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Whether you are writing a novel, making a scrapbook or greeting card, or painting a piece of art to hang on a wall, I think everyone occasionally has the experience of wanting to create something, but not knowing what to create. In making one of these blog posts, I usually start out drawing, and the writing comes to me as I draw. Sometimes I don’t know what to draw, like today. I started in the center of the page and began to scribble, hoping an idea would come to me. However, well into a frenzied scribble, all that came into my mind was “Where am i going what am i doing?”

If this were purely a writing exercise, I could have written random words that entered my mind, stream of consciousness style. I think the results would be comparable. In this case, I wasn’t satisfied with what I had done. I had created the scribble so fast and without any effort at all, and I felt like I hadn’t learned anything. So I created another drawing. I returned to poppies as a subject matter, because I liked my results yesterday.

Then I went back to the original scribble, and I thought, what if I slow down a little and add some detail to make it more interesting? Maybe it was simply unfinished. Perhaps the frenzied scribble was just a starting point – an ice breaker. So, I slowed down and began to add detail to the shapes I had drawn.

It boils down to simply getting started in any random way, and continuing from there, wherever your imagination carries you. When the imagination is unlocked, no blocks have the power to contain it.