One of the questions I often hear from readers is this one: ‘How do you manage to come up with a new story?‘

And then they often add that they struggle to be creative.

Honestly, I never have a good answer to their question, other than to admit that I read a lot of books, and that some of them are so badly written that I feel inspired to write a ‘better‘ version.

Apart from that, I feel that creativity is like a muscle. The more you use it, the easier it becomes. But we all have those days when you feel that the well is completely empty.

Then again, I often get the feeling that we expect that the book should appear as one complete idea before you start writing. But the truth is the opposite. The book starts with one sentence, one scene or a feeling. When you write it down, your brain can start working on the next, and suddenly you have several more scenes which you can tie together until they become a short story.

This is one of the reasons I just love the Literotica site. They publish all stories, good or bad (providing you follow the rules), and allows you to learn while you write. If it hadn’t been for them, I would never have started writing. But after I read a lot of stories on their site, I figured I could actually have a chance to write one too. And I did – and it was actually accepted, despite a ton of grammatical errors.

And that is probably the solution to become more creative: Just do it! Right?