We have a toy closet mounding knee-high in a blur of plastic, building pieces, and play weaponry, but I hear my three sons say, “What is there to do? We’re bored. We don’t have anything to play with.”

As I point to the pile of toys, I realize that they don’t know what they have here because nothing, at all, is organized, so I put them to work: blocks in one container, books in a basket, robots in one zip-lock, plastic animals in another, and all of Mr. Potato Head’s many lips and ears go inside his own belly. It is a beautiful moment.

There is something so innately pleasing about laying it all out there and taking an inventory that my boys played for hours, newly excited about the Legos they step over daily. I think the same could apply for us in our writing.

The habit of daily writing can act like a sort of inventory, laying ideas down so we can see them for what they are, play with them in new ways, switch them up and weave them together.  Our lives are full of reoccurring themes that we may never notice because they’re jumbled in the floor of our hearts.

Is it too elementary to let our writing tip today be for you to simply write and to write often, just as we could also suggest that you organize your closets often?

It sounds like so much work, but a little disciplined diligence to straighten as you go along, a little diligence to wake from a dream and immediately note its color scheme, and you’ll be so much closer to knowing what to say when the time really comes, when you need to know what toys you have or when that book proposal is due.

Keep an inventory, and there, you’ll find your muse.

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Next Monday, we want to see you back here with a link to your favorite creatively written blog post. Let’s learn from one another.