Rediscover Your Stifled Creativity

Why you aren’t writing fiction? Think you’re not creative enough?

You once were.

You may not remember it, but when you were between three and five, you weren’t afraid to try anything. You were bold, unconstrained, inquisitive. You overflowed with all kinds of ideas, fantasies, and stories. That young version of you wasn’t afraid to talk about them, either.

How do I know this? Most kids that age are like that.

What happened to all that creativity? It got stifled. Someone, or maybe many people, told you your ideas were no good. Or they laughed at you. It could have been your parents, a teacher, your playmates, or anyone you respected. But someone stifled the creativity in you, and convinced you you’re not creative.

How do I know this? Because it happened, and is happening, to everybody.

You can get much of that creativity back. Not all of it, though. No technique can restore the complete freedom, the unchecked abandon, of a five-year-old. Your older brain has too many well-worn grooves for that.

But it’s possible to regain a good portion of that creative spirit. Moreover, that creativity will be coupled with sufficient adult patience to write a novel, and the adult life experiences to make such a novel believable and interesting. Those are two things you didn’t have when you were five.

Before we get to the creativity restoration secret, I must give credit to author and entrepreneur Tim Ferriss for this blogpost. His personal experiment to increase his creativity caused me to think about my own creativity quest.

Through trial and error, Ferriss found he could be most creative by knowing when to write, what to drink, and what to listen to. He tried writing at various times a day. He tried drinking different teas while writing. He worked while listening to different types of music. He settled on the right combination of these that worked for him. He stressed that the right combination for you would likely be different.

Ferris didn’t discuss how he measured his creativity for these experiments, but I suspect it was subjective. You just sorta know when you’re in the creative zone.

Most writers can’t easily experiment with different times of the day to write. The rest of your life may dictate the few available time slots, and you’ll have to do the best you can within those.

I haven’t tried various drinks. With the exception of a single mug of coffee in the morning, I avoid having any food or drink near my computer. That’s partly for sanitary reasons, but mostly to avoid weight gain.

As for music, I’ve just gotten used to silence. If I did listen to music, I’d go with instrumentals, because it’s hard for me to avoid paying attention to sung lyrics.

Now for my own prescription to restore much of your childhood creativity:

  1. Avoid settling on any fixed pattern. If possible, write at different times, in different places, by different methods, with different music, and different scents. A part of your brain will love the changes, and respond by thinking in new ways.
  2. Make a place for private, uncritical play. Write in a journal with a lock, or type in a password-protected file. Here, in this place, you can let yourself loose and explore anything, try out ideas, let your imagination soar with silly notions that will never be shared. (Some you might share once the ideas mature.)
  3. Try the ’20 Answers Method’ of solving a problem. Got a writing problem? Go to your private place and think of 20 answers to that problem. Don’t stop until you get to 20. Even stupid answers count, since they sometimes spark good ones.
  4. Hand over problems to your subconscious. I’ve found myself coming up with creative answers while doing mundane activities—showering, mowing the lawn, riding a bus or subway, cleaning, gardening, etc.
  5. Try mind mapping. How I wish a teacher had taught me this technique in elementary school! It’s a marvelous method for quickly collecting creative ideas.

I believe you can restore much of your long-lost creativity. Give my ideas a try. Also conduct some experiments like Tim Ferriss did. Soon you’ll be twice as creative as—

Poseidon’s Scribe

October 25, 2020Permalink

3 States of Writing Flow

Fellow author Andrew Gudgel wrote a great blogpost on December 19, 2019 regarding writing, and I’d like to expand on it.

His post is titled “Water, Molasses, Glass” and you may have to scroll down to get to it. He compares writing to the densities of three substances—water, molasses, and glass.

Sometimes writing comes easily and flows like water. Other times it’s more difficult and flows like thick molasses. What about glass? Well, that’s probably a bad example, since it’s a solid and doesn’t flow at all. The common belief that it’s a slow-moving liquid is false.

Water, Molasses, and Tar

A better third substance would be tar, or pitch. That is a slow-flowing (highly viscous) liquid. Very patient researchers at the University of Queensland (Brisbane, Australia) have been watching pitch pour from a funnel since 1930. In those ninety years, nine drops have fallen. Nine drops. Rather a slow way to resurface your driveway.

Let’s get back to the writing comparison.

Water. When writing flows like water, life is good. You know what’s coming next, and nothing’s slowing you down. Without effort, you’re churning out words in a steady stream. People have studied this state of mind and call it ‘Flow.’ I blogged about this phenomenon here. It’s great while it lasts, but it always ends at some point. While you’re in that zone, just go for it.

Molasses. Here’s where writing is harder. You’ve got to force the words out. There are long stretches where you’re just thinking and not producing prose at all. You consider doing something more fun, like, say, cleaning the garage. When in this mental state, I suggest a few strategies:

  1. First, try to recall why you started this writing project in the first place. Something made you want to write this story, and you were enthused about it then. Try to recapture that passion.
  2. Second, write an outline, or revisit the one you previously wrote. Jot down where you think the story is going. Or, since you’re stuck for words, create a mind-map of all the possible alternatives for the part you’re stuck on. It could be different plot paths, different scene descriptions, possible character types, or whatever.
  3. Third, consider writing something else for a while. Trust that your subconscious, your muse, will work on the original problem and come up with a solution.

Tar. At a drop each decade, this is truly writer’s block. I’ve written about writer’s block before, both the diagnosis and the cures. There are several things that might be causing your writer’s block, and you have to pick the right cure for your particular cause.

May your words always flow like water and your rejections and negative reviews flow like tar. That’s the writing wish for you from—

Poseidon’s Scribe

February 16, 2020Permalink

Are Outlines…Out of Line?

Do you outline before you write stories?  If you’re not a fiction writer, do you outline in preparation for any substantial non-fiction you write?  I do, but this won’t be an attempt to persuade you to outline, but rather a description of why and how I do it.  Perhaps you’ll benefit from knowing such things.

I’m sure many writers don’t use outlines.  Too much of a bother, they’d say.  Too confining, others believe.  Still others would profess that time spent outlining is time not spent writing.  For some, their outline is in their head, and that’s enough.

More power to them.  I can’t imagine writing without an outline.  For me, it’s not a bother, but rather a way to ensure my story stays on track, stays true to its intended purpose.  I suppose outlines can be confining, but I think if them as flexible guidelines, every bit as subject to editing and rewriting as the story itself.  I rarely adhere entirely to my outline anyway.  It’s true—the process of outlining takes time that could be spent writing.  However, the time I spend outlining is worth far more to me than time wasted writing a story that lacks direction or purposeful flow.  As for keeping an outline in my head, I’m too afraid I’ll forget something important.

How do I outline, you ask?  I always start with a mind map.  If only my teachers had covered mind maps in elementary school!  Instead, I first heard about them in my thirties.  What a marvelous note-taking and brain-storming method!  I recommend reading Use Both Sides of Your Brain, by Tony Buzan, but you can also learn about the technique through internet searches.  I use mind maps initially to form ideas for my story, letting my mind free-stream, and organizing my thoughts on the mind map.  Later I might refine or redraw the mind map as things clarify.

More often I use the mind map to create a document called “Notes for ___” where the blank is either the title of the story, or the initial idea for the story.  This Notes document will eventually contain the research I’ve done, as well as the outline fleshed out from the mind map.

That outline basically consists of: (1) a list of the characters, along with character traits and motivations, (2) a description of the setting, along with any research I’ve done about the setting, (3) some notes about the conflict(s) to be resolved (both external and internal), and (4) the listed series of events making up the plot.

I know—seems like a lot of work, doesn’t it?  But I write short stories, so my lists of characters are short, the settings and conflicts are few, and the plots are not too involved.  As important as outlines are for my short stories, I imagine they’ll be even more necessary when I take the leap into writing novels.  For me, there’s little danger of getting snared in the trap of forever planning the story and never writing it.  Every moment I’m outlining, my bored muse is screaming at me to stop that tedious business and get writing!

As I write the story, I keep the Notes at the ready and refer to them often.  In almost every case, I reach a point where the story wants to deviate from the outline.  This can occur when a minor character starts taking center stage more than intended, or when my outlined plot requires a character to do something he or she just would not do, or many other reasons.  Here I must decide whether to detour from the outline or edit the story to match the existing outline.  Most often I abandon the outline, but I’ve done both.

My process has evolved to this and will likely continue to change.  Perhaps the next time I address outlining in a blog, my method will have altered again.  The process you choose will be different and uniquely you; it may not involve outlines at all.  It’s my hope you enjoy your writing adventure as much as…

Poseidon’s Scribe