Writing Outside Your Comfort Zone: Unordinary inspiration

Hi everyone, and welcome back to Too Many Books to Count! I’m so glad you stopped by. This month, we’ve been talking about getting outside our comfort zones. I know it’s not something we all want to do, something we like to do, or something we remotely look forward to the majority of the time, but you know what? If we’re ever going to grow in our writing career, we need to stretch ourselves, we need to get outside those comfort zones and explore something new. So that’s what we’re doing, this month.

Thus far, we’ve talked about everything from genre swapping to playing with new points of view—and if you haven’t been around all month, I’d encourage you to go back and read the rest of the series. I really believe there’s a lot to be gained from this month.

For today, let’s talk about something a bit more abstract:

Writing Outside Your Comfort Zone: Unordinary inspiration

See what I mean? Unlike just changing your genre or finding someone to collaborate with, this one is much more abstract—but still just as important, if I’m being perfectly honest. How’s that? Because we all have that set list of things we generally get inspiration from, those banks of things we know inspire us, the list of things that we know we can always fall back on, when we’re feeling a little short on inspiration. And it’s important that we allow ourselves to be inspired by other things, too. Things that we wouldn’t normally allow to inspire us at all.

I’ll use myself as an example, because, hey, I know me pretty darn well. And I know the things that I like to get inspiration from, the things that I love to go back to whenever I’m struggling to find exactly what I want to write. And the thing I’m going to use, as an example, is music.

If you know me at all, if you’ve been following me or reading TMBTC for more than a few months, then you know one of the biggest things I get inspiration from is music. And you’ll also know that I’m extremely picky about that music. I never listen to music with lyrics, and allow those lyrics to inspire me. I just don’t.

But you know what? That’s what I’ve been doing lately, to get outside that darned comfort zone. I’ve been listening to whatever music I have, whatever music YouTube recommends, and allowing that music to inspire the things I write. I’ve been listening to suggestions from my friends, listening to music from more genres than I care to admit, and letting the words flow into something I wouldn’t ordinarily be able to achieve.

Know what else? I don’t generally like what I write, when I use this method. But! I know that I can do it, and I know that it’s a useful exercise for me. I know I need to be able to write with any music on, whether that be music that actually inspires me or music that annoys me. Why? Because sometimes I just need to write, and I need to be able to do it no matter what’s going on around me. We all have those moments, you know?

It’s something I’ve been trying, because I knew if I was going to write this month's series, I needed to actually try out the things I was recommending. I needed to actually do these things, and make myself get outside my comfort zone. Besides, I also felt like I’d been in a rut for a little bit, and some of these exercises have really helped me get out of it.

So try it. I challenge you. If I can do it, so can you. And it doesn’t even have to be music. It can be whatever thing you never allow to inspire you. Try to find a way to be inspired by it. Let it flow into the words you write, and see what happens. Sure, you might hate what comes out of it. But you never know—you might also find something really cool, that you’ll be able to use from here on out.

Have any of you done this exercise before? What were your results? Let me know in the comments, or message me on Facebook!

[love]

{Rani Divine}