It’s great to be inspired by great minds who think like you. As a writer, you may tend to read books that are within your realm of interest.

But the fact is that by sticking to a particular area of comfort, you are pigeonholing yourself into a limited area of creativity. Break free, and look at writers who are experts in their own genre. If you prefer reading can-lit novels all the time, consider picking up a book of poetry for inspiration once in a while. Recently I was at an ECW Press party and picked up two wonderful books of inspiration. One was a poetry book called Happyland by Kevin Connolly; the other was Joni Mitchell, In Her Own Words: By Malka Marom.

Both these books were great in helping me gather inspiration for one of my retail clients.

As a general rule, I love to surround myself with books. All kinds of books, from opposite ends of the genre spectrum, to a variety of age groups. This way, I never have an excuse to blame anything on writer’s block. And, with my line of work, I can never afford to be weighed down by such frivolous musings.