You become what you feed your eyes and ears. Eat good art if you want to make good art.

What you take in sets the range of what occurs to you, because new work gets assembled from whatever is nearest to hand. If everything around you is average, average is what will feel normal, and you will produce it without ever deciding to. Input quality shows up in output quietly and on a delay.

Deliberately add one thing above your usual level this month: a difficult book, an old film, a body of work you find intimidating. You do not have to love it. You have to let it move where normal sits.