen to the music that stimulates your creativity. Wear your favovourite clothes. Listen to a person who motivates your creativity, nurtures your creativity, supports and nurtures change. Then remember: Creativity is about "getting it down." Toy w/ the romanticism of "making things up." Then return to "getting it down" on paper, on the morning journal pages, on the monitor screen, the easel, the audio file, the video file, into the business world, on the guitar, violin, composition paper. Finale/Sibelius software files. Get it down; put it down on paper. Make something. Create something. And have a little fun. Not in the mood (to start.) Start anyway. The mood will follow.