Guest Author - Lucinda Moriarty

Imagination is the most important tool in a writer’s toolbox. It is the fuel that feeds ideas, plots, and characters. When your imagination well starts to dwindle, it is time to replenish. Here are a few easy tips to give your noggin a make-over.

Shift into discovery mode. Remember what it was like to be five-years-old? I don’t. But I do remember that everything was fascinating. Try spending a few minutes in that pre-school discovery mode. Go outside and smell the grass. Look up at the clouds and try to find faces in them. Stare at the veins in a leaf. You will be surprised how rediscovering simple things can do wonders for the brain.

Challenge your senses. Put on a blindfold and have a friend walk you around your neighborhood. Experience the smells, the sounds that you overlook every single day. Take a few items out of your closet that are made from different fabrics. Close your eyes and feel each one. Try to find the roughness in the softest fabric, and the softness in the roughest.

Be silly. Make a face, make a funny sound. Laugh out loud about absolutely nothing for five minutes straight. Find a place where you can be alone and play for twenty minutes. Grab an old doll or a miniature car and play until your heart is content. Find a box of crayons and draw a picture of a magical creature – but please, no coloring on the wall!

Get your just rewards. Rewarding yourself is something everyone needs to do from time to time. Take a few dollars and go buy something you really don’t need. Spend just a couple of dollars – don’t break the bank. Use the change you find underneath the sofa cushion, or on the floor of your car. Buy something colorful that strikes your fancy. A stack of neon post-it notes, a Christmas ornament, or a novelty box with a beach ball painted on it.

Read a good book. One of the reasons you write for children is because you like children’s literature. Go to the library and check out one of your all time favorites and read it right there on the spot. It inspired you once, it can do it again.