The best way to find success is to actually write.

Like love, success if notorious for its elusive nature … the only way to find it is to stop looking for it. For creative people, letting go of success might be difficult, but it’s the best way to free yourself from your worries of becoming successful. Once you let go of your worries to succeed, impress, and satisfy your audience, you’ll be able to reach new creative heights and learn more about yourself as an artist.

This isn’t to say you should forget about the reader of your work and do what ever the hell you want, but it is to say you should give yourself permission to forget about what works, what doesn’t, what readers probably want, and whether or not they’ll like you or not.

Stop looking for success, and you’ll enable yourself to grow as a writer and stumble upon success later when you’re ready — when you’re talent demands it from people.

On a bit of a side note, what do you consider success as a writer — getting an agent, getting published, becoming a New York Times bestseller?

Freewriting — or scribbling — is the method of writing what ever comes to your mind, without the restrictions of your inner editor balking.

How many writers out there are plotting and how many are freewriting?

For writers, magic hour is that time when you’re struck with inspiration and you find the flow of your writing. It might be at dawn, noon, or if you’re like me, 3 in the morning. Regardless the time, it can be an invaluable time if faced with writer’s block.

I experienced this last night … only it was about 3 in the morning — I guess that’s when the creative juices start flowing.

Discover Your Magic Hour

To find your own magic hour, you’ll need to experiment with your time.Try waking up early if you’re a morning person; staying up longer at night if you’re a night owl.

When do you find that you’re most productive?

What if it’s not all that complicated?

I wanted to take a detour around the confusing charts and breakdowns and approach the matter as a person with five basic things in common with you — because I think these five things might be they keys a lot of writers will find useful.

These, of course, are the five basic senses — and just as they will help store and recall memory, they can also be used to inspire your own creativity.

So, the question stands — how can a writer’s senses inspire creativity?

Sight

As one of the primary and most powerful forms of observation, sight is the most common sense utilized by writers around the world.

Though some writers are talented beyond the rest and actually write without the use of sight, the majority of us will depend on it to inform us of the world in which live, the people we meet, and often trigger the feelings we feel.

One exercise I think a lot of writers, including myself, will benefit from is approaching sight from the position of someone who writes without it — in other words, try not to take it for granted. Look around your world, watch people, and soak up the visual of life — what do they tell you?

Try looking at old photographs of people — it’s strange how much they look exactly like the people we know today … only dressed in funky clothing.

Watch a film. Study a painting. Look up … what do you see?

It’s important to keep your eyes open as you live — you’ll see things most people in the world don’t know exist, regardless if you’re in a huge city or rural hamlet. Write it down to study later.

The trick here is to think about everything you see.

Sound

Again, hearing the world certainly isn’t essential to a writer, but it’s another powerful sense to have at your disposal — so much in fact, it often becomes the primary sense for the blind.

Most of us will often find inspiration by listening to music of some genre or another — it could be a cinematic score, something from a nostalgic era, or a personal favorite. Music affects artists because musicians pour their own inspiration and creativity into their work and strive to share a feeling with the listener — if they’ve done a good job, the listener will feel something emotional.

And while most writers will utilize music for inspiration, it’s definitely not the only source of inspiration.

Hearing another language can also inspire a writer tremendously. The sounds of a city or a village will spark the creativity for some. Certain sounds might spark something as well, such as a gunshot, an animals cry, or a spaceship.

Just as you keep your eyes open, it’s important to keep your ears open. Think about what you’re hearing and wonder what the source of the sound wanted you to feel when they made it.

Taste

For me personally, I find food from other cultures extremely inspirational. Food will often reveal a lot about the culture, the restaurant, or the person cooking it.

I recently traveled to Mexico for the weekend and experienced authentic Mexican food for the first time — it was amazing! Adding spices instead of salt, enjoying real sugar cane instead of fructose corn syrup, and using fresh ingredients … it was just a taste of what the culture preferred, which to me revealed a priority for fresh foods.

Though I had acquired a pretty good feel for what Mexican food was all about here in Los Angeles, it was inspiring to be able to enjoy it while visiting its place of birth.

In essence, taste can spark your creativity like no other sense — it can spring you from culture to culture and even inspire a feeling … for example, when I go for sushi and miso, I’m often struck with inspiration due to the feeling of being in the world of Blade Runner — this might seem strange to you, but that’s because everyone has their own memories and feelings tied with certain tastes.

Touch

Whether you’re shaking someone’s hand or petting a tiger shark, touch can be an incredible source of inspiration.

A lot of people attribute this sense to the majority of their experiences in life, because for most, physical feeling sticks around longer. Swimming in the waves at the beach, dancing until you’re completely exhausted, or enjoying a massage are all examples of feelings through touch.

Feeling something you’ve never felt before might be a very inspiring moment in your life — for example, if you were to experience a powerful earthquake for the first time, chances are you’d come out of the experience with a little more respect for mother nature.

Try to experience life to the fullest — go skydiving, ride a roller coaster, fly somewhere, or try rock-climbing. Any and all physical experiences might spark that inspiration needed to get creative.

Think about how you feel when you’re experiencing it — what does it tell you about life?

Smell

Like taste, this sense isn’t really a primary source of observation, but can be utilized by writers to enhance an experience.

I’m not sure about you, but I’ve found that certain smells, such as pyrotechnics smoke and air conditioning in the theatre strike my creativity — probably because I associate it with plays I’ve experienced.

The key here is to keep an open mind toward your senses and think about what you’re smelling. Smelling the salt in the air at the beach might spark a world of story, you never know.

What Senses inspire your creativity most?

Just as there is a vast range of how to go about writing a story, there is an equally vast range of ways to yield your inspiration and turn it into creativity.

What sense do you find inspires your creativity most?

iBookstore

It reflects the look and feel of iTunes and the App Store and replicates their ease of use, which for readers, makes the iPad the best e-reader available. With the major publishers onboard with the iBookstore, readers will not only be able to purchase, download, and read their favorite titles in an instant, they’ll also be able to read titles made available by smaller publishers (much like the app developer community — sounds like a perfect opportunity to get involved with the digital platform for independent and self-publishing companies out there.

So with the iBookstore coming shortly,what is the iPad and how will writers be able to use it?

iPad

As a device that fills the gap between your computer and your smart phone, the iPad will act as your mobile computer — smaller than your laptop, yet more powerful than your smart phone. a Device that can float around the office or the house; some have even called it the first, true household computer. That said, I just saw a video of the iPad being installed to the dashboard of a vehicle, so it’s clear their are plenty of uses for the device.

Apple also introduced a suite of apps along with the device, called iWorks — including spreadsheets, keynote presentations, and what writers will find most useful, the word processing app called pages. In addition, with such apps as WordPress and other blogging focused platforms, writers will almost certainly find their iPad a convenient tool to write and publish their work on the fly.

Apps

The App Store currently features over 140,000 apps — both for sale and for free, from professionals and from amateurs … you’ll even find a few writing related apps available for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

With the success of the app store and the innovation and creativity of the developers creating apps for the platform, there’s no doubt there will be writing related apps available for the larger platform, the iPad.

The question stands — what might those apps include?

I’d love to hear what you think about all this — the iPad, using the full size touch keyboard, adjusting to the platform, and writing while on the go.

Do you see yourself writing your book on the iPad? Publishing your work to the iBookstore through a self-publisher, or do you see yourself continuing to pursue traditional publishing?

Susan stressed the importance of physically exercising in order to stimulate the body and mind — I agreed (check out our short conversation). If you’re not physically moving around and getting the blood flowing, you’re mind isn’t going to be as sharp as can be.

Are you living to write, or writing to live?

In other words, are you living your life and subsequently using your experiences as inspiration to write, or do you experience life through your writing — through characters, situations, and themes you might not have been able to experience in reality?

This question is important because it will reveal your approach not only to writing, but to life as well. If you’re like me, you probably feel pull in both directions — you want to experience life for what it is as well as what it’s not.

Where does everyone stand in their own writing?

I’m interested in hearing your thoughts on this question, what approach you take with your writing, and whether or not you feel this is affected by the genre in which you usually write.

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Sure, it might feel that way, but that point of view is more harmful than helpful. When setting yourself up to meet such high expectations (a number of pages that you probably can’t even articulate … you just know it’s a stack of papers neatly stacked on one side of your desk), you’re setting yourself up for you know what.

Let’s face it — how many of us actually write pages upon pages every time we sit down?

One. Two. Maybe a handful of others. The point is, the majority of writers can’t even meet their own standards.

If you can’t seem to knock out twenty pages at a time, try writing a little each day instead.

This might be exactly what you need as a parent, professional, or student — all of who have very busy schedules.

A little at a time will go a long way.

Approaching your story, novel, or other literary work with the plan to write a little at a time might just be what you need to conquer that writer’s block you’re enabling.

Has this approach worked for you? If not, what are your own methods and how have they helped you achieve your goals with writing?