Ideas for getting inspired to write

Do you want to write a book, or maybe need some help getting the juices flow for a letter?  Maybe you need to write your Christmas letter, or send an important email?  Here are some ideas to help you get the juices flowing.

I like to read similar works, observe people, and search the internet.  The library and Google/the internet are great resources.  It is amazing what you can find on the internet, and it can bring a lot of inspiration.

Sometimes you just have to start writing things.  Keeping a journal or a diary can help.  What's the difference between the two?  A diary is daily, while a journal is not necessarily daily.  You can write about what happened each day, or you can pick a different topic to write about each day.  One way to keep a journal, if you are more public about what you do, is to send a weekly email to your family and/or friends, or use your Facebook posts.  If you do either of these, you should at least consider what should happen if, worst case, the media you use has issues of whatever type.  Make a back-up of your writings.

You can write short stories, or poetry.  You can try different things.  You may tell your kids bed-time stories, then write them down and possibly make stories out of them.  You could self publish them.

You can write pure fiction, or pure non-fiction, or do a mixture of the two.  You could write historical fiction, where you study a period of time, or a person, and write about what they did, but add additional characters and/or events into their life.  There are a lot of stories like these.  The National Treasure movie series has a lot of facts interwoven with a fictional story.  I really enjoy these, because I learn interesting facts about history, and it is woven into a puzzle that my mind tries to solve.

To get started, I often start with an outline of what I want to write.  For example, if I have a talk or speech to give, and it is 15 minutes, for example, then I will make an outline, and give each section of the outline a set number of minutes.  For example, if I needed to talk about ways to get inspired, I might break it into 5 minutes for an introduction, including why one might need to get inspired, followed by 5 minutes of different ways to get inspired, and then end with the last 5 minutes of a conclusion, possibly including examples.  These 3 items could be broken down further--something like this:

• Intro, including why one would want to get inspired
• Productivity
• Health
• Work
• School
• Hobby
• Ways to get inspired
• Meditation
• Brain storming
• Reading
• Internet
• Conclusion
• Example

How do you get inspired to write?