Wednesday 28 November 2012

Nurture your creativity



Here's a simple model I came up with to help with nurturing your creative writing (poetry in my case). The top half prompts us to bring the outside in by reading others' work and using any other external stimulus. That could be anything from taking a walk and really observing something in order to write about it, or using props, sensory stimulus (scents, music), for example.

The other half of the model is about bringing the inside out: which we can do by writing more and by accessing our own inner thoughts and feelings. Here are a few ideas about how to do that:

  • take 5-10 minutes to clear top-of-mind clutter by doing free writing before starting your creative writing
  • use creative thinking techniques that prompt sub-conscious responses - for example where you're asked to respond to a set of stimulus with "the first thing that comes into your head" or "without thinking"
  • pay attention to your own use of metaphor as you talk. I'm using the word metaphor in the broader sense, to mean any construction where we use one idea to describe another, when it isn't literally true. (For example, "Getting out of bed this morning was a real struggle"). The words we choose can point to our deeper thoughts and feelings about what we're saying.


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