“Life begets life. Energy creates energy. It is by spending oneself that one becomes rich.”   Sarah Bernhardt

“You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.”   Maya Angelou

What inspiring invitations! Sarah and Maya surely knew a thing or two about creativity and energy: they were both amazingly active and procreative all their lives. Their words are potent reminders that abundance is all around us — everywhere and anywhere, within and without,  and always ready and willing to share its treasures for us — if we seek them out with an open heart and mind.

Yet, so often, we limit ourselves. We hit a roadblock in a story or despair of a clumsy, jerryrigged plot or find that our secondary characters feel flat and wonder how to breathe more life into the
pages they inhabit.

What to do? What to do? We can fall back on a handful of old patterns and approaches — and lull ourselves into feeling that they’re good enough to solve the problem, even though we secretly know they’re not. Or we can resort to the Land of Imitation and refurbish a well-worn strategy. Or we can retreat into the Land of Limitation and just give up: put the work aside because we believe we just don’t have enough juice in the moment to make it sing and dance.

Or — we can write dangerously! We can venture into the Land of Possibilities and embrace abundance. instead of feeling spent and tapped out, we can “spend ourselves” and “become rich” by actively pushing past our sense of limitation. We can tap into our inner wellspring of creative energy and come up with fresh, even surprising, ways of tackling thorny writing challenges when they crop up.

Energy creates energy! The more creativity you use, the more you have! Creativity an artesian well: as you draw upon it, more bubbles up. The more joy, power, and inventiveness — the more resourcefulness of mind and heart — we ask for and bring to our writing, the more alive it will become. Why play small? If Wallace Stevens can discover “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” then we, too, can surely call upon our own inner muses to surprise and delight us — and the readers we ask to journey with us.

Abundance awaits you. Ask for it. Accept it — and write on!