You can’t build a campfire without fuel. You can’t build a creative fire without fuel, either.
To build a campfire, you don’t need just matches, a butane torch, or a couple of sticks you can rub together. You need something to burn. In the case of the campfire, you need wood.
The fuel for your creative fire is the ideas, insights, and experiences you’ve collected up to this moment. You get new creative ideas and insights by combining the old ones in new ways.
Your experiences can be fuel for your creative fire. Enrich them by capturing them in notes or a journal.
Conversations can be fuel for your creative fire. Take the time for rich conversations with people who have knowledge, experience, or a perspective that you don’t. Ask questions. Make notes. Record your impressions and insights in a journal.
Posts and articles you read online can be fuel for your creative fire. Beat the algorithm and find posts about areas you don’t know.
Books can be fuel for your creative fire. Books allow you to explore widely and deeply. Read history, biography, science, and social analysis. Read fiction to immerse yourself in someone else’s mental world. Record your impressions and insights in a journal.
This isn’t a hack. You must hunt down the fuel before you need the fire. Make fuel gathering a way of life.
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I’m Wally Bock. If you’re writing your first book, you don’t know what you don’t know. I can help you get on the right track and make progress without making rookie mistakes and wasting time.