Category Archives: Get Creative!

I’m doing double duty this month during the A to Z Blogging Challenge. Here at Heather Erickson Author/Writer/Speaker, I will share ways to increase your creativity. I’ll also be doing the challenge at Facing Cancer with Grace, where I will share posts that focus on caregiving. I hope you’ll visit me at both sites. While you’re here, sign up for my email list. Today’s post is S is for Senses.

The 5 Senses

Writers usually try to sprinkle each of the 5 senses throughout the story to make it come alive. This gives the reader a more vivid reading experience. Writers often lean heavily on the senses of sight and hearing, while neglecting the senses of taste, touch, and smell. Some writers go overboard, overwhelming readers to the point of distraction.

While balance is the key, once in a while, it’s a good idea to try something different to stretch your writing abilities. One way to do this is to eliminate one of the major sensory abilities. There must be a reason to do this which is integral to the plot. Make sure it’s not contrived.

Bird Box

A year ago, I heard about Josh Malerman’s novel, Bird Box, on The Story Grid podcast. I immediately put it on my “must read” list. The thing that interested me was a change of perspective. Malerman did something most writers would never dream of doing. He eliminated the sense of sight, almost completely from the story.

The premise of the book was that something was making everyone insane (to the point of self-destruction) by just being seen. So the main character was essentially on a quest—blindfolded. This forced not only the main character, but Josh Malerman, as well, to rely more heavily on the other 4 senses.

I recall watching an episode from the series Alfred Hitchcock Presents, called, You Got to Have Luck. An escaped convict took refuge in the home of a deaf woman, not knowing she was deaf and was reading his lips. Eventually he was caught because of this mistake. This concept has been used several times since then, most recently in the 2016 horror movie, “Hush.”  Even if you only do this as an exercise to stretch your writing muscles, I highly recommend playing with the 5 senses in your writing.

While you’re here, sign up for my email list to get a periodic email newsletter to encourage your creativity.

What are YOUR thoughts?

I’d love to hear in the comment section, below. I appreciate my readers as well as the writing community. To show that appreciation, I use Comment Luv. Just leave a comment below and your latest post will get a link next to it. Thank you!

About Heather Erickson

I am an author, writer, and speaker and homeschooling mom of 3. Since doctors diagnosed my husband, Dan with stage IV lung cancer in 2012, I’ve focused my writing and speaking on helping cancer patients and their families advocate for themselves and live life to the fullest, in spite of their illness. My goal is to help people face cancer with grace.

My books The Memory Maker’s Journal and Facing Cancer as a Friend: How to Support Someone Who Has Cancer, are available at Amazon.com.

I also blog about living with cancer at, Facing Cancer with Grace.

I’m doing double duty this month during the A to Z Blogging Challenge. Here at Heather Erickson Author/Writer/Speaker, I will share ways to increase your creativity. I’ll also be doing the challenge at Facing Cancer with Grace, where I will share posts that focus on caregiving. I hope you’ll visit me at both sites. While you’re here, sign up for my email list. Today’s post is Q is for Quiet Your Mind.

Recently a friend came to drop off a meal after my husband had a round of chemo. As soon as she entered our home, she lowered her voice to just above a whisper. She probably figured Dan was resting (which he was). Just before leaving she remarked, “Your house is so quiet.” I got a bit of a chuckle out of that and chalked it up to the fact that our daughter, Summer, wasn’t there. Summer is a force of life that you can’t ignore. She enters our house each night after college and work, like a parade. The truth is, that over the years, many people have remarked at the quiet atmosphere in our home.

There are a few things that add to that:

1. The TV isn’t running. We get plenty of screen time, but throughout the day and most evenings, the television set in our living room (the only TV in our home) is turned off. When our kids were young we limited television use and didn’t have cable. Now that they are older, there is an unspoken rule against watching the TV without a good reason.
2. We don’t have a stereo. This is actually a bummer sometimes. It’s not even an intentional decision, but it does add to the peace and quiet in our home.
3. “We don’t have a dog.” This is what my daughter Emily said when I asked them why our home is quiet. She’s right. When I was younger, we had dogs and there was always barking or running across the floors. The most noise came from my mom yelling at the dogs for one thing or another. My daughters have lots of allergies, dogs and cats included, so the only pets we have are fish and gerbils.
4. Headphone use. When someone is using a computer they wear headphones.

A home’s peaceful atmosphere can help quiet your mind. When you quiet your mind, you will find it is more focused. This is one of the reasons it’s essential to creativity. You can’t strive to work in a creative endeavor if a distraction comes knocking on the door of your mind every five minutes. How do you go about quiet your mind?

Don’t Multitask

I’ve written about multitasking before when I did my Digital Detox series. Dr. Travis Bradberry, co-founder of TalentSmart wrote this very succinct article on the dangers multitasking poses to your brain. As a recovering multitasker, I can tell you there is a definite improvement in creative and cognitive functioning when you eliminate multitasking from your life. It was the second most difficult thing for me to give up on my digital detox.

Take a walk

The researchers at Stanford University looked at how taking a walk affected creative output. They learned that it increased participants’ creative output by 60% versus when they were sitting. Walking is a meditative activity. My husband and I walk in our neighborhood and I often find inspiration is easily plucked from the air during these times.

Controlled Breathing to Quiet Your Mind

Breathing can have a profound effect on your mind. Often when people become anxious, they forget to breathe. When they do something difficult or frightening, the hold their breath without even knowing it. I learned about the power of breathing from a physical therapist who was helping me with chronic pain. After teaching me the theory of breathing being important in controlling your physical well being, he put me on a stationary bike that took my pulse as I rode. We watched as my heart rate increased. Then he told me to do my controlled breathing. As I did, my heart rate began to drop! I was amazed. This exercise will quiet your mind and enable you to think more clearly.

Controlled Breathing Exercise

• Inhale through your nose 5 seconds.
• Hold your breath for 2 seconds.
• Exhale through pursed lips for 5 seconds.
• Repeat until you have done this 10 times

Take a Silent Retreat

I take an annual retreat to Pacem in Terris, a hermitage north of the Twin Cities. During my time away, I am able to relax and let the cares of the world drift away. There’s no email, no squabbling kids, no worries that I can’t hand over to God. In fact, one of the greatest gifts you can get at Pacem in Terris is when you are being dropped off at your cabin. The host asks you if you have any need of prayer. You can tell them what’s on your mind and they pray for those needs specifically while you are there. I find that very freeing. Whatever way you use to quiet your mind, you will find that you can then hear the muse you need to be creative.

While you’re here, sign up for my email list to get a periodic email newsletter to encourage your creativity.

What are YOUR thoughts?

I’d love to hear in the comment section, below. I appreciate my readers as well as the writing community. To show that appreciation, I use Comment Luv. Just leave a comment below and your latest post will get a link next to it. Thank you!

About Heather Erickson

I am an author, writer, and speaker and homeschooling mom of 3. Since doctors diagnosed my husband, Dan with stage IV lung cancer in 2012, I’ve focused my writing and speaking on helping cancer patients and their families advocate for themselves and live life to the fullest, in spite of their illness. My goal is to help people face cancer with grace.

My books The Memory Maker’s Journal and Facing Cancer as a Friend: How to Support Someone Who Has Cancer, are available at Amazon.com.

I also blog about living with cancer at, Facing Cancer with Grace.

I’m doing double duty this month during the A to Z Blogging Challenge. Here at Heather Erickson Author/Writer/Speaker, I will share ways to increase your creativity. I’ll also be doing the challenge at Facing Cancer with Grace, where I will share posts that focus on caregiving. I hope you’ll visit me at both sites. While you’re here, sign up for my email list. Today’s post is P for Change Your Perspective.

.When you change your perspective you can be more creative, whether you are writing, doing visual art or any of the other artistic endeavor. Even outside of the arts, it’s helpful to change your perspective. In your daily life, you need to change your perspective not only to empathize with family, friends, and coworkers but also to problem solve.

Saving the World

One example of this is frequently seen on the CBS drama (also seen on Netflix), “Madam Secretary.”  As the Secretary of State, Elizabeth McCord encounters a new crisis every day. Despite the fact that these situations seem to leave her with no good solution, she needs to come up with a plan. Often, in the company of her family, she sees things through fresh eyes and devises a plan that everyone can live with. By the way, I highly recommend checking it out “Madam Secretary” if you liked “The West Wing.” It has a very similar feeling to it.

What about Visual Art?

Any type of visual art you do can benefit when you change your perspective. Sometimes that means changing the media you use. Even changing the lighting will affect how the piece looks and how the viewer feels as they experience it.  Consider daylight savings time. Not everyone has daylight savings time where they live, but those of us who do, know the eerie feeling when the clocks roll back in the fall and it’s suddenly dark at 4:30 PM. We have to change more than the time on our clocks. We need to adjust when we go to bed, because our bodies don’t care what the clock says. It’s like jet-lag without the vacation.

You can also, quite literally, change your perspective

These are two pictures of the same object. This is a spearfishing decoy that my daughter Emily painted and entered in a contest.

Here is the same fish, competing. It’s with all of its other fishy friends trying to stand out. Unfortunately, it didn’t stand out enough.

Now think about how the viewer would feel about this same decoy fulfilling it’s true purpose as it catches the eye on a fish in the water. This is also affected by something that as an artist you can’t control: The opinions and experiences the viewer brings to the piece of art.

Point of View

There are countless ways to tell a story.  As a writer, it’s essential to consider how the reader is going to receive the story. The basic theory behind point-of-view is more than just deciding which pronouns you will use to tell the story. It’s also about distance. How close are we going to let the reader get to the action? One of the things you can do to improve your fiction is to choose a scene that isn’t popping. Rewrite that scene using each of the following points of view and see which one suits your story’s needs. Each will have its own benefits and drawbacks. Be sure to take your time with this. It shouldn’t be too daunting with the aid of your computer.

1^st Person

1^st Person is very intimate. When you change your perspective to 1^st person, you put the reader inside of the narrator’s head. However, that narrator may not give us the whole picture because everything will be seen from their point of view. We’ll get their opinions and may even end up being manipulated by them. If you have a specific reason for using this point of view, it can really work to your advantage. It often feels awkward for readers, though. And readers are hesitant to trust the narrator completely which can interfere with their ability to become immersed in the story. Weigh the pros and cons of this and change your perspective accordingly.

2nd person

2^nd person is rarely used in fiction because it’s kind of weird to have a writer talking directly to you. This is more commonly used in non-fiction writing like this blog post. I’m talking to you about how you can become more creative by changing your point of view.

3rd person

3^rd person and (its derivatives) is the most common point of view. We are getting the story from someone who isn’t a part of the story. The pronouns “he,” “she” and “they” are used, but never “I” or “you.” You can have this 3^rd person narrator peek through one of the characters eyes. This is called 3^rd person limited. This gives the reader a more intimate view of the story, while still keeping a big picture point of view. Otherwise, you can use an omniscient point of view. This gives the narrator (and thus, the reader) a bird’s eye view of the story. Some people feel this POV prevents the reader from feeling the intensity of the story. Stephen King is known as a master of this point of view, and I sure feel the intensity of his stories.

There is more than traditional point-of-view to think about.

Who is telling the story? I recently read “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest” by Ken Kesey. This book was fascinating from a writer’s point of view. He used first person POV extremely well. The wonderful thing about it was not only the POV he chose from a technical standpoint but the particular character he chose. Let’s face it; the story takes place in an asylum. There were endless possibilities of who he could have had told the story.

He chose “Chief” Bromden. Ken Kesey had a keen interest in the Native Americans that lived in Oregon along the Columbia River. This character was interesting on so many levels. He had chosen to play deaf/mute for years; so we are pulled into the book by a voice no one else is able to hear. The other thing that was so essential to the book was the metaphor of the combine. He spoke in literal word pictures about machinery and this combine (the system) that was going to roll right over them. As a Native American, he had experienced this in a literal sense. Now in the asylum, he sees the combine in the form of Nurse Ratched.

Change your perspective

Choose which perspective you use for your story, or any other form of art, intentionally and wisely. Try different perspectives out on a smaller scale. Think about it for a while and then change your perspective to the one that best fits your needs.

While you’re here, sign up for my email list to get a periodic email newsletter to encourage your creativity.

What are YOUR thoughts?

I’d love to hear in the comment section, below. I appreciate my readers as well as the writing community. To show that appreciation, I use Comment Luv. Just leave a comment below and your latest post will get a link next to it. Thank you!

About Heather Erickson

I am an author, writer, and speaker and homeschooling mom of 3. Since doctors diagnosed my husband, Dan with stage IV lung cancer in 2012, I’ve focused my writing and speaking on helping cancer patients and their families advocate for themselves and live life to the fullest, in spite of their illness. My goal is to help people face cancer with grace.

My books The Memory Maker’s Journal and Facing Cancer as a Friend: How to Support Someone Who Has Cancer, are available at Amazon.com.

I also blog about living with cancer at, Facing Cancer with Grace.

I’m doing double duty this month during the A to Z Blogging Challenge. Here at Heather Erickson Author/Writer/Speaker, I will share ways to increase your creativity. I’ll also be doing the challenge at Facing Cancer with Grace, where I will share posts that focus on caregiving. I hope you’ll visit me at both sites. While you’re here, sign up for my email list. Today’s post is O for Write an Ode.

What exactly is an ode?

It’s a tribute—an emotionally over-the-top tribute to something or someone (or even an abstract concept).  It can be free-form, but more often is set to a pattern of the writer’s choosing.

How does writing an ode—or any poetry make you more creative?

Poetry strengthens your language skills and pushes you to dig deep within yourself to help you best express your emotions. Often, in poetry, you will use symbolism, imagery and metaphors. It can also be very therapeutic, releasing blocks to your creativity. Doing this activity will challenge you. I recommend that you come up with short stanzas for different people and things throughout your day.

When is the last time you wrote an ode?

It’s not as hard as it John Keats makes it sound.

Decide what or who you want to praise.

It could be anything. It might be easier if it’s something you genuinely care about. But for this exercise, it could also be something as simple as your morning cup of coffee. To get into the mood you could brainstorm all of the aspects of that person or thing that you could talk about.

Coffee= Steamy, brown, liquid, energy, in a cup, bitter, sweet, creamy, hot, roasted, nutty

Choose a pattern of rhythm and rhyme that you want to use.

The great thing about odes is that they don’t lock you into specific rules the way other types of poetry like sonnets or haiku do. You actually don’t need to rhyme at all—or write with a specific rhythm. It can be great to use one of these elements, or both. If you do decide to use rhythm and/or rhyme, use whatever pattern you come up with consistently throughout the entire poem. Another thing you will want to do is speak directly to what or whoever you are writing the ode for. Odes are traditionally quite long. I will share one stanza to show you an example that I wrote about my coffee. There is often a line that is repeated throughout the poem. I would use the first line and repeat it in the beginning of every stanza.

An example of a 5 line stanza:

Oh coffee, how I need you.

You steam my senses with energy

I pour you into my cup

But a sip of your brown liquid

Wakes my sleepy brain up

In the spring of 1819, John Keats heard a nightingale sing. He was so inspired by the bird’s song that he composed Ode to a Nightingale in one day. These are the last 20 lines on the 80 line tribute to a plain brown bird with a beautiful song.

Ode to a Nightingale Verses 60-80

Perhaps the self-same song that found a path 65

Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,

She stood in tears amid the alien corn;

The same that ofttimes hath

Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam

Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn. 70

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell

To toll me back from thee to my sole self!

Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well

As she is famed to do, deceiving elf.

Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades 75

Past the near meadows, over the still stream,

Up the hill-side; and now ’tis buried deep

In the next valley-glades:

Was it a vision, or a waking dream?

Fled is that music:—do I wake or sleep? 80

Biblical Odes

This definition brings up the obvious question of whether there are odes in the Bible. There ARE! Here are a few:

Exodus 15:1-19                    The (First) Song of Moses

Deuteronomy 32:1-43          The (Second) Song of Moses

1 Samuel 2:1-10                   The Prayer of Hannah

Habakkuk 3:1-19                  The Prayer of Habakkuk

Isaiah 26:9-20                     The Prayer of Isaiah

Jonah 2:2-9                         The Prayer of Jonah

Luke 1:46-55                       The Magnificat

Luke 1:68-79                       The Song of Zacharias

Another example of a famous ode is “Ode to Joy.” Poet Friedrich Schiller first published this ode in 1766. Then in 1824, Composer Ludwig van Beethoven set it to music in his Ninth Symphony.

While you’re here, sign up for my email list to get a periodic email newsletter to encourage your creativity.

What are YOUR thoughts?

I’d love to hear in the comment section, below. I appreciate my readers as well as the writing community. To show that appreciation, I use Comment Luv. Just leave a comment below and your latest post will get a link next to it. Thank you!

About Heather Erickson

I am an author, writer, and speaker and homeschooling mom of 3. Since doctors diagnosed my husband, Dan with stage IV lung cancer in 2012, I’ve focused my writing and speaking on helping cancer patients and their families advocate for themselves and live life to the fullest, in spite of their illness. My goal is to help people face cancer with grace.

My books The Memory Maker’s Journal and Facing Cancer as a Friend: How to Support Someone Who Has Cancer, are available at Amazon.com.

I also blog about living with cancer at, Facing Cancer with Grace.

I’m doing double duty this month during the A to Z Blogging Challenge. Here at Heather Erickson Author/Writer/Speaker, I will share ways to increase your creativity. I’ll also be doing the challenge at Facing Cancer with Grace, where I will share posts that focus on caregiving. I hope you’ll visit me at both sites. While you’re here, sign up for my email list. Today’s post is N is for Nap Like Salvador Dali.

Take a Nap to Wake Up your Creativity

If you think that Dali’s famous melting clocks look like something out of a strange dream, you might be right. Dali had a unique method of inspiring his creative endeavors. In his book, 50 Secrets of Magic Craftsmanship , Dali assures his readers who are working on a project that a good heavy sleep is when “you will secretly, in the very depths of your spirit, solve most of its subtle and complicated, technical problems, which in your state of waking consciousness you would never be humanly capable of solving.” Dali recommends waking very early, in order to take advantage of maximum daylight. He then goes on to describe an afternoon nap of less than a minute long—“less than a quarter of a second,” in fact.

Unlocking Your Creativity

He called it “slumber with a key.” He would sit in an armchair (preferably a bony armchair, Spanish style), head tilted back, resting his arms comfortably on the those of the chair. He applied oil of aspic to his wrists in order to numb his hands causing them to tingle. They would hang beyond the arms of the chair, dangling freely. He held a key between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand. Directly beneath the dangling key was an overturned plate. He allowed himself to relax until the moment he fell asleep.

Hypnagogia

At that point, the key would drop onto the plate and wake him from his slumbering state. This in-between state is called the hypnagogic state (or hypnagogia). Dictionary.com defines hypnagogic as “the drowsy period between wakefulness and sleep, during which fantasies and hallucinations often occur.”(1) It happens as you are just beginning to fall asleep. You may have had the experience almost falling asleep. Suddenly you felt like you were falling or you saw something that wasn’t there and you jerked awake. This is one manifestation of hypnagogia. It’s easy to see by this definition alone why capturing the essence of this state would be valuable to an artist like Salvador Dali.

Nap like Van Winkle

There is a similar state called hypnopompia.(2) This (almost) mirrors hypnagogia. It happens after you’ve fallen asleep—just as you are waking up. Hypnopompic more vivid and immersive than the simpler visual “hallucinations” of hypnagogia. They are often a continuation of a dream experience. Another interesting phenomenon that occurs in a hypnopompic state is the feeling of “sleep paralysis.” It’s exactly what it sounds like. You feel like you can’t move upon waking up. It can actually be pretty frightening.

Salvador Dali isn’t the only one to take advantage of the micro nap. Many artists, writers, composers, and geniuses from other realms of thought have attributed their inspiration to a sleep practice similar to Dali’s. The next time you are struggling with a creative endeavor, try experimenting with your sleep habits. It may take a little while to make headway, but give it a shot. Everyone has to sleep sometime, right? How does taking a nap help your creativity?

Before you leave to take that nap, sign up for my email list to get a periodic email newsletter to encourage your creativity.

What are YOUR thoughts?

I’d love to hear in the comment section, below. I appreciate my readers as well as the writing community. To show that appreciation, I use Comment Luv. Just leave a comment below and your latest post will get a link next to it. Thank you!

About Heather Erickson

I am an author, writer, and speaker and homeschooling mom of 3. Since doctors diagnosed my husband, Dan with stage IV lung cancer in 2012, I’ve focused my writing and speaking on helping cancer patients and their families advocate for themselves and live life to the fullest, in spite of their illness. My goal is to help people face cancer with grace.

My books The Memory Maker’s Journal and Facing Cancer as a Friend: How to Support Someone Who Has Cancer, are available at Amazon.com.

I also blog about living with cancer at, Facing Cancer with Grace.

Footnotes:

1. Dictionary.com, hypnagogic,
2. Van Winkle’s, Exploring Hypnopompia, the Trippy Transition Between Sleep and Wakefulness, July 28, 2016,

I’m doing double duty this month during the A to Z Blogging Challenge. Here at Heather Erickson Author/Writer/Speaker, I will share ways to increase your creativity. I’ll also be doing the challenge at Facing Cancer with Grace, where I will share posts that focus on caregiving. I hope you’ll visit me at both sites. While you’re here, sign up for my email list. Today’s post is M is for Morning Pages.

Julia Cameron introduced Morning pages to the world in her book, The Artist’s Way. At the time The Artist’s Way was published, the ideas in it were revolutionary. The purpose of the book was to “unblock” artists and writers and foster their self-confidence.

Julia Cameron first published The Artist’s Way in 1992. Julia originally compiled tips and hints from artists, for artists, into a book and tried to get it published. It was turned down! Julia ended up self-publishing the book and the sales went wild. It’s sold millions of copies and is on the list of top 100 self-help books of all time. This is quite an encouraging story for self-published authors.

What are Morning Pages?

Morning Pages are three pages of longhand, stream-of-consciousness writing done every morning, first thing in the morning. You simply get 3 sheets of paper and a favorite pen or pencil and write until the pages are filled. You can write anything that comes to mind. It might be what you dreamed the night before or an argument you had with your spouse before you even got out of bed. They could even be a grocery list if that’s what’s on your mind.

No one will ever see your morning pages. Even you aren’t meant to look back on them any more than you would peek into your rubbish bin at the end of the week. They almost are rubbish. Morning pages help you sort through the jumble of things that lay on your mind each morning when you wake up and clear it all out.

Morning Pages aren’t just for writers. They have helped people in an array of creative capacities. We all have the problem of becoming blocked oncein a while.

My Experience with Morning Pages

For me, Morning Pages are hard. They aren’t meant to be. There is no right or wrong way to do them. But I am a perfectionist of sorts. I often ponder a sentence for a half an hour, trying to figure out the right way to express a thought. Morning pages are meant to be fast—no pondering. No spelling or grammar check allowed.
Not only that but writing longhand is difficult for me, especially in the morning when my arthritic hands are at their stiffest. So, the handwriting looks awful, which bothers me.

Have Morning Pages Helped?

They have. As much as I don’t like doing them, they are like taking vitamins. Over the course of three pages, the thoughts in my mind that would ordinarily pop in and interrupt me as I am doing my creative writing are sorted out and dealt with. I write them as I drink the last of my morning coffee, and by the time I am done, I feel more energized. It could be the coffee.

They Take Time

Don’t expect to be a creative genius or have your stubborn writer’s block disappear after one set of Morning Pages. It does take a while. I feel confident that you will notice a difference within a couple of weeks, though. By the way, your feelings toward the morning pages won’t be much of an indicator of whether they are working or not. I still don’t like doing them. They force me to slow down and look inward (which I don’t like either). But both make me a better writer. Pick a notebook, any notebook and begin to write.

While you’re here, sign up for my email list to get a periodic email newsletter to encourage your creativity.

What are YOUR thoughts?

I’d love to hear in the comment section, below. I appreciate my readers as well as the writing community. To show that appreciation, I use Comment Luv. Just leave a comment below and your latest post will get a link next to it. Thank you!

About Heather Erickson

I am an author, writer, and speaker and homeschooling mom of 3. Since doctors diagnosed my husband, Dan with stage IV lung cancer in 2012, I’ve focused my writing and speaking on helping cancer patients and their families advocate for themselves and live life to the fullest, in spite of their illness. My goal is to help people face cancer with grace.

My books The Memory Maker’s Journal and Facing Cancer as a Friend: How to Support Someone Who Has Cancer, are available at Amazon.com.

I also blog about living with cancer at, Facing Cancer with Grace.

I’m doing double duty this month during the A to Z Blogging Challenge. Here at Heather Erickson Author/Writer/Speaker, I will share ways to increase your creativity. I’ll also be doing the challenge at Facing Cancer with Grace, where I will share posts that focus on caregiving. I hope you’ll visit me at both sites. While you’re here, sign up for my email list. Today’s post is L is for Learn Something New.

The one thing that frustrates me in life (okay…one of the many things that frustrate me) is how many awesome things there are to learn, and how little time there is to soak up all of that knowledge. The great thing is that there are so many ways to learn something new. And when you do, you can learn to think more creatively.

Learn Something New Online

Online classes are a great way to learn something new. They can usually be completed at a pace that works with your schedule. Sometimes there’s a charge for the classes but often they are free (unless you want to pay for a certificate). I love Open 2 Study courses and Udemy. You can take classes to enhance your career or just to expand your horizons.

MOOCS

MOOC means Massive Open Online Classes. They are a great opportunity to learn something new from the comfort of your home. One thing that sets a MOOC apart from other online classes is the interaction with other students from around the world. In my experience, it’s always enlightening and professional. Everyone has the same goal—to learn something new. Some of my favorite MOOCs are from Coursera and Class Central.

Community Education

Most cities send out a newsletter highlighting community education opportunities. They have classes so people from toddlers to senior citizens can learn something new. Some classes are free and some have a charge for materials and to cover the cost of the facility. These classes are a great opportunity to get some hands-on experience as you learn something new. You could take a pottery class or learn how to take apart a car engine. Every time you learn something new you add something more to your bag of tricks. That’s one more thing your character can know.

I recently participated in Citizen’s Academy, a course that enables citizens to learn what our city’s police and firemen do in their jobs. I even got to do hands-on activities usually reserved for officers. This information will greatly enhance my mystery novels. It also gave me even greater respect for the men and women who serve our community.

Audit a Class at a University

In order to audit a class, you typically pay a reduced price for the class. You attend classes but don’t need to do the homework (You can but it’s not graded) and the same goes for tests. At the end of the class, you don’t get college credit for the class, but you do know a whole lot more than you did before you took the class. My daughter, Summer, is an Art History major at the University of Saint Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. She says that several people audit the art history classes because they are so interesting.

Definitely, consider how you can learn something new in the near future. It may just take asking someone you know to teach you something. Knowledge will expand your word and your creativity!

While you’re here, sign up for my email list to get a periodic email newsletter to encourage your creativity.

What are YOUR thoughts?

I’d love to hear in the comment section, below. I appreciate my readers as well as the writing community. To show that appreciation, I use Comment Luv. Just leave a comment below and your latest post will get a link next to it. Thank you!

About Heather Erickson

I am an author, writer, and speaker and homeschooling mom of 3. Since doctors diagnosed my husband, Dan with stage IV lung cancer in 2012, I’ve focused my writing and speaking on helping cancer patients and their families advocate for themselves and live life to the fullest, in spite of their illness. My goal is to help people face cancer with grace.

My books The Memory Maker’s Journal and Facing Cancer as a Friend: How to Support Someone Who Has Cancer, are available at Amazon.com.

I also blog about living with cancer at, Facing Cancer with Grace.

I’m doing double duty this month during the A to Z Blogging Challenge. Here at Heather Erickson Author/Writer/Speaker, I will share ways to increase your creativity. I’ll also be doing the challenge at Facing Cancer with Grace, where I will share posts that focus on caregiving. I hope you’ll visit me at both sites. While you’re here, sign up for my email list. Today’s post is K is for Kids’ Creative Perspectives.

Single, Double, or King?

Our daughter, Emily, was a quiet, highly intelligent child. When she played, it was very grounded in reality. However, it was imaginative. For example, one day when she was about 4 years old, I saw her seated in the doorway which led to her room. She had a large box in front of her and a pad of Post-It notes. She sat patiently in silence. I asked her what she was doing. She told me that she owned this hotel and would I like to check in.

Curious, I said, “sure.”

She scrawled a number on a post-it and handed it to me. “Here you go. Room number three.”

It was the cutest thing. Other kids played fireman and movie star and she played hotel. She played hotel a lot!

To the Moon!

One day I was driving the kids somewhere in our family van. Emily sat in the seat behind me as I drove down the highway. She held a book in her hands looking from page to page. She said, “I never want to go to the moon.” With awe in her voice. “There are so many critters there.”

“Critters?” I asked. “What kind of critters?”

“Big critters, little critters; The moon is full of critters!” still with awe in her voice.

Within moments we’d arrived home and I opened up the van’s sliding door. “What on earth do you mean by critters?” I asked.

“These critters,” she said, pointing to the child’s encyclopedia. When I saw the moon’s craters, I laughed so hard. “Those are craters, not critters,” I explained. She didn’t understand why I was laughing like I was. To her, critters or craters, the moon was a scary place.

Perceptions of Kids

Kids see the world differently than adults do. In the process of growing up, we lose a little of that magic. Meditate on the things that you hear kids say. If you do this enough, you can recapture your own child-like imagination. What do they see when they are staring at the clouds? How does the grass feel as they run barefoot across it to get their Easter basket? Beyond the things kids say and fee are the coming of age realizations, too.

Miss Nikko’s Tears

When I was in the 6th grade I had the greatest teacher ever. In fact, she was the first person to see a writer inside of me. Miss Nikko actually read to our class—out loud, just like we were little kids. I think that she saw that even big kids needed to be inspired by stories. I’ll never forget when she read us, The Bridge to Terabithia. The especially amazing thing was when she cried as she read the sad parts. There was a sort of magic in her tears. She didn’t act embarrassed to feel the strong emotions that a good story elicits.Instead, she trusted us with her tears. Now, whenever a book makes me cry, I know it’s okay, because Miss Nikko cried, too.

That Cancer Dragon.

A beautiful and tragic example of looking through a child’s eyes can be found in the immersive experience of a “game” called That Cancer Dragon. It was created by the father of a child who had cancer. He eloquently puts you in his shoes but also shows how his son felt as he went through treatment. If you want to have your heart torn out and be inspired at the same time, I highly recommend checking it out. It’s available on the steam platform.

Kids’ Quotes & Questions

Looking at life through a kid’s eyes can really be an adventure. It can also be a great way to think creatively. When we write from an adult’s point of view, ours is often blended in. When you think about what it’s like to be a kid and hear things with a kid’s short breadth of life experience, It is really altered. Try to recapture those moments of wonder. Spend time with children of various ages. Learn how the brain of a child develops. http://amzn.to/2DKkhmT It’s really quite amazing! Write a short story from a kid’s point of view—then change the kid’s age and write it again. How do things change? Try to remember pivotal moments in your life and how your thinking has changed since then.
When you think like a child for a while, you can’t help but be open to the wonders of this world.

While you’re here, sign up for my email list to get a periodic email newsletter to encourage your creativity.

What are YOUR thoughts?

I’d love to hear in the comment section, below. I appreciate my readers as well as the writing community. To show that appreciation, I use Comment Luv. Just leave a comment below and your latest post will get a link next to it. Thank you!

About Heather Erickson

I am an author, writer, and speaker and homeschooling mom of 3. Since doctors diagnosed my husband, Dan with stage IV lung cancer in 2012, I’ve focused my writing and speaking on helping cancer patients and their families advocate for themselves and live life to the fullest, in spite of their illness. My goal is to help people face cancer with grace.

My books The Memory Maker’s Journal and Facing Cancer as a Friend: How to Support Someone Who Has Cancer, are available at Amazon.com.

I also blog about living with cancer at, Facing Cancer with Grace.

I’m doing double duty this month during the A to Z Blogging Challenge. Here at Heather Erickson Author/Writer/Speaker, I will share ways to increase your creativity. I’ll also be doing the challenge at Facing Cancer with Grace, where I will share posts that focus on caregiving. I hope you’ll visit me at both sites. While you’re here, sign up for my email list. Today’s post is J is for Jar of Ideas.

As a teenager, I attended The Perpich Center for Art Education as a Literary Art student. Nearly every day in our Literary Arts classes, the teacher would pull a slip of paper from a jar of ideas. It might be a question or a quote. It could even be a single word.

Then, she would start a timer.

The timer might go for as little as a minute, but that was rare. More often it would be set for 5, 10, or 15 minutes. Once in a great while, we could write for 20 minutes. Using a timer as we write from the jar of ideas forced us to shape what we wrote to the confines of the timer. We had to begin, build, and wrap up our piece within the time limit. Over and over we wrote from the jar of ideas and learned how to structure our pieces by instinct, through practice.

No grammar needed

When we wrote is was free-write style. We didn’t worry about grammar or punctuation or even about the right words. We were more concerned with getting our thoughts and ideas down on the page within the allotted time period. I think the time limit helped those of us who habitually corrected those details to let go. We didn’t have time to worry about the details.

We would read aloud.

Around the table we went, each student reading aloud what they wrote from the jar of ideas. It was interesting to see what popped into each person’s mind when they heard the writing prompt. Two people sitting side by side could write completely different pieces from the same idea. Structure varied a lot from writer to writer. One might write a 3-page poem, while another reminisced about his past.

A jar of ideas can help you discover who you are.

During these exercises, which we did daily, we began to figure out who we were as writers and as people. When I married my husband, I was given a gift by my sister-in-law. It was a jar of ideas and a journal. This jar was filled with questions designed to tickle my memory and pass along to my children stories of my life—of our family’s life. I was so thankful to have my creativity kindled in the way it had been in my youth.

There’s an app for that.

More recently, I was introduced to a fun app called Writelight. I’ve been using this app for the past year and have fallen in love with it. If you don’t already have a regular writing routine, using this FREE app is a great way to start one. It’s a perfect compliment to Morning Pages, if you do them (and I recommend them). If you ever have writer’s block, this digital jar of ideas will unblock you. Writelight is available online or you can download it free on Apple’s App Store or at Google Play Store. Note: I am not receiving anything in exchange for this recommendation. I just believe in the app and the theory behind it.

While you’re here, sign up for my email list to get a periodic email newsletter to encourage your creativity.

What are YOUR thoughts?

I’d love to hear in the comment section, below. I appreciate my readers as well as the writing community. To show that appreciation, I use Comment Luv. Just leave a comment below and your latest post will get a link next to it. Thank you!

About Heather Erickson

I am an author, writer, and speaker and homeschooling mom of 3. Since doctors diagnosed my husband, Dan with stage IV lung cancer in 2012, I’ve focused my writing and speaking on helping cancer patients and their families advocate for themselves and live life to the fullest, in spite of their illness. My goal is to help people face cancer with grace.

My books The Memory Maker’s Journal and Facing Cancer as a Friend: How to Support Someone Who Has Cancer, are available at Amazon.com.

I also blog about living with cancer at, Facing Cancer with Grace.