Writer’s tips: Pinterest and the Visual Writer

I adore Pinterest. I also hate it. And can you really blame me? It is both a magnificent tool for brainstorming and character development and a ginormous time waster. I mean I can say I’m gathering images for my book and developing my ideas but I’m also just looking at pretty pictures.

But I’m not here to berate Pinterest for stealing hours of time away from me. I’m here to praise it for its help with the idea stage of the creative process.

I am a visual reader. Being a lover of film and theater all my life, I like to picture books in my head, not just read them. It’s an amazing feeling to get so lost in a book that you forget you are even reading words. My mind starts subconsciously painting the scenes for me. I am a visual reader and I am also a visual writer. I love finding little images that remind me of my characters. Finding images that suit my ideas really helps spur them on and encourage me to start, finish and edit projects.

If you are a visual writer as I am, here are a few Pinterest tips to help you cultivate your ideas in the midst of your procrastination.

1. Make a board for each book. A lot of people have writing boards for general book inspiration but if you put ALL your writing related pictures on one board, it will get cluttered really fast. Book boards work much better if you keep it to one book idea per board. Its more organized and its easier to identify a theme between the pictures. It looks prettier, honestly.

2. Whenever you are stuck on a scene, head to Pinterest and start pinning images that relate to the characters you are dealing with. Get lost for awhile in a maze of pictures and maybe your mind will get unstuck. Or maybe you’ll spend two hours getting lost. Either way, your book board just got a whole lot fatter

3. Use Pinterest for inspiration. Not feeling any of your current book ideas? That’s alright. Go browse random art boards and see what jumps out at you. Maybe a picture will spark an idea and send you down a rabbit hole to a new writing adventure. Pinterest is great for that kind of thing but also annoying when you already have ten other ideas. It’s a mixed bag.

4. When all else fails: look up delicious recipes. This is actually a horrible thing to do for your productivity. But, on the other hand, it involves awesome food.

So there you go. Simple tips for the visual writer on Pinterest. Get writing and, if you can’t find the motivation, get pinning! And if you're interested in writing and general nerdom, follow me on pinterest here.