Creativity and The Writer’s Habits
Do you find that you suddenly can’t write? You sit at the screen – glaring, sweating, picking your nails and waiting for inspiration to suddenly spit itself forth in a rapacious finger-flapping fury? Don’t do that to yourself!
Writer’s block is the inability to express yourself in writing and get your ideas flowing – (I’ve been a little prickly about this subject in the past, in fact my initial status in this post was writer’s block is bullshit’ – and after some consideration I realised that I can’t sustain this position.) It is something writers experience – myself included. Some days, writing just doesn’t happen and it sucks. But there are ways to avoid this and to simply not suffer it. (From my personal experience, I would encourage writers suffering from the dreaded block to walk away from it for now. There are other things to be doing). There is always something else to write, even very minor and small things – whether it’s planning some plot-arc, scribbling a character detail you noticed in a friend that you think would suit your protagonist, or just scribbling a new word you came across. But for the sake of your life and health – DON’T FORCE IT!
Sitting and glaring at the screen will get you no closer to where you want to be. Your stream-of-consciousness exercise discussed in the last part will not bring you a structured craft (though it might present ideas to work with and is a great way to warm up the digits and the mind). But if your story isn’t moving forward and you find you’re simply not writing an easy flow – it’s time to pull away and take a walk. Do something. Dedicate your unconscious to do what it does and chew around the story – meantime you can get on with whatever it is you need to get on with. Come back to it when you are ready – trust me, you’ll know and it will flow!
PART 2 –The Conscious Activity –Tips
Largely, society and education demands our conscious attention. Whether it’s completing logical puzzles, homework assignments, filling in forms for safety regulations, bureaucracy etc. Our conscious mind is required for daily tasks. This is where we live – it’s the language that buzzes around our head – the floating memories and images that get imposed in our visual cortex, the thought of what we’re doing for lunch, who do we need to contact next and for what reason, where did I put the keys, has the dog been walked? yadda-yadda.
The is the part of us that is overwhelmingly at work, and since it’s the part we’re so used to operating in, we might be very adept at using our conscious mind. There’s an idea that this is what leads to writer’s block, since we haven’t properly learned to utilise our unconscious mind we end up staring at a blank screen, unable to shift those immediate, conscious thoughts. It’s a helluva clutter up there sometimes – so what do we do? How do we utilise this for writing?
Balance!
Try a thought exercise. I want you to think of the most rational person you know. The most square, everything in order, everything by the book, edging on annoyance, rigidly conformist and dutifully regulative individual you can think of. Put that person in the left seat of your brain, the rational and realistic hemisphere. Now we’re going to think of another stereotype, this time, the opposite. The most relaxed, spiritual, down-to-earth, empathic, loving, creative and energetic person you know, someone fearless and colourful, someone with laughter and optimism. This person will sit in the seat at the right hemisphere of your brain. Put them back there side by side.
Allow these characters to talk. What conversations might they have? What are their opinions? Pass them topic cards. (Ideas = what would you do if you see a robbery? Is the sky really blue or is colour an illusion? What is freedom?)
Think about what triggers you, emotionally. What gets you clicking and sharing social media? Think about why that happens, how are these news outlets finding you and turning you into their temporary puppet? Understanding this will allow you to see how you too can be provocative with your writing, how you can utilise emotional language and equally catch attention by writing about things you are passionate about and believe you can get others passionate about as well. This is of course a little bit of marketing theory, but what you’re aiming to do is connect those conscious and unconscious parts of your mind by getting your rational and emotional brain’s sides talking.
If the unconscious mind is allowed to flow, the conscious mind can later correct, grammar, spelling, prose, all those things come later. So, get your brain active, take a walk, make notes, come back and write something – anything. A sentence is fine. What I find really helps is reading a chapter from your favourite author and saying to yourself – How do they do that? So cool – love those words, that collection, the timing and delivery here – how they juxtapose those statements, those paragraphs working together. I’m stealing that sentence there and paraphrasing it to my way!
Puzzles are also a great way to get the conscious mind and unconscious mind talking. The conscious mind is always at the task while the unconscious mind it chewing the puzzle over, later, trying to solve it. I quite like geometric puzzles like Rubik cubes or murder mystery puzzles and word games.
If you don’t play an instrument and you want to be a writer, now’s a great time to get to it. I play guitar when nothing comes to mind and it greatly helps to solidify ideas. Turns out this is not unusual practice for people thinking over difficult problems. When Einstein struggled over equations, he would go play his violin and later return to the problem and solve it. Learning music is a great way to aid your creativity. Not necessary – but a damn good idea!
So, to recap:
- Create some distance – take a walk, don’t stare at screens!
- Return and get your hemispheres talking (rational/emotional stereotypes)
- Builds a small questionnaire for your stereotypes (questions that bother you – find two different answers to them. What triggers you emotionally? What bothers you rationally?) – Use argumentative vocabulary!
- Read a chapter from your favourite author. (Take notes.)
- Try puzzles!
- Learn and instrument (or take time to learn a new skill if you already play)
- Free-flow, write something. Lose control –structure comes later!
To finish up this two-part intro to creative writing habits, I’d like to include for you a questionnaire for your rational and emotional stereotype characters. I’m also including an extract of writing from a book I wrote. Your task will be to highlight the mistakes and underline and take note of the problems. Note what you like / dislike about it. This will be a practice paper to get you used to reading unfamiliar texts by different writers and adapt to the process of critical analysis.
Happy writing future authors! Ciao for now!
questionnaire for character stereotypes
questionnaire for character stereotypes
Critical analysis practice
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