Saturate your life with Creativity

Or – “Write every day and just see what happens”.

By  Monica Egan

One of the popular maxims floating around these days is “Find Your Passion”. While advocates of the “life is all about hard work” philosophy might knock this adage, I still can’t go past its simple wisdom and truth.

How can you be good at something (even if you work hard at it) without first enjoying and feeling passion for it?

If life has taught me anything, it is that positive outcomes come about via the positive thoughts and feelings that precede them and passion is one of the most positive feelings there is.

There’s probably some law of physics (about positive and negative energies) that I could relate this learnt lesson to, but I’m not that passionate about science and physics, so I’ll leave that thought alone!

A PASSION THAT CAN’T BE IGNORED

What I am passionate about though is writing. About making improvements and learning how to relate to readers more personally. About discovering how to connect with other people through writing.

Perhaps I am a shy communicator (although anyone who knows me may actually be shaking their head at that claim!), because I find writing an invaluable vehicle for getting my thoughts out, for stimulating my imagination and for exploring ideas that would otherwise stay unexamined and ignored.

In short, I love it.

BOOK WRITING VERSUS BLOG WRITING

Even though, before starting my blog, I had already written two books, one unpublished (because it’s still sitting in the bottom of my filing cabinet!) and another published as an e-book, blog writing itself has taught me so much more about writing. Mostly in terms of:

1. Speeding up the writing process;
2. Realizing and believing in a reader who ‘sits right next to me’ (perhaps across a coffee table or adjacent on the bar stool!)–someone who is close, rather than distant, someone who is a real, living, breathing, thinking person rather than a hard-to-believe-in character in my own writing story.

Both these lessons have helped me improve.

BEFORE BLOGGING

If I look back along the continuum that has been my writing life so far, it would probably look a bit like the diagram, below.

Yes, a little unsure about the direction it should take but making some definite improvements from time to time!

AFTER BLOGGING

Lately though, in terms of personal satisfaction from my writing and thanks to some wonderful advice and teaching from other bloggers, including the fabulous Tristan from The Blogging Bookshelf, I would say that the process of writing is now far easier for me.

I now write like I talk and try not to agonize for days over an idea I want to publish on my blog.

In contrast to how I used to write (thinking about things forever/waiting till every word was perfect before finishing and being way too analytic and self-critical about every phrase/adjective/metaphor I used!) I now find (most times) that my writing will just flow if I let it.

In short and to reiterate my point at the beginning of this post, if I truly follow my passion, the process of writing is simpler. And by following my passion, I mean both reading and learning about writing and actually writing every day.

To be even more succinct–saturating my life with creativity.

A FINAL THOUGHT

To close, I will share with you a line from one of Marcus Sheridan’s latest posts. He had posed the question “how can you learn to love writing?”

The Answer: Find your passion. See yourself as a teacher. And start putting your thoughts down on that computer screen of yours.

I have taken that advice to heart and have now submitted my first guest post! Thanks for the opportunity to truly follow my own passion.

Monica’s passion for writing began in childhood following the publication of her first creative essay by a city newspaper. She is now an avid blogger, part-time kid wrangler and author of the e-book Reframe Weight Loss, published at Smashwords.com.

Monica’s blog was recently featured on WordPress.com’s ‘best of’ homepage, where posts are selected from over 300,000 WordPress articles.

Apart from raising her two kids, Monica’s full time focus is writing, which she does regularly at www.changesational.com . You can also find her on twitter at www.twitter.com/MonsInspiration.