Poem is an ocean stirring
your imagination
and your pen pours rivers of creativity.
Take a deep breath and dive in!
Maja S. Todorovic
Tag: inspiration
Business in Rhyme is looking for blog guests!
Many of you who have been following this blog for some time know that I’ve always intended to form a community around ideas that poetry as an art form has to offer much more than it is usually implied. For almost a year I’ve been on a quest to explore all benefits that writing and poetry has to bring into our lives. And a lot has been said and written. But I think it’s time we hear (read) some other voices and opinions too.
So this is official invitation to all bloggers to become a guest blogger on Business in Rhyme. This will give you the opportunity to show your work and share your opinions.
The first topic we could explore is how poetry improved your life and why do you write poetry? You could also include crucial poems that you like or that you wrote…Possibilities are endless.I know it might not be easy for some of you to share your vulnerability and intimate times of your lives, but think how you might help someone, inspire and encourage to embrace their feelings … I’m doing this on the blog for the first time and I have no idea if any of you are interested, but since Business in Rhyme has a growing following of a roughly 5000 people on social media, it is a chance for you to show your work and increase readership.
If you would like to share your experience and inspire others to start/continue writing poetry, you can read the general guidance given in the header menu.
Thank you in advance for your contribution.
Where is the inexhaustible source of inspiration for your writing?
I’m going to be quite bold in my next statement and say that it lies in you. You are your most valuable and inexhaustible well of inspiration for any story, poem, article or blog post you want to write. Sounds strange? Now, before you dismiss the rest of the article, let me elaborate a bit:
Often times, we look for external stimulants, information for guidance and ideas for our writing. But I believe that our own actual, raw and vivid experiences are our truest guides in which direction our writing should go. Every event, relationship, travel, struggle, joy, pain, suffering, reasons to be happy…are our best source of inspiration. When you share sincere bits of your personalities, these are the parts that people can relate to most.
You can write a beautiful poem about your ordinary everyday trip to a grocery store (like an ode to strawberries 🙂 ), you can write how technology impacts your life or how you love or dislike your current job…you can write about your need to write..you can find inspiration in children which can trigger some childhood memory and evoke new poem to be written.
But everything is in you. We can just look for some external motivators like current circumstances, sounds or place we are at the moment (I wrote a few poems while being on the plane 🙂 ) that will inspire our writing .
Jorges Luis Borges once said:
A writer – and, I believe, generally all persons – must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art.”
Lessons we learned in our life journey are our greatest teachers and I believe also a huge inspiration for anything further we do in life. And so with writing. I have found that when I share what I learned in my life so far – it’s like opening the door to even greater source of inspiration and it helps me avoid in future some of the mistakes I made in the past.
Or you can write about what you would like to experience – let your wishes and desires simply go wild with your imagination.
As long as you write what you know to be true in life, how you perceive life, beauty, love, pain, suffering..you simply can’t go wrong with that. You are unique and extraordinary human being with universal skills and experiences. Share and write about that, and your writing will be nothing less but exquisite.
I love all beauteous things,
I seek and adore them;
God hath no better praise,
And man in his hasty days
Is honoured for them.
I too will something make
And joy in the making!
Altho’ tomorrow it seem’
Like the empty words of a dream
Remembered, on waking.
Robert Seymour Bridges
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NaPoWriMo day 8: You are the only
I want to tell you a secret
little secret, simple and honest –
You are the only
reason for your existence:
to grow
to glitter
to laugh.
You are the only
one who makes this prison
of negative persistence.
You are the only
one who can say: “No, I’m not a
quitter!”
Open your eyes widely
world that lies beneath you
is your home.
Open your heart kindly
let your dreams fly back to you,
wildly.
Maja S. Todorovic
Creativity is
not what I think
nor what I do:
it arises from a feeling;
it’s a clue,
how life that lies before me
is eager and true.
Maja S. Todorovic
3 steps to tap into your intuitive inspiration
Creativity is sometimes hard to grasp: an undefined, unfathomable idea that drives action to make something, introduce change or solve problem. I believe there is a lot of correlation between intuition and creativity. Intuition is also that unexplainable part of us, the “knowing” that goes beyond our rational mind, and is rather deeply rooted in the subconsciousness. It’s sort of a guidance system.
For a normal functioning in our societal organized life we need both: instinct and reason to make the best possible decisions for ourselves, our businesses, and our families.
Hence for a creative part of us, empowering our intuitive nature can be a great advantage.
Here, I propose 3 steps to get more acquainted with your intuition and how to use it for improving your creativity skills:
- Spend more time with your best friend (you) and learn more about him/her.
What I mean by this, in reality the only person you can really rely on in this life is you! Our busy and noisy environment can disguise our true needs, values and purpose. By living a life set on autopilot we forget that we are the ones who can fly the plane. Take time to be alone with yourself and listen what your body and mind tells you. Self-exploration can be easily translated through any kind of self-expression. It can be dancing, writing, painting, singing, or any kind of playing or sports..you are tapping into “your spirit” (inspiration). Life and joy speaks through you and leads you directly to your own unexplored creative possibilities.
The very act of expressing yourself connects you with your true creative being. That sacred moments of alignment with who you really are, it’s invigorating, improves your health, decreases stress levels – which is prerequisite of any productive creative action.
- You are part of nature -what it has to tell you?
Now, I have a confession to make: I’m a tree hugger 🙂 It sounds silly (to some of you maybe even stupid) but I like spending time in nature, especially near water and in the woods. I grew up by the Danube river where is a huge park, overpopulated with birches and willows, and this is like I have that engraved need for green surroundings. And every year, in May (now has become a sort of ritual) I like to go to my home country and visit my parents’ weekend cottage, where they have a small orchard and my favorite cherry tree is waiting for me. Still like a kid many years ago, I like to climb it, swing on one of its branches and enjoy the taste of first cherries in the year: sweet, sour, vibrant with life and color. That kind of silence offers me a chance to ‘reset’ my brain, to take a different perspective on life. And also, my geology studies taught me to even more respect nature and value it hold for us. For me is a habitual thing to spend some time during the day in some natural environment. Even here in the Hague, just a stroll through the park during windy and rainy day can do wonders. It helps me in my clear thinking, and offers connection with life on more subtle levels. Spending time in nature can help you sharpen your instincts and keep you grounded. We relate instincts to animal behavior, but in a way we are “more sophisticated animals”. I suggest you try to find some green oase that can help you ‘calibrate’ your senses to better perceive natural sounds, scents, fresh air, and rest your eyes from artificial colors. It awakens an intuitive part of you.
- Make it a meaningful daily practice
To be receptive of creative energy, you have to make it a regular part of your daily life. Along the way, you will discover so much about yourself, how to be more open and aligned. And gaining inspiration you need with time will become easier and more frequent. It’s like an unhoned diamond that with each day you polish, your inner genius shines and sparkle with more intensity.
Become your own most precious gem – an initiator of creative life force within you.
If with light head erect I sing,
Though all the Muses lend their force,
From my poor love of anything,
The verse is weak and shallow as its source.
Making my soul accomplice there
Unto the flame my heart hath lit,
Then will the verse forever wear–
Time cannot bend the line which God hath writ.
But now there comes unsought, unseen,
Some clear divine electuary,
And I, who had but sensual been,
Grow sensible, and as God is, am wary.
It comes in summer’s broadest noon,
By a grey wall or some chance place,
Unseasoning Time, insulting June,
And vexing day with its presuming face.
Such fragrance round my couch it makes,
More rich than are Arabian drugs,
That my soul scents its life and wakes
The body up beneath its perfumed rugs.
Such is the Muse, the heavenly maid,
The star that guides our mortal course,
Which shows where life’s true kernel’s laid,
Its wheat’s fine flour, and its undying force.
Inspiration by Henry David Thoreau (an excerpt)
Daily verse with purpose
Daily verse with purpose
Daily verse with purpose
Daily verse with purpose
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