Nurturing Creativity - How to Keep the Muses Talking

I’ve written before about 'gathering inspiration' but there’s so much more to creativity than the ideas we have.

Your creativity is your desire to create. It’s your drive, your motivation. It’s the unique combination of influences that you bring to your work. And when it’s flowing, you feel unstoppable. But when it isn’t… that’s when the self-doubt and the uncertainty set in. So how can we keep the creativity flowing? Gathering inspiration is important, but as the wonderful Douglas Adams said:

“An idea is only an idea. An actual script, on the other hand, is hundreds of ideas bashed around, screwed up, thrown into the trash can, fished out of the trash can an hour later and folded up into thick wads and put under the leg of a table to stop it from wobbling. And then the same again for the next line, and the next and so on, until you have a whole page or the table finally keels over.”

If you don’t have the creativity and motivation to persevere with your ideas, even when they’re being difficult and you don’t want to,  you aren’t going to get very far as a writer.

So, how can we nurture our creativity? How can we develop the drive to turn our ideas into finished stories and poems?

Gathering Inspiration

We often think of inspiration as something that simply comes to us… there’s that image of the writer being struck by a ‘bolt of lightning’. But that isn’t how it works. At least, I’ve never been struck by this mysterious lightning bolt of ideas - and I think waiting for it is probably a waste of time.

How often have you sat in front of your computer, only to stare at a word document for a few minutes and then open facebook? Or taken up your notebook, only to sigh and put it down again because you don’t know what to write. You aren't feeling it. You aren’t motivated. You just want a cup of coffee and maybe a nap… You aren’t inspired and nothing gets done.

So, even if you want to keep faith in the lightning bolt, I encourage you to find your own inspiration in the meantime.

Minstrel Sophia of Apostrophe

Have you ever played The Sims Medieval? It's one of my favourite ways to procrastinate - The Kingdom of Apostrophe (I'm a writing geek, okay?) flourishes whenever I'm trying to put something off.

Anyway, one of the playable characters  is ‘the bard’ of the kingdom and, guess what? They don't let a lack of ideas stop them.

Playing as the bard, one of the tasks you have to complete is to spend a certain amount of time ‘gathering inspiration’. This is something that many of us forget to do in the real world.

Now, I’m not suggesting that we should stand around on the beach all day, holding a quill and looking pensively at a scroll... but I do think we ought to be actively gathering inspiration from the world around us.

Productive Procrastination

Writers procrastinate. Editors procrastinate. Students, office workers and builders procrastinate... avoiding difficult tasks is something we humans excel at.

So, yes, it's understandable. It's natural. It's forgivable... but it's not very useful.

Or is it?

There are two ways to make use of the temptation to procrastinate:

·         We can analyse it

or

·         We can try to direct it

Analysing Your Procrastination

As writers, we tend to be quite introspective. So, as analyising procrastination involves asking yourself a lot of questions, it can become quite interesting.

Before you can inspect the cause of your procrastination, of course, you have to notice that you are doing it. Sometimes, this is easy. Sometimes we know exactly what it is we are avoiding or, at least, we think we do.

But sometimes  it's a subconscious thing. So, to catch it, we need to pay attention to our behaviours. If we can learn to recognise the things we do when we procrastinate, we should be able get past it and complete our tasks before we get too close to any looming deadlines.

So, is your house unusually spotless? Are you rearranging the tins of soup in the cupboard? Trying out a lot of new recipes? Spending a lot of time browsing the internet for said recipes? Is your inbox looking particularly well organised? Chances are, you're procrastinating.

So, what are you avoiding? Let's say it's writing that short story you were supposed to have done by the end of the week... Why are you avoiding it? You were excited about it at one point... weren't you? Why? Or, if not, why are you supposed to be doing it? Is it an assignment? A commission? An entry for a competition? What will you, or might you, gain from completing it? How far have you got? Do you still like the idea? Why? Or why not? How about the characters?