Finding Inspiration

I usually start my writing sessions with about a 10-minute tour of Twitterland. Don't ask my why, but such a tour usually stirs up my imagination and I'm off and running.

However, during my Twitterland twirl this morning, I found nothing that made me want to pick up my pen. 

So I began to question just how I found inspiration in such a vast wasteland of self-promotion and excessive links. For one thing, out of the first 20 tweets that came through my feed, over half were promoting books (most self-pubbed). One guy tweeted his own book cover twice. A few people tweeted cute animal pictures and one woman tweeted a link to a blog piece she found (I'm not sure if she tweeted the right link cuz it went to a pretty bizarre blog).

Needless to say, I'm beginning to think that I need to either new sources of inspiration or I need to follow new people.

I'm not going to get all philosophical about finding inspiration within myself because that's just bunk. Inspiration comes from all around - a source stimulates the imagination and makes me step outside of myself for a minute or two. 

I use Twitter because I like following successful writers: "seeing" how they spend their days often times helps me assess how I spend mine. From there, I often dive into my process and the juices start to flow. 

Something changed, though, during the time when I stopped writing two years ago and coming back this last week. Gone are the writers who use Twitter to take a break from their work and enter the writers who self-promote their work over and over again. 

Am I any different? After all, I seek validation be keeping a blog and then tweeting "Hey! Lookatmeandmyblog!" 

The lesson I need to take away from this: find inspiration away from the computer. Find it in the world. Take a walk, call someone. Twitterland will not work anymore...and I'm ok with that.

Thank you for listening.