Spontaneous Prompt

Let's trigger you creativity!
Tell me what comes up to your mind when you hear these spontaneous prompts:

• Perfume
• A tower of strength
• Like mother, like daughter
• Toast of the town
• Childhood dreams
• Bearing a grudge
• Out of sight, out of mind
• Waiting at a finish line
• Tall, dark, and handsome
• All I want is a chance to...
• Wearily, he closed his eyes
• Pain
• Camaraderie

Here's what I pick: 'All I want is a chance to...', enjoy! Looking forward to see yours :)

All I want is a chance to put everything in its right place so that everybody's happy. As I turn up my iPod's volume, I stare blankly and let Maybe Tomorrow from Stereophonics make me wonder. I so want to get back on track I am willing to risk everything for it. Is that too much to ask for?
My friend says everything is everything. The more you lust after it, the less you do have control of it. But who cares when everything in me means everything and nothing at the same time? It's full inside, yet it's empty inside. I've gone through a year of failure, thus I think I am through with redemption and resilience. I don't want to, I cannot move on when everything inside me is still trying hard to fit it.
I feel like a jigsaw in the puzzle, endeavor to find its spot on a bigger picture somewhere. All I want is a chance to put everything in its right place so that I know what I am. What is that you try to say?

In You, You Trust

Do you keep the list you made? The one where you have tried to recognize the variety voice within your inner-self? Yes, that one. Keep it close, keep it tight, because it will become handy from now onwards.

The reason why I emphasize heavily on that list is because I believe that techniques of writing can be taught, but talent is another thing. Talent cannot be taught, yet it can be discovered, nurtured, and developed. Writing a fiction involves more than the master of technique. Unlike using several Adobe products, there are a lot more than just technique here. A writer needs to know how to read, and how to think about reading and writing. At the end, it will help in making readers believe in things that you write.

Invest in your time, your emotions, your heart, and not to forget: your soul. Festivals, events, books, magazines, films... true, they can be a source of inspiration too. Albeit if much of the content of the fiction is borrowed from this source, without passing through the medium of the writer's heart and imagination, the fiction might fail to engage the reader and even might look unconvincing.

Find out who you are and what you know, and then more or less forget it. Fly with your imagination. The more you write, the more you explore, the more you will surprise yourself with who you are and what you can think. Come what may, and if imagination comes, rejoices. And keep writing.

"Remember, it is necessary for those creative minds living through the experience to revisit and re-examine the modes of expression and communication" (Theall 2005).

What Does It Mean to Mean?

Every designed and every made things was used to define a story. Definitions are there as an expression, to form patterns of communication. In a real way, it facilitates people the way to understand each other.

I chose What Does It Mean to Mean? as a title because I was trying to trigger your sense of feeling. Previously, I've talked about how to deal with creativity, and now I am trying to assess your creative side by trying to describe about feelings. Why? Because, before you start thinking or working on characters and storyline, you need to know what kind of atmosphere that will move your story emotionally. You need to make it alive so that people can sense it while reading it.

All of us contain multiple inner voices. All of us need a safe place to admit that we are angry, disappointed, ecstatic, and the list goes on and on. Use it as fuel for action, feel it when your emotions and perceptions battle and play out. Engage your feelings, view it with greater detachment, learn to observe.

Now, take a piece of paper and write them down. List your fear, your anger, the jetsam of your relationship, whatever. You can even list your hopes regarding the creative work you are about to do. Be free, be cruel, be silly, be self-centered, be exactly as you are in the moment. Do not stop to analyze it. Just write it fast, do not try too hard, and move one.

Why I encourage you to list those feelings? Because it is so familiar to you. By recognizing the variety voices within your inner self, you will discover many positive aspects that might have become silenced over the year. We know more but we do less.

This exercise, I hope, will help you to observe the feelings before putting them into words. To express feelings through definition, not to define feelings through definitions. And the most important thing is, to make you begin to feel again.

See It As Potential

It has been said that to learn about writing is through writing. Sounds simple, eh? But when you sit down in front of your laptop, starring at the screen while trying to figure out a starting line to trigger your story, that’s when you realize that writing is not as simple as it looks like. Writing this diminutive, fastidious arrangement of words unquestionably does make you think: I should’ve realized the limit of my talent a lot sooner.

Now, now, release those back pain that you get from starring blanky at your Microsoft Office for hours and relax. There is an opportunity inherent in every failure, a chance to turn negative experiences into positive lesson — to learn. Yes, you heard it from me. Writing is something that can be taught. There might not be a magic way to achieve instant fulfillment in writing, but surely there is a path to it.

Firstly, what we need to do is to not be intimidated by the fact that you are going to work with the-so-called creativity. I personally think that some people are afraid — yet curious as well — to deal with creativity because it is related with ‘incredibly amazing artists’ who write without flaws or intermission. This false perception leads to a notion that creativity is something vulnerable, a gift for certain people only.

The truth is, creativity is user-friendly and can be generated over time. It is something like energy, it can be generated and cannot be destroyed. What you need to do is try to recognize it, traces it down, and tries to safely grounded it. Bare in mind: we are all creative in our own way.

“No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new heaven to the human spirit.” — Hellen Keller

All of us can be more creative than we already are. That’s the message that I’m trying to send from every entry that I’ll be making. To be a positive catalyst for yourself. You are the author of your own story. At last, trust me, the vibe of your story will make you happier, more productive, and of course more creative!