Seven Sentences of Daily Inspiration

Why not?

Many people receive in their email inboxes daily prompts that are supposed to boost their creativity; others search for photos or pieces of art that will suggest a feeling, a description, a quest; some are inspired in a spur of a moment, by something they experience or by a walk at
the nearby park.

Inspiration is everywhere and the only thing we lack, sometimes, is the openness to acknowledge it and the will to grasp and reproduce it through the means that we have at our disposal. Why couldn't seven sentences become a tool that will move the vehicle of our imagination?

One can read the seven sentences that Geoff Talbott posts on a daily basis on his blog and delve into the questions they pose; he can submit his own seven sentences, for Geoff encourages his readers to be heard through his virtual pages; he can also comment on the posts, using seven sentences, or less, or even more, since inspiration and creativity are alive and sometimes escape our little plans.

Seven sentences is a functional framework into which inspiration can operate; they allow space enough to let someone develop a complete meaning, while being of a limited enough number to impose a certain brevity and swiftness; for people who can meet the challenge of specifications, they can be an additional lever to take advantage of.

Furthermore, seven is a number that, for certain reasons, is deeply engraved on the human psyche and the alliteration of the "s" sound makes the blog's name even more memorable - which is what every blogger would wish for his online venue.

This is a true story.

You see, I had to publish my website and I was long overdue, when I stubled upon Seven Sentences blog. I was immediately hooked: I liked the minimalistic design, I liked Geoff's and his guests' ruminations and viewpoints, I liked the concept of writing in a pre-determined set of sentences -- and I went with the flow, because I enjoyed it.

The habit of writing in seven sentences quickly grew so natural and familiar to me that I found myself subconsciously using it when composing pieces for other purposes -- and, when I discovered that I was not eligible, after all, to enter a writing contest (always read guidelines at least twice!), I was left with a 100-word, 7-sentence (see?) story in my hands, and a thought about submitting it as a potential guest post to the blog.

While I was thinking about it, but not going ahead with it yet, Geoff contacted me about a comment of mine he had liked. He asked my permission to publish it as a guest post, complete with a short bio and a link to my site -- and, oh, it's such an elating feeling, seeing your work appreciated and sought after!

Now, I had to act fast.

It is the logical sequence of things: if you want an inbound link to your own site coming from a PR3 blog, you gotta have a site in the first place.



Even though I already had written some basic pages, my blog was still tragically poor and unorganized. But, I knew about perfectionism and how it could lead you to postpone and then postpone again crucial moves, until it was too late and countless opportunities were lost; blogging coaches used to write extensively about it -- in other words, it was something observed, well-known, and undoubtedly detrimental.

They say the first step is the hardest -- yet, if I wanted to encourage myself, I could consider that first page I ever published on Squidoo, a page still read and enjoyed by fellow Squidoo-ers and by external visitors, as the starting point of my online presence. And, when I finally deactivated the "Under Construction" plugin, my beautiful, uncomplete blog saw the light of day, thanks to a creative push from an inspired blogger.

Several things happened during those few memorable days: WritersWritingWords was officially launched and that one little vision of mine was born into existence; my guest post, The River of Life, was published on Seven Sentences; and another birth, a literal one, took place, as Geoff and his wife had their first baby.

Congratulations to us all and I wish us a blessed 2012.



(Photo courtesy of Frontal Q. Parks under a Creative Commons Licence)