Do you ever begin to feel tired and have difficulty focusing on your creative projects as the afternoon wears on?

In the late afternoon when I begin to feel my creative energy take a nosedive, I pause from my writing projects to enjoy tea time with my family. This is a tradition passed down to us from my British grandmother.

She saw afternoon tea as just as important a time in the day as breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I remember a conversation I once had with her when she was telling me about her experiences as a child in London during WWII.

Her family eventually sent her to the countryside during the Blitz, but she remembered before that how they would sit together in an Anderson shelter in their neighbor’s yard. She told me they put the kettle on before heading to the shelter. When the kettle whistled, one of her sisters dashed to the kitchen to prepare the tea and brought it back to the shelter.

Clearly, not even a war could come between a Londoner and her tea. The tea must have helped my grandmother cling to a sense of calm and normalcy as she waited out the air-raid warning.

In fact, when I did a little digging into the benefits of tea, I discovered that thanks to a special ingredient, tea really does relax you. Additionally, because it has less caffeine than coffee, it doesn’t cause caffeine jitters that mess with your focus and concentration. But it does give you a boost of creative energy. 

Maybe this is why so many of us writers like to drink a cup of tea while we are writing.

Read on to discover several of the famous writers who loved tea and how tea can improve your health and enhance your creativity. [Read more…]

A story idea suddenly appears in your head with a complete beginning, middle, and end. You sit down to write, and the words flow freely. It’s as if the story is typing itself.

How often do you experience that kind of burst of incredible inspiration?

I’m guessing that probably doesn’t happen to you very often. (If it does, I am incredibly envious of your superpower.)

However, for the majority of us writers, the Muse is more like a grouchy hibernating bear who refuses to leave its cave. If we wait for her to drop in on us before we start writing, we probably would only end up with a handful of words every year.

In Jack London’s 1905 essay on how to become a published writer, he wisely observed, “Don’t loaf and invite inspiration; light out after it with a club, and if you don’t get it you will nonetheless get something that looks remarkably like it.”

London believed that writing daily was the best way to rouse the sleeping Muse. He advised in his essay, “Set yourself a ‘stint,’ and see that you do that ‘stint’ each day; you will have more words to your credit at the end of the year.”

However, implementing a daily writing habit is hard work, and even when we show up at the computer, the words might still refuse to come.

We need a way to lure the Muse out of the cave, and one of the best ways to do that is with a writing ritual. Read on to discover how several famous writers used writing rituals to spark inspiration and how you too can design a powerful writing ritual to achieve your daily writing goals. [Read more…]