Shared via Wind Fist on Facebook.

I originally posted this writing prompt as a reply on ISBW. However, this is truly a great idea for writers. I’ve been so enamored with the process and the results it’s produced in my creativity, that I’ve switched from using 750words.com as my journaling tool to using OneNote, and I’m thinking about purchasing EverNote because of its great photo tools.

Well, here you go, enjoy. And give it a try for a month! I think you’ll find it as much a boon to the craft as I have:

For the length of a semester, keep an “image notebook.” Every day, record at least one image. (date the entries.) Use all your senses. Ask yourself: What’s the most striking thing I heard, saw, smelled, touched, tasted today? Images begin with precise sensual detail. One day you may overhear a strange bit of conversation, another you may smell something that triggers a memory.

Another day you find a photograph or take one or do a drawing. You might make a collage of words and pictures from magazines. This exercise is very open. Length is variable. Some days you may write a page and others a line. Don’t get behind.

Interesting juxtapositions emerge when you’re not conscious of how many images are colliding. If you do your week’s work all at once, you’ll lose the mystery.

–What If? p. 267

I’ve avoided the media surrounding Jobs’s death, mostly because of being busy with the changing landscape of work and family. Today I sat down and read some of the epitaphs and chronologies of his life and was a bit overcome at just how much he accomplished in 56 years.

Some compared him to a modern Leonardo da Vinci and I think it’s an apt portrayal. So in honor of Steve, I offer some of his quotes, which are truly inspirational to the creative process:

A lot of companies have chosen to downsize, and maybe that was the right thing for them. We chose a different path. Our belief was that if we kept putting great products in front of customers, they would continue to open their wallets.
–Steve Jobs

A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. So they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.
–Steve Jobs

Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
–Steve Jobs

And it comes from saying no to 1,000 things to make sure we don’t get on the wrong track or try to do too much. We’re always thinking about new markets we could enter, but it’s only by saying no that you can concentrate on the things that are really important.
–Steve Jobs

As individuals, people are inherently good. I have a somewhat more pessimistic view of people in groups. And I remain extremely concerned when I see what’s happening in our country, which is in many ways the luckiest place in the world. We don’t seem to be excited about making our country a better place for our kids.
–Steve Jobs

Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.
–Steve Jobs

Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me. Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful, that’s what matters to me.
–Steve Jobs

Bottom line is, I didn’t return to Apple to make a fortune. I’ve been very lucky in my life and already have one. When I was 25, my net worth was $100 million or so. I decided then that I wasn’t going to let it ruin my life. There’s no way you could ever spend it all, and I don’t view wealth as something that validates my intelligence.
–Steve Jobs

But innovation comes from people meeting up in the hallways or calling each other at 10:30 at night with a new idea, or because they realized something that shoots holes in how we’ve been thinking about a problem.
–Steve Jobs

Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things.
–Steve Jobs

We are all satellites. Some of us orbit our jobs. Others orbit our parents. Many orbit a pub or television. We all orbit a planet. That planet orbits a star orbiting a sun orbiting a galaxy… on it goes.

It is intrinsic to every physical, social, and mental construct we experience in our lives. Brilliant minds gravitate to other brilliant thinkers. Those who seek out and surround themselves with such become brilliant themselves. A little too much to believe?

Consider it. A solitary idea is inert. A solitary artist is inert. But add a catalyst. Stick another creative process in the same space, and watch the volatile reaction of ideas, counter-ideas, and brilliance that ensues.

Take a person who is motivated to learn and put them in the room with a brilliant teacher and see what happens. Take a hungry martial arts student and put them in a room with a grand master and see if they both do not leave better martial artists.

And here is what will really bake your noodle: a word need not be spoken by either; it’s almost by mere contact that they grow; it’s almost a catalytic reaction of our mental and spiritual composition.

Question: Do you know how old I’ll be by the time I learn to play the piano?

Answer: The same age you will be if you don’t.

The Artist’s Way — Julia Cameron

We can live our whole lives thinking about grand ideas and the wonderful things we would like to do and learn. Or we can do them.

Do you want to:

• Learn the flute or guitar?
• Be able to draw anime?
• See the world from the top of Mount Everest?
• Visit Japan?
• Publish one of your stories?

Don’t wait until life is ready for you–it never will be.

Your Challenge, if you choose to accept it: Start one today.