5 Ways To Become a More Creative Human Being

Or how to stop writing about writing.

I am tired of writing about writing. Seriously.

Blogging is funny this way. If you want to know what a person thinks, just find their Medium profile — and you’ll get VIP access into this writer’s head.

Granted they are honest, of course.

Because there are always writers who write for the sake of typing words. Or making money. Or both. But those are not real writers.

They are noisemakers.

I recently had a call with a friend who said that I write in phases or themes. It’s easier for outsiders to see these things. After all, my job is to write — not judge my work.

But when I think about it, I see he’s right. One theme was anxiety — somewhere in April, when I wrote 3–4 articles about having panic attacks.

Back in February, I wrote a series of posts about lessons from people I admire. That was a theme too.

Recently all I’ve been writing about was content creation and writing. And I must say I am a bit bored with it.

The reason is that there’s nothing much to say. The theme is not as interesting.

Yes, I want to understand this mysterious art — writing. True.

But on the other hand, there’s nothing to say except for what I told one of my readers recently via email (he asked for advice): just write.

Imagine two writers, I told that reader. Writer A and writer B.

Let’s say both want to start making a decent income from Medium. They start on the same date.

Writer A is talented and gifted. He’s one of those writers who’s a real pro — and knows it.

Writer B is a terrible writer. On top of that, let’s say he’s a non-native English speaker (like yours truly) and can’t even spell properly (sometimes like yours truly).

They start writing on the same date, except that writer A writes whenever the ‘muse’ strikes her — whereas writer B has an ‘I-don’t-give-a-fuck-what-you-think’ kind of attitude, which allows her to just write whatever comes to mind and every day.

Fast-forward twelve months.

Who do you think ‘made’ it?

If you want to be a writer, you have to write. Period.

When you write a lot, you find your voice. You understand what you want to write about. You build an audience — becomes all that matters is that you show up. You ‘unblock’ yourself.

As a bonus, you get to learn to write better.

But again, I digress. I said I didn’t want to talk about writing. After all, I don’t want to be that blogger who blogs only about blogging.

It’s like that old joke: a business guru gathers 1,000 people to tell them how to make one million dollars and charges $1,000 per this session. $1,000 x 1,000 people = 1 million.

But then, you can’t expect to write about things you don’t think about.

If all you think about is writing (as I did for the majority of the past two months), you inevitably end up talking and writing about writing. You have a theme.

So the goal is not to force yourself to write about other things but to start thinking about other things.

Then you automatically have a new theme — and new things to write about.

This process is harder than it sounds. When you want to become successful at anything — you start to want to try to control every part of the process. Especially control-freaks like me.

Our minds think (falsely) that the more we obsess over something, the better it’ll become.

Our whole Type-A lives supported this lie: the more we studied — the better grades we’ve got. The harder we worked, the more clients we got, the more money we made.

So — it’s easy to think, that to make it in the writing or blogging profession, all you need to think about is writing. (That’s how you end up writing about writing all the time. You’re simply too self-conscious.)

But it’s scary to admit that creativity doesn’t work this way. It’s not something that can be pushed or accelerated with effort.

And it’s even more terrifying to admit that we might not have any power over the process. Or worse, that with all our successes as Type-A personalities, we’re ill-equipped to deal with it. (Creativity, I mean.)

After all, creativity and intellect — the one your parents are so proud of — have almost nothing in common. You can be incredibly smart, but incredibly worthless when it comes to coming up with something on the go.

Creativity needs something different. Below are the five things I learned quite recently.

Creativity needs an open mind.

It’s easy to brush off new ideas as they come.

And our minds whatever we look for. So even if you don’t think of yourself as a close-minded person, it’s better to call yourself one. Then you (‘accidentally’) start finding evidence of your close-mindedness.

You’d see that you brush off whatever doesn’t fit our current worldview as wrong.

Or that people who don’t agree with us are stupid.

Or that the idea you just had — it’ll never work. Even though you haven’t even tried executing on it (so how would you know?).

Creativity is the process of idea-birth. And if your mind is like a room, then your ideas are guests.

Yes, you might have some longtime stayers, but if you constantly scare away any new guests by imposing a way-too-strict face control — it’ll be just a matter of time before new guests stop coming.

You can’t be both creative and close-minded.

Creativity needs play.

When I was a kid, I played all the time.

I never played with toys though. No. I played inside my head.

I had such intricate world-building that I don’t remember playing anything but one game throughout all of my childhood.

I had 3 or 4 main characters, and I’d put them in all kinds of situations. The play didn’t stop — even if we were traveling (on the other hand, I had new scenery!).

Sometimes I’d often invite other people (mostly my younger sister) to participate in the plot I’ve constructed.

Sometimes I’d put on the music on our CD player to have a soundtrack.

And sometimes I’d avoid moving altogether, deciding to play completely inside my head.

I was weird.

But I never thought at that time that a kid who whispers words and makes faces and sounds and runs around the room erratically — can look stupid.

I didn’t have an inner Censor that stopped me from playing.

On the contrary, I lived for play.

It gave me pure joy to dream about my characters and their struggles within a non-existent galactic empire. Time evaporated. I didn’t need food, friends, or video games. And the real world was too boring.

People say that children are naturally creative.

That’s because creativity is not like play — it is play.

And as any child knows, you can’t force it.

Quite the opposite, you need to let go of anything that’s not play — fear, self-doubt, seriousness, worry, fear-of-missing-out, and Google Calendar — to let it happen organically.

Your goal is to get to the point when not playing (or writing) sounds terrible. Soul-crushing. As if, why did you even wake up this morning?

And if you remember, that’s exactly how you felt when you were a kid.

Creativity needs you to fill your well.

Julia Cameron (the famous creativity teacher and writer) thinks we’re all creative. She also thinks that people who don’t think they’re creative, do so because their inner artist is buried too deep.

The good news is, you can reconnect with your inner artist.

You can take them on a date — just the two of you — and go somewhere trusting your curiosity. Be it a park, museum, thrift shop, or a local bar for a pint of beer. She calls this the artist date.

You can also learn to hear what the artist within you is thinking about. To do that, write three pages of stream-of-consciousness writing, first thing in the morning. Julia calls this the morning pages.

Apart from these practical exercises, you need to take care of your creativity — like you would a fire that’s burning and needs more logs to keep burning.

A few years back, I read a viral post on Medium that promoted the idea that we should all stop being consumers and become producers instead. That may be true.

But to create great content, we need to consume great content too.

Creativity needs you to do nothing.

«Young people are creative because they have so much time to waste,» said Kevin Kelly in one interview.

He knows what he is talking about: when he was just 20 years old, he traveled to Asia to do nothing but bicycle, photograph and take odd jobs. He did that for 10 years. And now he is known as the founder and chief editor of Wired magazine.

Ideas never come north of the 14th hour of work.

Sometimes to accomplish something, you need to first do nothing. Enter that state of ‘doing-nothingness’ and prolong it for as long as possible.

Neil Gaiman uses this technique to fight writer’s block when he tells himself to ‘do nothing or write’. He stares at the blank wall for a few minutes, but after a while, it becomes too boring — so he starts writing.

Boredom can be a tool.

Creativity needs you to pay attention.

I recently read a quote by an American poet whose name I forgot. It went something like this: «The worst thing you can say about a man is that he didn’t pay attention.»

In other words, he lived — but didn’t. He existed.

What’s the point of living — or doing anything — if you don’t pay attention? If you don’t remember the nuances, the details, the little things that make the big ones worthwhile in the first place?

When it comes to creativity and coming up with ideas, attention plays the following role: to have things to write about besides yourself and your struggles, you need to pay attention to the world.

You need to forget yourself. Live by watching what you see in front of you.

The brilliant people that surround you. The beautiful nature. Animals. Children. The sea. Great books. Bad books. Birds. More birds.

Anything you see — that’s not you — is worth paying attention to.

Your job as an artist is simple. You notice things. And then create art that allows everyone else to notice them too.

But again — I wish I could say it’s easy. It’s not.

Self-centered people are not confident, they are embarrassingly insecure.

There is nothing more frightening than the prospect of letting go of ourselves and our affairs — even if just for the moment.

The truth — one you’ve got to remind yourself all the time about — is that nothing will happen. On the scale of the world, you’re unimportant, and from the evolutionary standpoint, you’re most likely unnecessary.

And yet, here you are, caring, worrying, obsessing, hesitating, fidgeting.

Thinking you are the most important person in the world. Thinking that what you do matters — and thus, ridding yourself of paying attention to what’s happening around you.

The job of an artist is to let go of the self. Let go of their importance in favor of the bigger world.

If you manage to do that, writing about other topics besides writing stops being a problem.

Writing itself stops being a problem.

Like that kid who cries if he doesn’t get to play today — your inner artist will do everything to start writing.

And then again tomorrow.

Because that’s what he lives for.