Published:

09/11/2014 07:40pm

The Creativity Spot

Having breakfast at a hotel coffee shop yesterday I waited for a friend to join me. He was on a conference call and due any minute. I have my grandmother's habit of drinking a hot beverage when it is piping hot so as the waitress served my cup of coffee I reached out for it and started sipping it.

Looking around at others I noticed a group of 3 businessmen on a Skype call. Another had earphones on and he too was attending to a work call. One lady was writing. She seemed to be in her own world. "Today" I thought to myself "every man and his dog is writing or has written a book"

My friend arrived highly apologetic. I told him not to be as I was quite capable of entertaining myself. He is a creativity expert and we started our conversation about my book that he had just reviewed. Taking notes so I could receive every bit of feedback and mull over it, we moved on to discuss my creativity spot (which is my term for a place where writers' block does not happen and words flow effortlessly).

I told him that it had taken me a while to find the spot where my creative juices flowed well. I needed to be home for a start because for me, home is where I am most relaxed. So the naturally occurring state of "relaxation" was already present.

Then I noticed the clothes I wore made a difference to the quality and speed of my writing. Funnily I would very unconsciously grab a t-shirt and shorts without thinking and most often they were the oldest ones in my wardrobe. I needed to be in comfortable clothes warts and all.

When I first started writing I moved away from my study table. My study room had become too small for me. My mind wanted to roam as I allowed my creative self to surface and dream up ideas. So I thought the dining table would lend a larger space to look out to through the lounge and out the windows.

That didn't work either. I moved to the lounge. This was getting better. I could feel the breeze blowing in through the windows and hear the rustle of leaves from the trees. Only I started to feel the tropical heat shine through the window in the afternoons.

What choices did I have left? My bedroom perhaps? I had tremendous success writing in bed with my pillow propped up behind me, when I lived in Sydney.

I realized while I needed space to think I also needed to hunker down in a corner. Like being in a self-made cocoon, where I felt protected by a warm, soft feeling around me and stillness coupled with silence. Any aspect of wind blowing hard or heat streaming in directly towards me, didn't work even though I love nature. I tested this new space out.

The words started flowing. I felt I had found my creativity spot. As I ventured inside me I noticed a bouncy feeling that produced ideas for me. Plus I realized that I always needed silence. Internal and external sounds interrupted my train of thought.

It was also extremely colourful a bit like a clown's costume. Sometimes I would see the colours come together in a theme and other times the smorgasbord of colours would create a design of their own.

No sound like a hollow vacuum with bouncy colours doing their thing. This was what I needed to write with calm, flow and creativity. I found writing so easy when I was in this state and most of all when I was in my creativity spot. What would happen when I traveled? Could I take my creativity spot with me?

I closed my eyes and captured every ounce of this space I was in. I wanted to transport this in my imaginary pocket so when I needed it, all I had to do was imagine that I was taking it out of my pocket, place it in the space I was in (hopefully with as similar conditions to my room as possible) and use it.

I related this to my friend and wondered how many authors really paid attention to this? I was on a scale of much higher productivity as I didn't waste time with writers' block. This was one major aspect in helping people achieve results by fast tracking success. Creating effective people was quite easy after all if only people were open enough to try out new things.

Sylvia Fernandes is the Founder & CEO of VIA Frontiers. She is also the author of Bye Bye Black Cat – Turn Your Luck Around to Realise Opportunities – to be launched on the 23rd October 2014. She has been conducting corporate training and creating effective people in the Asia Pacific Region for the last 12 years. She is currently based in Singapore. Go to www.viafrontiers.com or email blog@viafrontiers.com for more information.