Julia forced me to go to Paper Source with her again today at lunch. Well, okay, she didn't actually force me--she didn't hold me at gunpoint or anything. She said, "I'm going to Paper Source, do you want to come?" and, well, what could I do?

At least this time I only spent $40. Last time we went I spent almost $100. Today I bought a sheet of wrapping paper printed with black and white tarot cards featuring cats in all the roles, a rubberstamp of a Chinese postmark, a rubberstamp artist's zine, and a couple of packages of miniature photographs--all stuff that I plan to use in my collage cards.

I love going to that store, mostly because it gives me so many ideas and feeds my creativity. And I find that even if I don't go right home with my things and make something with them, the increase in creativity works in other ways--I've been working on a site redesign for my web design site tonight, and I have so many ideas that I can hardly keep up with them.

That's the amazing thing about creativity--it tends to feed on itself. I remember a quote of Sark's that I used to have printed out and pinned to my bulletin board--something like "Inspiration follows action, not the other way around." Meaning, don't just sit around waiting for the muse to wake up, start doing something, anything, and once you start writing or painting or whatever it is that you do, once you flex those muscles, the ideas will come.

The same idea is behind Julia Cameron's Morning Pages, and Barbara Bretton's secret to being a bestselling writer--"butt to chair."