When I started writing, I lived on an Iowa farm, in a county known nationwide as the “black dirt capital of the world.” Record crops were grown there, in the most nutrient-dense soil in the country.

Then I moved to Texas twelve years ago. I tried for years to grow something–anything–in my front yard. I watered faithfully, but after a few weeks, the bushes curled up and died, the flowers shriveled, and the firm succulents went squishy.

What passes for “dirt” here is a bit of leached-out clay embedded with rocks and gravel. There is almost no top soil at all, and certainly none of it is black. Not even brown. Just sort of dingy gray. One weekend, I asked the advice of the older man across the street, a retired wheat farmer from Nebraska whose vegetable gardens were green and lush.

“Compost your yard,” he said. “Pile up all kinds of vegetable peelings and leaves and grass clippings, let it get warm and decompose, then use the rich formula to give your plants something to grow on.”

Something to Grow On

When he said that, I realized he was talking about more than my dried-up yard, although he didn’t know it…  I was twenty-seven years old when I took a writing course for children. At that time, I’d stored up twenty-seven years of experiences, plus twenty-seven years’ worth of books read and absorbed. I also had three small children, so ideas were unfolding before my very eyes on a daily basis. I had more ideas than I had time to write down, much less develop.

Fast forward thirty-three years to arid Texas. I’ve had nearly 50 books published, plus scores of articles and some short stories. Even so, sometimes my inner reservoir of ideas feels a lot like my gray hard rocky soil out front. Some days I feel like I’m about as successful growing stories as I am at growing flowers.

We all get there, if we write long enough. For me, it means that my writing life needs composting.

Artist Dates

One of the things Julia Cameron advises in The Artist’s Way is to take a weekly “artist date.” It’s for feeding your mind with images and experiences you need as a writer. Weekly nurturing experiences restock the pond that perhaps you’ve fished from for years. An over-fished pond leaves us with diminished resources. Our work dries up. The pond needs to be restocked. You do that with artist dates.

“An artist date is a block of time, perhaps two hours weekly, especially set aside and committed to nurturing your creative consciousness, your inner artist. In its most primary form, the artist date is an excursion, a play date that you pre-plan and defend against all interlopers.”

You go alone–no spouses, friends, children, or grandchildren.

Cameron suggests things like a visit to a great junk store, a solo trip to the beach, an old movie seen alone, a visit to an aquarium or art gallery. A long walk, sitting to watching a sunrise or sunset, going bowling, a free concert in the park: all such experiences qualify.

Crop Analysis

Are you expecting a bumper crop of writing to come from soil that was depleted some time ago? Is the fruit of your writing labor smaller than it used to be? It could be that it’s time to do some composting.

What are some of your favorite ways to feed and nurture your creative side? What do you do to fit creative composting into your writing life?

Some days I feel about as creative as a cement block. Most of us know, however, that we can’t wait to feel creative before we write.

Writers who wait for inspiration before they decide to write are generally known as hobbyists. Working writers–those actively writing and growing in their craft–must write whether the muse is “in” or not.

“Which means, essentially,” James Scott Bell says, “you have to become a walking idea factory.” And he really does mean walking. He said he gets a lot of his ideas for his current work-in-progress when walking. I know other writers who’ve said the same thing.

Dragging My Heels

I love to walk, but I have usually balked at this kind of “work while you walk” advice. After working at my desk, I want a break. And mulling over my novel while taking a walk doesn’t do a darned thing to refresh me. My brain is too tired. When I walk, I want to listen to a book on tape, something Jane Austen-y that I know will feed my soul. Thinking about my own novel just feels like more work to me.

But…I’m happy to say that’s not what Bell recommends! In his The Art of War for Writers, he says that after a writing session, “I try to take an hour walk every day and listen to an audio book.” Inevitably his muse or imagination (what he calls “the boys in the basement”) sends up ideas for his work-in-progress while he’s listening to his audio book for relaxation. When that happens, he stops, makes a note in the pocket notebook he carries, then goes back to his audio book and walks some more.

He calls this his system for “being creative without thinking about it. That way you can be ‘working’ on your idea even when you’re not working on it.”

Then What?

For several days I tried Bell’s system. I hadn’t expected it to work–but it did! While walking and listening to Pride and Prejudice on my MP3 player, my brain released a good number of ideas–things that I could later develop (a secondary character’s flaw, a plot twist that would also show the book’s theme, a better setting for the climax scene). I have to admit that I was very surprised how well this worked.

If you want to try it, here are Bell’s steps for becoming a walking idea factory.

• Focus fully on your book or story idea during your writing time.
• Take a walk and relax, then capture the ideas that pop up during your walk.
• Back home, immediately put your recorded bits in a computer file. Expand on them, brainstorm the ideas, follow rabbit trails. Do that with each idea that popped up on your walk.
• Let the ideas cool for a day and then come back to them for assessment.
• Decide which ideas to keep and use in your current work. Set the others aside for another project.

Bell says if you get used to thinking this way, your creativity will explode!