Writing Creativity: How to Harness Your Creative Side
Harnessing the writing creativity you were born with is one of the most important things you can do. Not only will having full access to this inner power help you to be a better writer, it will make the job much more enjoyable.
You know that feeling you get when you sit down to do some creative writing and every word is a struggle? When that happens, your creativity has deserted you. And it's miserable.
The good news is that us humans are a naturally creative bunch. The bad news is that it tends to get hammered out of us from middle-childhood onwards. Now that you have decided to become a writer, it is time to rediscover this inner, magical power.
This article is about two things...
- First, it is about reawakening the creativity we all possessed as children. Like I said, this won't just make writing easier, it will also make it a lot more fun.
- Just as importantly, it is about using the skills we have acquired in adulthood to channel that creative power effectively - or knowing when to use it and when not to use it.
You see, the creative spirit is only one aspect of the successful writer's makeup. The other is a deep, almost scientific knowledge of the craft of writing novels.
You use your artistic, creative side (or your inner-writer) to supply you with great raw material. Then you use your logical side (or your inner-writer's assistant) to make sense of it all and knock it into shape.
- Many beginners (and some seasoned professionals, too) struggle to write because their logical, critical side does all the work. For these writers, producing raw material that is true and alive is slow and painful at best, and sometimes even impossible.
- A less common (but equally serious) problem is writers who use nothing but their creativity in writing a novel. These writers can't get in touch with their logical side - which they need to hammer their free-flowing musings into some sort of publishable shape.
What kind of writer are you?
Introducing the Inner-Artist and Inner-Critic
Who are the artist and the critic, exactly? What characterizes them? What strengths and weaknesses do they possess that might help or hinder you in the writing of your novel? Allow me to explain...
- The artist within you lives in the right side of your brain - the side where all the creative work takes place. He or she is the source of your writing creativity - or the power that will help you to write better novels and have a lot more fun doing it.
- The critic lives in the logical left side of your brain. He or she has no time for the arty-farty part of being a novelist, but excels at things like craft and structure and learning the rules of writing.
We all contain these two characters within us, in varying degrees, and we need to draw on both of them if we want to learn how to write fiction to the best of our ability.
The trick is to not prefer one over the other, like a favorite child, but to embrace them both in equal measure. Not only will this help you to live a better life (it will make you responsible when you need to act responsibly, but willing to seek out fun and adventure and spontaneity in between times). But it will also help you to write better novels...
- Too much time spent in the company of the artist (who is the source of your writing creativity, remember) will lead to a novel which shows flashes of brilliance but is ultimately too rough and shapeless for publishers to bother with.
- Too much of the critic's influence and the novel will be technically well-constructed but somehow lifeless.
In short, they must learn to work together as partners, not be forever trying to outfox the other. And it is your job as the writer in whom these two characters exist to ensure that they do form a perfect partnership.
How? Simply by understanding what each of them is good at (and not so good at), and then ensuring that you perform each stage of the novel writing process using the best man or woman for the job...
- Finding Ideas: Trawling the depths of your subconscious memories for ideas and inspiration is a job the artist excels at. But don't discount the critic here - he or she is great at taking all these random, brainstormed ideas and piecing them together into strong patterns.
- Planning a Novel: This is primarily one for the critic. But, again, your artist can't take an afternoon off here. Creativity in writing is needed just as much during the planning stage as the writing stage.
- Writing a Novel: This is where the two sides of a writer's personality can seriously get in each other's way if the writer allows them to. Yes, the artist's creative streak is vital here if you want your prose to have any life. But without the critic to get the writing session started, no prose is likely to be written at all.
- Revising a Novel: This task consists of two parts - revising what you have said (character development, plot progression, and so on) and revising how you have said it (the language itself). You want the critic sitting at your desk for the first part, the artist for the second.
More Help On Harnessing Your Creativity
Everything above represents a brief overview of the subject. I hope I have demonstrated the importance of having full access to both aspects of a writer's personality. But what I haven't done yet is provided you with details and actionable steps.
You will find those in the full version of this article. There, you will find much more comprehensive information on how to recognize the artistic and critical sides of your writer's make-up, and how to make full and proper use of them during each of the novel writing steps.
After that, there is another article (not available here on the site) which offers even more ways to boost your creative side. These include...
- Why you shouldn't talk about your writing.
- Why self doubt can cripple creativity.
- The importance of looking forward to writing.
- Why you must let the artist play.
- How to boost your writing creativity by silencing the conscious mind.
- Why you should allow yourself to daydream.
The Downloadable Writing Guide also contains masses of other help and advice that you won't find here on the website.
Next Step: Closely linked to creativity is the subject of Beating Writer's Block...