For the last few months I’ve been feeling uninspired with regards to my writing. I haven’t worked on a new story idea in months. Instead, I’ve been focusing on either editing stories, or rewriting stories I wrote years ago in the hopes that they could be salvaged.
It’s been a long stagnant period that I haven’t seen any signs of ending.
Until I got to Boston.
While there, without even trying, I came up with an idea for a story. And while this sounds like it’s going to another entry where I just start gushing about how wonderful Boston is, this sparking has less to do with Boston itself and more to do with the general change in scenery.
It’s just about getting out there and seeing new things, experiencing new things. If I stay in one place and see the same buildings and the same parks and the same people every day, I’m going to write about the same topics or get locked into one frame of mind.
With the simple act of going to a new place, I’ve suddenly jumpstarted my brain. I started looking around, poking my nose into things, listening to new accents and all that begins to start the gears spinning again.
Right now, back at home, I just…keep my head down. I’ve seen it all before, so why bother paying attention? But in Boston, or any unfamiliar place, I become aware again, excited again, by what’s going on around me.
And the best part is, once I got back to Durham, I begin to notice things I had missed here before, simply by benefit of having a new point of comparison. For example, it’s really goddamn hot down here.
So that’s one big reason to keep on going back to Boston.
Not the only reason mind.
Nor the biggest reason.
But still, a nice little side-effect to going somewhere that already makes me ridiculously happy.
Dylan Charles
dylancharles.net 