How to be creative:

new ways to expand our creativity

For many writers, the urge to write is often stymied by the issue of what to write about. Craft is not the same as creativity. As ever, trusting in the muse, in inspiration or in nebulous concepts of talent gets you only so far. Consistency and process are the keys to ceaseless creativity. How can you organise your time and your work so that you’re always coming up with outlets for your writing?

Multitask your input

Maybe you’re a poet. Or a novelist. Or a blogger. It’s easy to get caught up in your own small corner of creativity and focus only on that. However, creativity is very often a result of cross-fertilisation. Ideas can come from anywhere, but you have to be looking out for them.

You’re probably already reading a variety of different material, from books to magazines to internet information. You’re probably also listening to music and watching TV. The trick is to consider all of this a mingling flow of ideas and to think about what potential there is for your own projects. You might be inspired by the structural format of a Netflix series, a quirky kind of interview on an online blog or themes being explored in a new album. It all connects if you let it.

Also open yourself to entirely new experiences. If there’s a talk on topiary at your local garden centre, who knows what characters you might meet there? If there’s an exhibition of Victorian memento mori artefacts at your local library, go along and see if anything quivers in your creative antennae. Everything is a potential stimulus when you’re open to ideas.

And don’t get hung up on working on one thing at a time. I’m usually flitting between an article, a novel, research and correcting other people’s work so that I’m always stimulated on many fronts. You don’t know where the next idea will come from, but there are possibilities when you multiply your input.

Forget purpose

Often, we’ll only begin a piece of work if we know what we’re going to do with it. If an article is not for a specific magazine, or if we’re unsure our novel is ever going to be published, we simply don’t write it. It seems purposeless. This is anti-creative. Creativity exists only for itself and in its own right. It doesn’t need a purpose or even an audience. It just needs to be done.

So if you have an urge to write something – a creative itch – just write it. Don’t even think about anybody ever reading it. That’s a question for later. The main point is you getting lost in a project, practising and learning more about your craft. I’ve written at least five novels without any realistic hope of them being published. Three of them were, but the other two made me a better writer by forcing me to spend many months on research and writing.

Maybe nobody will ever read them, but writing them made me more creative.

The work is its own purpose. Kurt Vonnegut (Slaughterhouse 5) advised young writers to try an exercise: write something true and honest on a piece of paper. Do it as well as you can and put everything into it. Then rip it up and throw it to the wind. That’s creativity.

Get in the middle

Fear and procrastination are the two greatest barriers to creativity – and with good reason. The start of any project tends to be scary. You’re unfamiliar with the work. You don’t feel it. You can become disillusioned if it doesn’t go right immediately and then you lose heart. Even professional writers can dread the start of a new book. They know what work is involved.

But here’s the thing: the magic only starts to happen when you’re in the middle of something. When you’ve found your rhythm and your flow. When you’ve built up momentum. That’s when the true creativity happens. However, you have to start before you get to be in the middle!

I didn’t like the last two novels I’ve written for at least the first 10,000 words or so. I just wasn’t feeling them. Even though I’d planned and researched them. Even though the writing was good, I just wasn’t enthused. Then the magic started to happen and they really took off. By the time I’d finished, I had enough magic left over to go back and tinker with the first 10,000 words.

If you don’t start, you can’t be creative.

Or to quote basketball maestro Michael

Jordan, ‘You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.’

Trust in your process

Here’s a funny thing. When I went back to edit my initial

10,000 words – the words I’d found such a drag to write – I discovered they weren’t bad at all. Maybe they lacked the alchemical spark of the later work, but they were pretty damn good and needed very little work. Why was this? Because I’d trusted in my process.

My process is intended as a failsafe: an insurance against the unreliability of emotion. We all doubt our own work sometimes. Is it any good? Having process avoids this trap by ensuring the prose is going to do everything it needs to do regardless of whether you feel it.

Thus, I plan my chapters so that I know for a fact that each one has a number of compelling story elements that will engage a reader. I know that each scene is designed with a specific customer response in mind. I know whether I’ll be using description or dialogue or exposition. When the time comes to write and I’m feeling unsure or uncommitted, it doesn’t matter. I just have to follow my own instructions and everything will be okay. And so it is.

That’s my process. Everyone should design their own. It should be something that second-guesses your doubts and gives you fuel to continue. That’s another reason why research is very useful – it gives you loads of interesting information that you’ll want to share with a reader.

Inside and outside

The above is an example of being both creator and editor at the same time. Creativity needs both: the fire of inspiration and spontaneity but also the level-headed ability to know what the work is supposed to achieve. You can get lost in your epic descriptions and research detail, but you always have to know where the reader stands in relation to your work. How much is too much?

This is very difficult for most writers. It’s not uncommon to finish a piece and have no idea if it’s any good. Or rather, it feels fantastic one day and abysmal the next. Maybe, as the artist, you’re excessively self-critical. Or utterly deluded. That’s why it’s essential to see your work from a purely functional angle.

This means submitting your writing to ‘outside’ questions such as: what is the purpose of this scene?

What is the reader supposed to feel here? What is the necessary tone for this scene? How is pace being managed at this stage in the chapter/book? If a chapter is supposed to be pacey and plot driven, then a three-page description of the hero’s new cufflinks is not likely to work in context.

If you don’t learn the ability to view your work from the outside as well as creating it from the inside, you’ll never have creative control. You’re like a powerful engine but with no gearbox. That’s where process comes in. First you ask the ‘outside’ questions, then you get ‘inside’ to give the work personality and voice.

Get lost

Once you’re inside, go deep. True creativity requires a degree of risk. It’s a high-wire act. You’re attempting something you suspect might be impossible, but you don’t care. You’re driven on by the excitement of trying something new, something you can’t even explain or visualise. It’s just a feeling that you need to get closer to.

There are professional writers – good writers of commercial fiction – who pretty much write the same thing over and over. The stories change, but the style and the prose don’t have to. That’s talent. That’s skill. But I don’t think it’s creative. Creativity doesn’t rest when it reaches a plateau. It’s disappointed if it has to stop climbing.

The greatest artists seemed to have an unlimited capacity for new work and new ideas (at least until they got too rich, spoiled or insane to care). They never stopped experimenting. They loved the feeling of being lost in their own work because the pressure of being lost caused them to find new techniques and new directions. In short, creativity is not something we’re born with or something reserved for a privileged few. It doesn’t demand acclaim. It’s work. It’s an attitude. It’s a process. Sure, it isn’t easy, but there are few things more rewarding than looking at a screen and thinking ‘Wow! Did I just write that?’