‘Get Inspired. Stay Inspired.’
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Reading takes us to new worlds, lets us meet new people and experience different things from the comfort of our homes. Isn’t it amazing how you can move from Hogwarts, to Middle Earth and hop onto Madol Doova and then return back right on time for the Mad Hatter’s tea party in Wonderland with this unique passport that we call a book?
If you are reading this, you are about to embark on a journey. A journey that will help you discover your inner writer.
But before we go on, I will tell you something that recently happened to me: The other day, I got scared. I sat down wondering “I’ve been home for two months now! Nothing special happens. What if I run out of stories to tell?” I think this is the problem with most of us writers, we think that inspiration is something out there. And that we cannot start writing if nothing special happens.
Where do ideas come from?
We hear that a writer writes when they are ‘inspired’. When I was little I used to wonder how inspiration worked. Is it like magic? Or is it like a dream where the entire story is revealed to the writer? After years of writing now I know that inspiration is actually a brilliant idea that you come up with when you see or feel something.
We have all had little moments of inspiration all our lives. And, now that we have had the peace and quiet of being home, we can draw on our banks of inspiration and start this journey.
Did you know?
Creativity is like a muscle that needs exercise. If you warm up and work out this muscle, you will easily be able to see everyday things in a different light!
Activity: Everyday Inspiration
What you need:
— A recent grocery bill
— A pen/pencil
— A piece of paper
Step 1: Research
Look at 5 interesting items on your grocery bill and see what each item says about the members of your household. Here’s an example from our grocery bill:
7kg of chicken: My dogs will only eat chicken
Allergy medicine: I am allergic to dust
A box of candles: We are having power cuts these days
Step 2: Re-think
Now imagine that you wanted to capture the characteristics of your family members using just a grocery bill. List out one grocery item for each person and explain what each reveals about them.
Eg: 1. Batteries: for my grandfather’s TV remote. He watches news from morning until evening.
Step 3: Re-write
Now, mix and match the products and backstories to come up with a single character—you can also assign new meanings to some of the grocery items.
Here’s a sketch for a story idea that I came up with using the three grocery items on my list:
Sumudu lives alone with his dogs. He only eats chicken, but his dogs are vegetarian. He always buys a box of candles because he is afraid of the dark. His dogs are allergic to dust. One night during a power-cut he finds out that he has run out of their allergy medicine.
This worksheet ‘Get inspired. Stay inspired.’ was contributed by Phusathi Liyanaarachchi.
