Time and time again I hear people say, and say myself, “Oh dear, I cannot think of any ideas for my next post!” or “I am trying to paint a picture but cannot find any inspiration!” Well, my advice is simple, look around. If you do not understand then do not worry, I shall explain it. What do these pictures all have in common?

That should give you enough of a clue to what this article is about. Inspiration. Nature. Take a look at anything that nature produced, does it look special? If not look harder, because everything is different and should be able to inspire you.

Now for the game. I have shown you that nature is special and should be able to inspire you. Unfortunately, nature is so inspirational that it is extremely hard to decide in what way to use it. So I devised a method, inspired by a game we often play with my brother (aged 5).

Word Association

Many of you may have realised what I am trying to get at. Basically, you start with an element of nature and write down words than spring to mind. A good way to do this is in a mind map. I shall give you a few examples, although I shall not upload any mind maps. I shall probably be using these sort of mind maps in another articles, so shall leave them for now. Instead I shall use simple text diagrams.

Spider – Spider Web – Climb – Ladder – Success

Yellow – Sand – Grain – Wood – Forest – Wildlife

Water – Droplets – Rain – Flood – Disaster – Poor

There are hundreds of thousands of different combinations you could choose, and I recommend you take them as far as you have time to. As you should be able to see, the choices you choose are almost infinite. The further you take each line, or mind map, the easier the writing will become.

Have any of you tried this before? Do you find it works well? Please discuss it as I am very interested in your opinions.

Thank you for reading,

Shane