What Kills Creativity – Article on Creative Writing
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Creativity alone is NOT enough for creative writing!!!
Creativity alone is not sufficient for creative writing; not even good writing skill alone would complement creativity for effective writing. One needs to harness her creativity, expertise and motivation as a whole for creative writing. This article provides quick tips for honing creative writing skill.
Creativity and Creative Writing
Creativity means ability to create something new, something meaningful, and something that matters to you. By nature every living being is creative. It is God gift. Creativity, however, is just ability and it by itself cannot create something new that is meaningful and matters to you. It requires needed expertise and high level of intrinsic motivation to fully unbridle one’s creativity into creative product. And yes, creative writing is also one of the creative products. If other two aspects are not considered in tandem, it may turn your creative writing hard work futile. This article considers newness, significance and personal attachment as key elements of creative writing, and suggests what creative writers can avoid or can do to make creative writing effective and fulfilling.
Stress Kills Creativity
Stress more often than not limits your options. Under pressure even highly imaginative person tends to bend to left [use left brain] and tries to look more for optimizing her gain from available options than exploring something new leveraging right brain. Sometime when you feel stumped and could not get any idea to pen further try taking break and do something that “YOU” like to do. Doing something totally unexpected, out of your comfort zone or daily life, can be a great stress buster. Make kite, try your luck with pottery, cook Mongolian recipe or do whatsoever you have never thought so far as “your cup of tea”.
Caveat:
Stress, though in general is enemy of creativity, spurs negative emotions and sometime it is better to use these emotions for creative writing. But do not intentionally take high stress rather, if due to unavoidable circumstance you are stressed and full with negative emotions, use this situation to your advantage. Here other two aspects – your expertise and intrinsic motivation – would help create meaningful and relevant content.
Without Practice Success is Matter of Luck
If you feel lucky, you may try writing something you aspire but haven’t really sweated for. Second aspect of creative writing is expertise that does not come by only aspiration; you need to slog. Yes, you need to slog like a bull. Typically expertise comes after approximately 15,000 hours of hard work in relevant topic. It means a lot — more than five years of hard work. Don’t be disheartened. You need not to count your hours from today as you have already spent significant hours in completing essay homework, writing your first love letter, preparing your curriculum-vitae and many more such stuffs in your past. Bottom line is to accept the fact that do not expect your only creation to be commercially successful, and equally important, that you need to practice writing — reading many famous and successful works would not make you expert enough. Unfortunately at least I do not see any short cut as without expertise it is difficult to create something meaningful [to others].
External Motivation Dies Fast
Have you ever thought why do you want to be creative writer? Uh…? Because you are good in language? Or because someone you know became successful by writing? Or because you feel it is the easiest way for you to earn quick money or to become successful? If answer to any such questions is yes, you need to perhaps retrospect your goal setting process that led you trying creative writing. Remember third point in definition of creativity? You must write something that matters to you. Your writing should first target you before any chosen segment of readers. You must be able to relate to your writing and must feel proud of your creation. It is the simplest aspect that you can master starting from now — just be yourself when you write.
In summary, to become successful by creative writing can be very tiring. Avoiding stress, continuously practising your genre, and doing it for yourself first would provide an enabling platform for you success. All the best and do write your comment on this article.
