Seeds for the blank page – how to always have ideas for creative work

It has happened to me quite frequently that I have allotted a certain time of my day to be creative and then, once I sat down, I was just out of ideas. I sat in front of my blank, empty page and simply did not know what I should write about. And the more I forced myself the more some kind of inner block hindered me from having any ideas at all. This is, of course, only too well known for many artists.

The opposite also happens occasionally:  you have an idea in your mind, and you simply must execute it, there is no other choice – you are literally burning with it. Its time has come. But this is not what I’m writing about in this post. Continue reading

Using your extendend memory

I have recently re-read a private memorandum of events that happened some time ago in my personal life. In this memo I wrote that “those two events will always stay intertwined in my memory”. Well… I didn’t take into account how quickly my memory of those events faded. If I hadn’t written them down for one, I wouldn’t even know about them any more. Both events have completely vanished from my active memory. It is not that I didn’t remember them when I read about them: the re-reading served as a refresher for my mind, the events are present again. But: I would not have been able to recall even one of them, left alone both and remember that they were intertwined without this refresher. Was it long ago? Maybe, it depends on your definition: about one and half years ago. And at that time I felt and believed that those events were pretty big in my life.

That showed me one thing very clearly: our memory is extremely faulty.

Continue reading