Recharge Your Writing Batteries!

by Caroline Lawrence

In her bestselling book The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron gives practical advice on how to open channels of creativity. One of her techniques is the Artist’s Date. She suggests that once a week you go to an exhibition or matinee or free lunchtime concert all by yourself, to recharge your creative batteries.

I have found this to be a wonderful way of generating new ideas. Not only does the so-called Artist’s Date feed our spirit, it boosts our creativity. Sometimes the best dates are those that have nothing to do with our specialist period or trademark genre.

So here, just in time for summer, are a dozen things from easy and cheap to slightly more expensive and challenging that those of us who write historical fiction can do to recharge our creative batteries.

1. Memorise a song or poem. Learning by heart means just that: we transfer the poem from our head to our hearts, the source of creativity. I am currently learning Shelley's Ozymandias, sometimes standing in front of the sculpture that inspired it. I've recently committed the first line of the Iliad to memory. Also a song by One Direction.

2. Play with an artefact or try a period recipe - playing with replica or real artefacts or eating ancient food often brings a surge of ideas as you feel, hear, sniff and sometimes taste an object from the past. My current experiment is tasting unusual flavours of Italian ice cream. Yes, It's a hard job... 

3. Recreate an experience from another time. Visit a London hotel in period dress for a Tea Dance. Wander a meat market like Smithfields early in the morning. Get someone to bleed you with leeches, if you dare. I took my strigil and oil flask to the Porchester Spa last month and got a "Roman" massage.

4. Attend a play or street theatre. An acrobat in Covent Garden might suggest ideas for acrobats from your historical period. A play at the Globe in London is a must for Elizabethan specialists but writers in other periods will be inspired, too. 

5. Go to a museum. Contemplate a statue from your historical period in the British Museum, or clothing at the Victoria & Albert, or a portrait at the National Gallery. 

6. Attend an art exhibition - The Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition is about to start. You might get the spark of an idea from something out of left field. I recently dropped by the Matisse exhibition at the Tate Modern and was inspired by his cutout of Icarus, a story from a Greek myth inspired by a WWII dogfight in the sky above France. 

7. Go to the cinema. The 2014 movie Pompeii was full of bloopers, but I found parts of it inspiring. The Two Faces of January brought back the sensation of the sun beating down on Greek ruins and the taste of ouzo. The Edge of Tomorrow reminded me of how powerful humour is in a thriller.

8. Go for a walk. Aimless walks along the riverside or through a park are wonderful for bringing subconscious ideas to the surface. But guided walks are fabulous, too. London Walks are my favourite and this is the season for them. If your guide doesn't inspire you the city itself will. 

9. Take a class. It doesn't have to be creative writing, though I love doing those. It could be basket-making, pottery or literature. An adult class in Intermediate Latin at the City Lit inspired The Night Raid, my re-telling of a story from Virgil. I've signed up for Virgil in Translation this summer.  

10. Go to a re-enactment event, festival or conference. I have gleaned more insight and inspiration from re-enactors than almost anything else. Last week I attended a conference called Visualising the Late Antique City and saw a baby's swaddling tunic. Although I'm now planning a historical novel set in the bronze age, things like weaving hardly change. Want inspiration? The Chalke Valley History Festival is coming up soon.

11. Listen to music in public. It can be anything from listening to a busker or a free lunchtime jazz at the Southbank to a full-blown opera at ENO or Dolly Parton at the O2. Let the music wash over you. Watch the musicians. Watch the crowds. Be inspired.

12. Take an expert to lunch (or tea) and pick their brain. Experts love sharing their expertise. Take them somewhere nice, like the Great Court Restaurant or the Kensington Roof Garden.

13. Travel to the country where your book is set (or where you'd like to set your book). This is my favourite way of recharging batteries and refilling the creative cisterns because it often involves all of the above. A trip to Naples last September has inspired a possible new history mystery series for kids. 

Please do add your own suggestions in the comments section or let me know how you get on. Happy writing!