How This YouTube Star Finds Her Inspiration

As a YouTube star and best-selling author, Rosanna Pansino is no stranger to the search for creative inspiration. If you're not familiar with Pansino's YouTube channel, she is the enterprising mind behind the Nerdy Nummies cooking series and corresponding analog recipe collection The Nerdy Nummies Cookbook . With such a wonderfully specific brand, you might think that Pansino would eventually struggle to come up with ways to find creative inspiration, but you would be incorrect. She's featured cookies, drinks, and other sweet treats on pretty much every geek-friendly theme from Harry Potter to Game of Thrones, and there's so much more where that came from.

Part of Pansino's knack for being a prolific digital content creator comes in the form of overflowing creativity. "Baker’s block is not a problem that I have," she tells Bustle. "Inspiration comes from everywhere. Sometimes, I’ll wake up in the middle of the night at 3 a.m., have an idea, and have to write it down. Sometimes, I dream an idea." Pansino also reads comments and tweets from her fans with requests for videos they'd like to see. "I’m always reading comments and responding. That way, you become a part of your community," she says.

On her channel, Ro, as most people call her, has collaborated with an impressive group of YouTube creators lovingly dubbed Team Internet. Now, she and a handful of other YouTubers, including iJustine and Jordan Maron of CaptainSparklez fame, have teamed up with sketch comedy outlet CollegeHumor to create an episode for the new YouTube Red series Bad Internet . "It's sort of like the YouTube world meets the Hunger Games. I play Chef Sara — a cutthroat cook. People are filming vlogs in the Hunger Games, and I set up a base camp to make wilderness drinks," Pansino laughs. "In the real Hunger Games, I would put my money on one of the fitness gurus."

It's obvious from her enthusiasm that she strongly believes in the sincerity of her industry. "For me YouTube has always felt like a community," she says. For any fledgling YouTube creators out there, Pansino stresses the importance of creating things that you love. "Make content you’re passionate about no matter what that is," she says. It is each creator that controls his or her digital destiny, after all. "Creating content online differs from traditional mediums because you are completely in control. There are also no barriers to entry which makes the process of getting a project started easier," she explains.

So, go forth and get inspired, and if you need a little push into your creative space, maybe swing by Pansino's YouTube channel and check out some of the nifty DIYs, recipes, and challenges that have inspired her to win over six million subscribers. Pretty impressive, right?

Image: Rosanna Pansino/YouTube