A Journey Through Creative Inspiration: Freewrite

An interesting phenomenon took place twenty minutes ago. Strapped for a subject to discuss today, a writer, barefoot in his bedroom shifted gears in a most inspired manner. To recite in detail the energy that left compositions by Nino Rota, composer of the soundtrack to The Godfather, one would need fine language and literary metaphor. Its ambience caressed the ears, while the faintest wisp of marijuana smoke swayed her hips to the music. Scrolling through his pieces from earlier in the week, he remembered. People in a 2014 Stanford study improved their creativity a lot more by walking than sitting. Laughing at the simplicity of the suggestion, he spun to his right and rose gingerly around the bedroom. Cold feet slid through soft carpet.

"Surrounded by choice...", he whispered to himself. It was true. A brief survey of the surroundings concluded similarly. Newspapers filled at least one Carhartt store bag at his feet. He spotted a men's entertainment magazine under an RC car on an antique lamp table. The white BMW Z4 GT3 sat at a 1:24 ratio to the real thing, but there wasn't writing material there, he knew. He shifted away from the bookshelf to the one behind him, the behemoth at his bedside. It stood at six feet, complete with three shelves and two pull-out draws at the bottom. Black paint modernized the wooden beauty, no doubt a bygone relic of carpentry artisanship. On the second shelf before him, sandwiched between Agent M by Henry Hemming and The Science of Getting Rich by Wallace D Wattles, the spine of an unfinished book caught his eye.

The thin paperback sported some modern pattern in a gradient of deep mauve to magenta. It resembled an endoplasmic reticulum; the thought of high school biology classes and crushes flash in the mind like a camera. Those memories would surface more another day, with a stronger cue. Today, it came to mind as he perused its contents.

Eric Patel sat at very back of the auditorium, but the acoustics assured everyone in the room met the same decibel level. He crossed his left leg over his right knee and sported a baseball cap. April was brisk that time of year and he hadn't removed his jacket. The copy on our writer's bookshelf sat beside him, on the small desk surface to his right. Boston University agreed to the host the conference in the building of politics or some other academia. The conversation with Patel was foggy now, but how could you forget the enthusiasm on his face? Eric had written this book with several co-authors with regular meetings for 2 years via Zoom. They did everything themselves, including publishing online via Amazon. Patel gave the copy away and hoped that reading the book would be of some value.

Slipping the book out from the shelf, our author sat back at the desk. The black stool cushion puffed once under his weight. He read aloud about several things to discuss:

• the definition of antifragile as written in Antifragile by Nassim Taleb
• fear-based versus love-inspired decision making
• mindfulness and the science behind emotion

Suddenly, 500 words seemed like a limit as the writer's block turned into a step in the direction of sharing his perspective. In fact, in addition to the subjects he just apprised himself of, he remembered- he didn't write his daily plan down during the three magic hours. Once he put all his thoughts together from the reading, he would get to plotting the course for tomorrow.