How To Fill the Creative Well

I started to call this post How to Know When You Need to Get Out in the Real World, but that title was a bit long even though that's really what this post is about.

The Creative Well & Why It Depletes

When I was a little kid, my grandparents had a water pump. It was a heavy iron contraption that required muscle power to pump up water from an underground well.

All You Need? Muscles

Most of the time, water pumps just need muscle power to produce water. You crank and crank that iron handle and water flows. But, sometimes, you can pump until your arm feels as if it will fall off, but no water comes out of the spout.

What happened to all the water? It's still down there, but it wasn't used for a long time or it was used to much so it stopped working. To get it going again, the pump must be primed, by pouring fresh water down the well in order to get the flow going again.

Creative Well Needs Priming Too

Same thing with your creative well. If you draw from it continuously, without replenishing with fresh ideas, experiences, and thoughts, the well may seem to dry up. That's when you have to prime it to get it flowing again.

Priming The Creative Well

I recently committed to another novella project for a box set. That makes 2 novellas I need to write in the next few weeks. I'm also trying to get the next full-length book set up for pre-order, reviews, etc. Then there's the book to help you blog faster and easier that I want to finish compiling and the next short story in A Moment in Time.

Suffice it to say that I've been slinging words fast and furiously. Normally, I walk every day which keeps my imagination strong, but the weather has been so lousy that I've been cooped up inside. This morning, I couldn't string ten words together that had any life. I knew I needed a break.

Errands Spur Creativity

So hubby and I made a run to Dunkin Donuts for several pounds of coffee. We chose the newest location which seems to be trying to recreate the "Starbucks" experience, but the hordes of kids and teens from surrounding subdivisions were negating their best efforts. Definitely some character ideas there.

Next we went to the brew-it yourself supply store. We're putting in a small vineyard at our country property. Someone gave my hubby a brew-your-own beer kit so now he's interested in that too. He "cooked up" the batch of beer this past week. It's fermenting now so we needed 2 cases of beer bottles and bottle caps. He's waiting for his capper and hydrometer to arrive from Amazon then he'll be ready to bottle the California-style pale beer when the fermentation is complete. He's already planning his next batch which will be an Irish Red.

We bought bottles, caps, and some more Star San which is for sanitizing the items in brewing. while he shopped, I talked with the clerk and learned quite a bit. (I'd been too busy writing this month to read everything hubby had read about brewing beer.)

My Creative Well Is Bubbling

Now, my head is spinning with ideas about a character who brews his own beer. Why not? In Scents and Sensuality, Sean, the hero, owns a small vineyard in Texas, out near Junction. Sean had an experimental patch of Sangiovese grapes which we plan to plant in our little vineyard.

Next we stopped at a gun and ammo store. Yep. More supplies for the creative well because this year I'll be writing more about characters with guns.

In fact, everything we did helped fill my creative well. This is the fun part of research--getting out and talking with people and learning things first hand.

How about you? What have you done lately to keep your creative well filled?

Takeaway Truth

Never underestimate the importance of your creative well. Fill it often to keep the flow of creativity going.