Thank You Dr. Maya Angelou for Always Curing My Writers Block

Yesterday Maya Angelou passed away and it made me think about being a writer. One of my favorite quotes of hers states, "You can't use up creativity the more you use, the more you have," and I could not agree more. I write Young Adults Fiction, apparently. I never thought about genre or labels until I had self-published my first book and had to know how/who to market it. But as a writer I don't sit down and think okay let's write some YA with some action/adventure and possibly a touch of paranormal romance . No the reality of what occurs is, the uncontrollable urge to write suddenly consumes me and no matter what I'm doing bits and pieces of a story being to appear. 

Sometimes I'm blessed with a full plot but not usually. Most of the time it's an expression or a mannerism that later develops into a character. Sometimes it's just a feeling. A feeling that later becomes a reoccurring theme or the tone of the entire novel. The point is, writing is hard but more than that it is a naturally occurring thing that I know, at least for me, can't just turn on or off. 

Luckily writing my Masters thesis and having to crank out 20 page research papers has made me extremely familiar with deadlines in terms of writing assignments-it didn't however help with the creative aspect hence the dreaded writers block that so many of us encounter. So how do you get the creative juices flowing?

I have noticed the more I read the more I write and the more I write, the more I write. More characters fight for my attention and more stories fought to be told once one story is occupying my thoughts.
The issue then becomes-how do I add more hours to the day? Which all in all is a good problem to have.

Happy Writing and Cheers to an amazing human being, Dr. Maya Angelou