It’s been a crazy couple of months, but the sun is shining here in Southern Ontario (as I write this, anyway), and the piles of snow are finally beginning to melt away. Halle-freaking-lujah!

For those of you who know me, you know that the day job has been intense—year-end reporting, corporate governance, inventory, and sick-leaves that have had to be managed with some tasking teamwork—and the writing work has been a hell-ton of administration, edits, and blog tours. (Not that I’m complaining, I swear.) I’ve had very little time to do anything creative (boo) and the doctor in charge of caring for my less than cooperative stomach has decided a little brain candy just might do the trick. Stress, it seems, has a habit of eating away at you. Literally.

What does any of that have to do with the price of tea in China? Not a lot, really. Mostly it’s just my way of offering excuses as to why I’ve been brain-vacant and social-media-absent this last while. On the flip-side, it’s also my way of introducing my post this month.

We can call it, what to do when you need a kick in the ass, inspirationally speaking.

There are probably a thousand different things a person can do to get themselves motivated to create: take a walk, talk shop with someone of the same mindset, get the blood flowing to the brain with a good workout, sort your supplies (paint brushes, writing notes, sheets of music), make a list of your goals and tick off the ones you’ve accomplished. There are posts everywhere with lists a mile long that can give a person ideas on motivational endeavours. But the basic concept—the line that runs through each of these thoughts and ideas—is the concept of reminding yourself what it is you’re doing, and why you’re doing it.

This past week I took a trip down to Nashville. In my recent release, ‘Road Trip’, my main character and his love interest stopped at the ‘Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center’. It’s a beautiful resort, in an amazing location, and it was a moment in the novel where both the characters ended up seeing something in each other beyond the here and now. I knew, even during my first few attempts at writing the scene, that I’d end up there one day, because (and I have a relative point here, I promise) experiencing a location that I’ve written about reminds me why I wrote it in the first place.

When I start researching locations for use in a novel, I find places that make my heart ache a little bit. That ache can be the result of something intensely beautiful, or overwhelmingly desolate. The bright but somehow empty lights of the Vegas strip, the threatening dark corners of a desperately poor neighbourhood, the tired, neglected properties of a suburb that once was but will never be again, or the breathtaking views of the Opryland’s atriums… they all wake something up in me – emotion. And that’s why I write, see. To transform that emotion into words, share what it is that setting made me feel, and hopefully evoke a similar feeling in my reader. I may not be a champion of conversation, but in my head I am the king of words.

I know there’s not much truth to that statement, but that’s not the point of my post. The point is, that’s how I feel when I’m writing. It makes me feel complete and in charge of my abilities. When I remember that I respond to writing in a positive way, that concept encourages me to do more of it. I write because I like how I feel about myself when I’m writing. I write because I feel like I’m sharing a part of me that I struggle to share in day-to-day transactions. I write because it helps me connect with people who have a similar mindset about connection, universal intervention, and spiritual healing.

Now that’s some motivational thinking.

So, the next time you’re looking for a boost on the motivation front, think back to what it was that inspired you to start in the first place. An expression, a saying, a movie, or an image – it doesn’t matter what it was, the only thing that matters is how you felt when you saw it/heard it/experienced it.

What are you doing?

And why are you doing it?

Here’s hoping that when you get to the point of answering those questions for yourself, your “why” is “because I love doing my ‘what’, and if I didn’t do my ‘what’, my life wouldn’t be complete.”

Until next time,

AF Henley <3

For those who are interested, here are some sharesies from the Gaylord Opryland trip:

The Twin Waterfalls, in the Cascades Atrium.

At the centerpiece of the Cascades Lobby: “Resurgence”, a blown-glass sculpture by Ludek Hroch.

View from the Delta River Flatboat Tours.

View from the hotel room, overlooking the Garden Conservatory.

Flowered canopy over fountain in the Garden Conservatory.

Henley was born with a full-blown passion for run-on sentences, a zealous indulgence in all words descriptive, and the endearing tendency to overuse punctuation. Since the early years Henley has been an enthusiastic writer, from the first few I-love-my-dog stories to the current leap into erotica. A self-professed Google genius, Henley lives for the hours spent digging through the Internet for ‘research purposes’ which, more often than not, lead seven thousand miles away from first intentions but bring Henley to new discoveries and ideas that, once seeded, tend to flourish.

Henley has been proudly publishing with Less Than Three Press since 2012, and has been writing like mad ever since—an indentured servant to the belief that romance and true love can mend the most broken soul. Even when presented in prose.

Henley’s newest release, “Road Trip” hit the market on February 11th and is now available at your favourite online book retailer in both ebook or print format.

Check it out on Amazon, or directly through LT3 Press.

For more information please stop by for a visit at afhenley.com.