Editor’s Choice — Top 10: Be Emotionally Creative to Make Your Writing Fresh

Reading 10 top stories is good for your writing health

The main idea of Elizabeth Gilbert’s TED Talk¹ was to explain how creativity works.

She started by telling us how her best literary achievement had doomed her — and perhaps she could not top her freakishly successful book, ‘Eat, Pray, Love.’ Her stories made the TED audience laugh.

The story that made me smile was of the poet named Ruth Stone. She was ninety when Elizabeth met her. Working in the fields, Ruth could literally feel and hear a poem approaching her. It was a hiss initially, but as the poem came closer, the ground under her feet shook. Ruth would run like hell to her house, the poem chasing her. She grabbed a pen and a piece of paper and captured it.

Sometimes, she could not reach the house in time and the poem barreled through her looking for another poet. But on some occasions, she barely grabbed the poem by its tail while it was about to leave her. When she wrote such a poem, it came backwards — from the last word to the first — since she started writing it from its tail.

It’s kind of funny — I am writing this with a smile on my face — and you must be smiling too.

Elizabeth Gilbert’s fear made her creativity a burden for her. She thought she felt better when she had yet not become a successful writer.

But during these agonizing moments, she started looking at the history of the world to find a saner model of understanding creativity. She needed to find another perspective to look at creativity — one that did not stress her.

She looked at the ancient Greeks and ancient Rome. She saw how the Greeks believed creativity was a divine attendant spirit — a daemon — who visited people when they felt creative. The ancient Romans thought that creative people were visited by a genius — a magical entity that literally lived in the walls of the artist’s studio.

Only after the Renaissance — during the last five hundred years — a human being became the center of the universe. A thought developed that creativity resided inside a person. People started believing that the artist was not visited by genius — he or she was the genius.

Elizabeth thinks this new approach is causing stress to creative people in all genres. Creative people are more likely to become depressed and commit suicide².

With time, Elizabeth Gilbert started separating creativity from herself. One day she actually talked to an empty corner of her room — as if a creative entity resided there — and asked her to play her part as she was sitting and trying to write. She told the creative elves and fairies that she was doing what she was supposed to do. If they — the elves and fairies — wanted to do their part, they could make it brilliant.

With time, Elizabeth has made it her habit to put some distance between her creativity and herself.

By using this psychological construct — of creative elves and fairies who are responsible for making our work brilliant — she feels less stressed when she is writing.

She ends her inspiring talk by saying that we should think of our creativity less of a personal trait and more of a loan from an unknown source.

Let’s read our top 10 stories today to learn how elves and fairies sparked the imagination of these wonderful writers:

10. Why Reading Is Becoming Skimming on the Internet

I wrote this piece. Read it without skimming and skipping — if you can. Then try the same technique on the remaining 9 stories. 😃

Everyone can say whatever they like on the blogging and social media platforms. The readers have to decide whether they want to read an article or not.

They like to skim and scan an article before deciding to read it.

Professor Maryanne Wolf, Director of the Center for Dyslexia at UCLA, says that skimming is the new normal, and it is affecting the society profoundly. She explains in an article in The Guardian, “When the reading brain skims texts, we don’t have time to grasp complexity, to understand another’s feelings or to perceive beauty. We need a new literacy for the digital age.”

9. Debunking Three Myths About Raising Bilingual Kids

Vic Bowling is a storyteller, dreamer, and pathfinder. She is on her journey to rediscover my writing voice.

She is an excellent writer. Her writing style is frank, direct, and very engaging. Don’t forget to check her other work.

I started feeling like I was losing a battle that had barely begun.

Both my partner and I wanted our child to grow up bilingual. But it’s easier said than done. Because I — myself and I — would be the parent responsible for our little one’s bilingual skills. And it’s kind of daunting.

I also realised that I had a lot of fears associated with trying to teach my child two languages at the same time.

8. How I Overcame My Phone Anxiety

Lucy The Eggcademic is trying to fill the cracks on conflicting improvement advice. She is a superb writer. Her style is way beyond engaging. If you started reading this story, you would not be able to click away.

She is talking about a common dis-ease: phone anxiety. Do check her other work. Follow her and wait for her next piece.

Phone anxiety is so common amongst millennials and Gen Z. I can’t pinpoint why, but it’s a confusing mix of not being able to see visual social cues, not really having the experience, and the demand of getting a phone call and feeling pressured to answer it immediately.

That being said, I eventually overcame this phone anxiety thanks to one of my earlier research assistantship jobs. I was inspired to tell this story after reading Michael Ranjitsingh’s story on knocking on 200 doors to ask about odours.

7. How to Stay Strong in Tough Times

Leah Njoki is here to help us create the best relationship with ourselves and others. She is an excellent writer. Her writing voice is artistic, direct, and engaging. She has thousands of followers already. But you’d love to follow her if you read this masterpiece.

“I miss her every day. I’ve never cleaned out her closet. I’m not there yet. I want to keep her memories as alive as long as I possibly can. She was the woman I adored. Although she’s been gone a year, the pain is still raw. When the cruel arm of death snatched her away, it ripped my heart into shreds.” Jack wrote these words in a social media post.

Last Wednesday was precisely one year since a tragic road accident robbed Jack of the love of his life. Trying to come to terms with his loss has been a roller coaster ride of mixed emotions. On some days, getting out of bed is incredibly difficult, and others feel a tiny bit easier.

6. How My Mom’s Bipolar Disorder Ripped Our Relationship Apart

Jasmine Soumana is a yoga teacher. Philosopher. Storyteller. Explorer. Meditator. Lover. She is trying to understand reality and living to experience it. She thinks life is a dance.

She is an exceptional writer. Her style is simple, direct, and very engaging. If you read this story you are going to love her other work as well.

The first time I was introduced to Bipolar Personality Disorder was at the age of 11 when I was coming home from school on a Friday afternoon. As I was looking forward to some relaxed quality time with my family, I was surprised to find my mom home earlier than usual. In excitement, she announced that she had just given up her well-paying job, was about to send my dad and little brother to live in Ghana, have me stay with my grandparents from now on, and travel the world preaching her very important new epiphanies.

5. An Insight Into The Emerging Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy

Viktor Marchev is interested in everything related to psychedelics, mental health, and self-improvement. He is an excellent writer.

His style is research-based, informative, and highly engaging. Many of his stories have gone viral in the past few months. Do check his other work.

“The MDMA assisted therapy allowed me to communicate the truth of my experience while remaining connected to my therapist.” Those were the words of Elizabeth Matthews, in the MAPS Bulletin Annual Report, when she talked about her experience with dealing with a long-lasting PTSD. “Before MDMA,” she argued, “I couldn’t tell my story without being rocked for days by the shame that surfaced in the telling.”

Psychedelics have become a hot topic in the past few years. Due to this fact, today, dozens of personal stories and scientific studies about the effects, both negative and positive, of substances such as LSD, MDMA, DMT, psilocybin, and ayahuasca, have flooded the world of the Internet. Although national news outlets are still not really keen on such topics, people still get their hands on the information they need.

4. The House of God

Robert Sedam, DVM is a small animal veterinarian hoping to provide honest insight into the veterinary profession. He is an excellent writer with an engaging style. Do check his other work.

Recently, I’ve made a change in my career and life path, and with it, I’ve come into some time that I didn’t normally have. This has allowed me to catch up on all of the reading that has been stacking up on my bookshelf since I graduated from veterinary school.

This book was recommended to me by a peer in a group forum discussing burnout in the veterinary profession. I hadn’t been heavily invested in reading this thread, but for some reason, the post about this book had caught my eye. So, when I did my last round of book acquisition I added it to the list. For less than $5 on Amazon, I was now the second (or perhaps third) owner of this book, but I had essentially no idea what it was about.

3. The Power of Words: How Uplifting Content Benefits Your Brain

Simona is passionate about sharing insights from science to help bring more mindfulness, joy, and self-compassion into the lives of others. She is a brilliant writer.

Her writing style is simple, direct, and engaging. Follow her, read her stories, and wait for her future work. She needs your energy.

The words you read or listen to have a physical effect on your well-being. From changing your brain’s functioning to shaping the molecular structure of your cells, being more conscious of the words you choose to consume or speak can bring many benefits to you and others.

Just as we are affected by the words we take in, so do the words that we share with others (whether verbally or in writing) have the power to benefit them on a physical and mental level.

2. Can a mushroom stop Alzheimer’s Disease or Dementia Progression?

Dr. Alessandro Crimi is a researcher, lecturer, and founder of yawlab.io Interested in biotech, medicine, cooperation, education, and entrepreneurship, also in low-income countries.

Nature is amazing, there is so much we do not know or understand. Mushrooms are often stigmatized, and people generally only know champignons and psychedelic mushrooms though there is an entire universe out there.

A popular mushroom among mycologists (scientists studying mushrooms) but not so much to the general public is the Hieracium erinaceus. This fluffy fungus has several nootropic benefits which we start to understand now. In this story, I will share research and anecdotes about it. This is the agenda: a short intro, a summary of traditional and folklore, and a summary of western research.

1. Neuropsychology Reveals Where Our Idea of “Self” Comes From

At number one, it is Simona. She is passionate about sharing insights from science to help bring more mindfulness, joy, and self-compassion into the lives of others. She is a brilliant writer.

Her writing style is simple, direct, and engaging. Follow her, read her stories, and wait for her future work. She needs your energy.

Can you consider the thought that right now, in this very instance, everything is ok? You are alive. You are breathing. Nothing is missing. If something vital to your survival was missing right now, you wouldn’t be here.

Yet there is a voice in your mind that may be wanting to explain everything that is apparently going wrong in your life — right now. You may be observing yourself thinking how silly this exercise might be. But who is the one noticing these thoughts? Could you imagine that the only thing keeping you from peace is the thought that something is not as it should be?

Neuropsychology is helping us understand where in the brain these thoughts come from.

Final Thoughts

If your story was selected as one of the Top 10, please share another one of your stories in the comments with a brief introduction and a short review that can convince a reader to read your piece. (Please write the review in the third person and start it with your name.)

I must have missed something today. I cannot read every story on Illumination and Illumination-Curated. Dr Mehmet Yildiz, the Chief Editor and Founder of Illumination and Illumination-Curated, read, highlighted, and applauded every good story when he started his publications. He still reads almost all of the good ones. I try — and fail daily — to read all of the masterpieces.

Dr Mehmet Yildiz has kindly allowed our top 10 series a full shelf on the front page of Illumination-Curated and Illumination:

So, help me to find and rank the best work of the writers of Illumination and Illumination-Curated.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

To improve your chances of success as a writer, read these curation guidelines.

You can read my curated stories here.

References:

1. Link to Elizabeth Gilbert’s TED Talk.
2. Link to the study on creativity, depression, and suicide