Our Creativity Spotlight series features advice on artistic practice, inspiration, and a glimpse into the worlds of artists working in a variety of disciplines.
Adrianne Elizabeth is a freelance health and wellness writer, and creator of YourHappinessQuest.com.
"Nature is one of my greatest inspirations, so going for a walk in the park or forest and meditating is the ultimate inspiration re-set."
Tell us a bit about yourself.
After working as a Marine Biologist for many years, I decided to travel the world. I started freelance writing a year ago to help fund my travels. Freelancing has the benefits of being able to work from anywhere with a decent Wi-Fi connection from my laptop.
While writing is definitely an art form, I mainly write non-fiction. To help express my artistic side, I’m also an obsessed yogi, an art form in itself, and love crafts such as creating jewellery and clothing. This year I have been learning how to macrame and create fun resin creations. I love that with resin, you can create beautiful yet practical objects such as chopping boards, cheese boards, bowls, clocks—all kinds of things.
What does your creative practice look like?
I’m still working on my planning and time management skills so usually, when it comes to my writing practice, I start by outlining the headings of a post and write. If I’m really organized, I will jot down notes to expand on in the text. This is not the most time-efficient process, but when I’m in the zone, I just research and write. If a point I want to make comes to mind, I will find a study that looked into this and expand upon that.
With all my creative practices, I find it challenging to get started when I’m not feeling inspired. Some days I wake up with a surge of energy ready to go and other days, it’s just not there. If I’m not in the right mind-frame, I have a few tricks to help get me there.
Yoga
Firstly, I practice Yoga every day, with the rare exception if I am not feeling well. I find that Yoga helps to clear the mind, relax you or energize you depending on the type of flow you practice. I am currently undertaking a 250-hour Vinyasa Yoga Teacher training course. So practicing Yoga by following other teachers helps to give me ideas and inspiration when creating my own routines to teach students.
I also have a planned list of blog ideas I want to write about in my business planner book. If I’m feeling stuck for a topic, I head to that list and pick one that grasps me on the day. Learning about something new that excites me always sparks my curiosity. Learning gets me excited and often sparks inspiration for new blog posts that I could expand on topics or are related to that topic.
Crafts
When I’m not in the mood for writing at all, I turn to my craft obsessions. I find there is something very soothing about making something with my hands. It helps me to get out of my head and just create. Pinterest and Google are great platforms to find tutorials and inspiration when finding or working on a new craft project.
Meditation
Meditation is also a highly useful tool to trigger inspiration. Like Yoga, meditation helps to calm the mind, bringing you back to a single focal point such as your breath. Meditation helps clear any clutter that is keeping your mind occupied, thinking about unimportant tasks. Nature is one of my greatest inspirations, so going for a walk in the park or forest and meditating is the ultimate inspiration re-set.
Collaboration
For any project, I find that collaboration and talking to other people with a similar passion to you is extremely useful to boost inspiration. Merely talking about it and sharing ideas helps build connections, discover new ideas, and sparks your inspiration. Recently, with all this COVID-19 lockdown business happening, I was feeling really unmotivated to work on any of my projects. Then I started collaborating with other writers and found that picked me back up and inspired me to get back to work. Part of this is that someone else is relying on you, so you feel obligated to follow through. Then once you get started working on something you enjoy, flow state enacts and you’re ready to work on the next thing.
What advice would you give to other creatives?
Just start somewhere and take action from there. It doesn’t matter if you don’t know how to do something, just start, and you will figure out the actions along the way. This is one of the most common pieces of advice that cropped up when I was interviewing women from around the world about their creative practices for Your Best Self Magazine.
Another piece of advice I would say is not to be afraid to try new things. Test them out see if they work for you. If they don’t resonate with you, don’t worry, find something new and try that. Or put it down for a while, do something else, relax, and come back to it with a fresh perspective.
PLUG TIME! What are you working on at the moment?
I recently updated my website and created a Free Happiness Resource Library for subscribers to my email list. The resource library ended up being a lot more work than I anticipated, it took me over 250 hours of unpaid work to complete, but ultimately I am proud of it.
In there, people can find all six issues of Your Best Self Magazine, which interviews women from around the world about their passions. There is a fashion designer, a body painting artist, Kara and Natalia from CrossLine Theatre, a musician, conservationists, an African orphanage volunteer, and more. Each magazine features healthy recipes, travel articles, how-to personal development articles, and more. It was a really fun project to work on over a year and a half.
For the library, I also created The Spoil Yourself: DIY Natural beauty e-book, a 21-Day Gratitude Journal Challenge, compiled lists of journal prompts, and formulated The Difficult Day Productivity Checklist. More will be added as time goes on. I hope people find this a valuable resource.
If you want to get access visit the Free Resource Library Sign Up page, and I will send you the password.
You can find out more about Adrianne Elizabeth and Your Happiness Quest by:
- Signing up to her email list here.
- Checking out her Pinterest account here.
- Connecting with her on Instagram @YourHappinessQuest
- Joining The Happiness Quest Facebook Community.
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