Tools to Spark Inspiration

The following is a guest post by author and speaker, Sarah Birnbach. Sarah was one of the first journal facilitators in the US, believing in journaling as both a means of creative expression and of healing. She was such a pleasure to work with for this guest post, and I'm deeply grateful to her for taking the time to write this piece for Purposeful Prose. If you are interested in reading more about her and her work, I highly recommend visiting her website. I also recommend reading her award-winning debut memoir, A Daughter’s Kaddish: My Year of Grief, Devotion, and Healing, which is available in print and audio formats.

Staring at a blank page can be intimidating and stressful. Journaling methods have been used for many years to inspire ideas, spark creativity, arouse the sleeping muse, and vanquish writer’s block. The methods discussed below can help jumpstart your creative spirit, stimulate inspiration, and generate fresh perspectives about your protagonists.

Consider this a toolbox of

methods to propel your writing forward.

I have been journaling since I was a teenager. My journal entries from the year after my father died informed my debut memoir, A Daughter’s Kaddish: My Year of Grief, Devotion, and Healing. Journaling has always enabled me to capture fleeting ideas – you know, the ones you get while driving or while in the shower. When I am sitting in a coffee house watching people go by and listening to conversations, capturing what I see and hear helps me to later write better details and dialogue between characters. When I write in my journal, I know that my ideas have

been captured and I’m able to clear my mind. Journaling also gives me practice in thinking freely, and it's something that helps a writer to get his or her words down on paper.

Five-Minute Sprint

The first tool in the toolbox is the Five-Minute Sprint. I use this technique when I’m

overwhelmed, when I don’t have much time to write (everyone has five minutes), when I don’t know what to write about, when I need clarity and focus, and when my thoughts are so jumbled, I need a way to unscramble them.

Because we tend to work best under pressure, when you set a timer for five minutes, you will find that your brain will work more effectively, especially after the first minute or two. Here are some examples of five-minute sprints:

• Right now I’m thinking of . . . .

• Things that are going right . . .

• The ways I distract myself are . . .

• What I want to write . . .

• Right now, what’s going on is . . .

The key is to write as fast as you can. Do not edit or stop to correct yourself. The goal is to put as many words on the page within those five minutes as possible.

Captured Moments

Think of the way a camera captures a split second in time. This tool captures the sensations of a frozen morsel of time. Captured moments are best written using strong sensory descriptors. This enables you to formulate evocative scenes in your writing.

Here’s a suggestion:

Look at the last photo you took on your phone. Writing from your senses using evocative words. What did you see? What did you hear? What did you smell? What feeling does the photo evoke in you?

Developing skill in capturing moments will help you to develop stronger scenes in your writing.

Unsent Letters

Unsent letters are just as the name indicates – letters written that you do not send. Unlike the

rapid-fire emails that most of us have become accustomed to, creating an unsent letter requires focus. After my father died, I wrote a lot of unsent letters in my journals. I wrote to my father, telling him all the things I wished I’d told him. I wrote to God telling him what I thought of his decision to take my father when he did. Writing those unsent letters was a form of free therapy for me.

To develop this skill, try writing any of the following:

• A letter to your main protagonist

• A letter to you from your main protagonist

• A letter from one character in your story to another

Using this tool will help you develop your characters in your writing.

Character Sketch

This tool creates a written portrait of another person or an aspect of the self. A character sketch can also personify and emotion by giving it a characterization – an appearance, a style of dress, a personality or temperament. Writers can learn more about the feelings and emotions of their characters by personifying those emotions as people or other animate objects.

Below is a character sketch that I wrote describing Joyful:

Joyful is a breath of fresh air. She breezes in to the room dressed in brightly colored and

patterned caftans and sandals and immediately makes everyone feel comfortable and so glad they are in her presence. She laughs a lot and smiles at everyone she meets, pulling them into her

magical welcoming circle. She makes them smile too.

Joyful likes to tell jokes, most of them cheesy, but those around her can’t help but laugh. Just her presence lightens the atmosphere.

Joyful works to help others find joy in their lives. Her life’s mission is to model happiness, and she is successful at it. People often feel lighter and calmer after spending time with her.

Joyful likes to play games, especially pickle ball outdoors and almost any kind of card game inside. She thinks games help people relax and get out of their heads for a while. She also likes to sing and has an average voice, but one that draws people in, because of how expressive she is.

She formed a community choir, and it has expanded to 40 people so far because of her charisma.

They sing at many types of events and have a lot of fun.

Joyful is just that, a joy to be around, like a sprinkle of glitter falling on whoever is with her.

Several types of character sketches you can create are:

• People you admire or respond well to (this can help you identify positive qualities in your protagonists)

• People who make you angry or upset

• Yourself from the point of view of another person

• Subpersonalities (e.g., your inner critic, your inner wisdom, your perfectionism)

Some questions to get your thinking started:

• What do you notice first? Physical qualities, a person’s essence?

• What are the person’s likes and dislikes?

• What is important to him or her?

• What does the character want, need, or fear?

Dialogue

Many of us know how to write effective dialogue. But if this is not your strong suit, you can develop the skill of writing dialogue by practicing any of the following in your journal:

• Dialogue with your inner critic

• Dialogue with your writer’s block

• Dialogue with yourself and your main protagonist

• Dialogue between two characters in your story; have them work out a solution

After my father died, I had many conversations with him in my journal. I would ask him questions and imagine how he would answer. By writing the dialogue between us, I learned much about my father even after he was gone.

Perspectives

Perspectives help when a writer is unsure how to move a story toward conclusion. By creating a visionary picture of the future, a writer can fast forward in time and space and write from the point of view of having already gotten there. This helps us to move a character forward in a novel or story, to examine possible outcomes of various choices the protagonist might make, and

to write about the choices the character(s) did not choose.

Here are two suggestion to get you started:

• Imagine it is one year from today (or pick any future date). Place yourself in space and time on that date. What are you doing, feeling, learning? What choices have you made that have gotten you to that point?

• Imagine your protagonist at some future point in time. Write about where the protagonist is, the work s/he is doing, the opportunities and challenges ahead, the parts of his/her life that make it joyful, challenging, or fulfilling. Write about the choices the character did not make.

Just as a hammer is the right tool for placing a nail in a wall, so a particular journaling method can be exactly the write tool to use to advance the dialogue in a story, to help craft the end of a novel, or to create a compelling protagonist. Journal prompts such as those above can help writers channel their ideas into a flow of words.

I wish you success in all your endeavors!