Do you ever feel like your mind has become a wasteland filled with countless identical grains of sand? These days, mine often does. I know why: it’s the morning news. Since last November I have let the crazoids featured in the day’s news dominate my mornings. I used to read books. Now I read whatever pops up on my iPhone news apps. The only good thing this has done for my writing is to get me to say “yes” to writing lyrics for a protest song a musician friend had a hankering to create. But that’s not much when it comes to output. Garbage in…little to nothing out. I know that great writing, great literature, has come out of every human struggle, but when you’re on the sidelines watching the struggles you don’t have a real experience; you can’t write with the realism, relevance, or authority needed to craft something truly credible and worthwhile. What to do? I’m now on a quest to broaden the input going into my brain, to read more books, and to do more real-world things to re-energize my writing.

Meanwhile, I’m still adjusting—post being downsized out of my editing job—to being able to sit down at my writing desk at almost any time of day and write something. It’s somehow…stymying. Weird, but true. So, here’s my question for the day if anyone out there has answers: What do you do that brings energy to your writing rather than sapping writing energy like an ink-sucking vampire? What practices make it easy to sit down to write rather than difficult? I’d love to know!