Writing | Creativity
How To Boost Your Creativity
Tried and tested ways to explore, expand, and develop your creative self
I don’t know about you, but I am constantly looking for new ways to be creative, particularly in my writing.
I have been ‘a writer’ for most of my life. Sometimes intentionally creative, like writing poetry and flash fiction. Other times, being unintentionally creative, such as carefully crafting student reports in my role as a teacher.
Since I started writing poetry almost daily four years ago, I’ve explored different ways to express my thoughts and ideas, including collaboration with other creatives.
By trying new things and finding new ways of thinking and writing, my creativity grows!
Here is what has worked for me:
Find Guiding Lights of Creativity
By this, I mean find experienced creatives who understand how the creative process works — the ups and downs, how to unlock the creativity within yourself — and ask questions, give their advice a go.
One of the best books I have ever read on unlocking and developing creativity is The Artist’s Way by Julie Cameron. My mum gave it to me in 1999, it was first published in 1994, and still going strong! Many creatives have credited Cameron for helping them to unlock their inner creative including Elizabeth Gilbert author of Eat, Pray, Love. It’s not just a book, but a course with weekly readings, activities and follow-up questions that goes for twelve weeks.
Sign up for something like Trisha Traughber’s Creative Journaling. She sends you emails with writing exercises to help develop your creativity. It was Trisha who encouraged me to try blackout poetry in my ‘other’ language, Swedish! She has a great publication called Vagabond Voices. Check it out and be inspired!
Try something like Writing Maps. These are little writing maps developed by writer and creative, Shaun Levin. You can carry them in your bag, in your journal, take them wherever you go, and use them to help your creativity. If you sign up for their newsletter he even sends you writing cards for free!
Challenges, prompts, pictures: There are so many different writing prompts and challenges around. Many publications provide creative stimulus in the form of a word, a group of words, characters, images, topics. So many juicy things to choose from to get your creativity flowing!
Check out: - The Bad Influence (Idea Stream is amazing!) - Weeds & Wildflowers - The House of Haiku - Blue Insights - I Challenge You - Spiritual Tree - Vagabond Voices - On Instagram — check out this compilation of creative prompts by @whiskeyandempathy
There are lots more all over this wonderful interconnected world — so if your creativity is flagging, perhaps a word or suggestion might push you in the right direction! Commit to a poem a day, a story a week using a prompt word or phrase.
Try New Forms
Challenging yourself as a writer can further unlock your creative potential. By trying different and new forms of poetry, you can learn about structure, word choice, expand your vocabulary, and have fun! New poetic forms, such as the tritriplicata, provide structure, challenge and new ways of expressing yourself. Developed by Arjan Tupan, he has channeled his creativity into not only developing this form of poetry but creating a publication, The Triple Effect, as well as a great podcast (he has even featured me!).
If you have never tried a haiku, give it a go! Sonnets, senryu, cinquain, blackout, limerick — depending on your mood and your subject matter, new forms can lead to greater creativity, honing your craft.
You could even try poetic sculpture, something I came up with combining my love of form, shape and words. It was an extension of the blackout poetry I had been trying. I used sunlight to great effect in the photos of the poetry sculptures I made — using contrast, shadow, line, and form to create something ‘extra’ in my cut-out style poetry.
By exploring all my senses, taking poetry out of the two-dimensional has resulted in awakening my creativity!
By trying new things and finding new ways of thinking and writing, my creativity grows.
Collaboration
Working with other creatives is inspiring! Sharing ideas, using each other as a springboard for new ideas, helps to grow your creativity.
And where to find these creatives? They’re all around you!
Same photo, different response: fellow Instagram poet, Liz Hawkmoon, and I found each other in the comments of someone’s Instagram post. We decided to try collaboration using the same image but our own response to it. The result was a series of poems we posted and shared. It was a fun creative experiment with someone I have never met in real life.
Maybe there’s someone you follow who you think might collaborate with you — you can only ask! The worst that can happen is they say no and you find someone else.
A chance meeting: For the past two years I’ve been collaborating with a woman I met on the ferry ride home. We started chatting and shared a bit of ourselves with each other — what we liked musically and our thoughts on life. Later, she checked out my poetry and asked if I’d like to collaborate on some songs — she writing the music and me the lyrics.
Our first song has been recorded by her with another five or so in the pipeline.
I have to point out that she currently lives in Spain and I live in Finland so we do all of this via technology!
Distance when collaborating is not a roadblock!
His music, my lyrics: my partner plays guitar and has performed locally with different musos here where we live. He has written his own songs in his mother tongue and when we got together we wrote a song together — my lyrics, his music. He performed it with a friend at a charity gig — so far the only time it’s been played outside our lounge room! But the process was fun and helped develop my lyric writing skills. By working together with someone who had experience writing music and lyrics it helped me think about rhythm, how lyrics fit to music, what feelings you want to get across and how it works practically once you start adding the music layer to the lyrics (and vice versa!).
Is there someone you know who is musical? Are you musical yourself? Could you try lyric writing? Maybe even start with music you like and write your own lyrics (as a starting point).
Friends for ages: one of my dear school friends, Rebecca Jones, is a talented artist. Bec and I have known each other for a really long time but have only just started collaborating recently after some video calls to each other. She lives in Melbourne, I live in Finland but the distance doesn’t stop the creative flow! She recently started working on a sculpture and she wanted to use some of my poetry in it — of course, I agreed! The results are pretty awesome.
During this process, we’ve had some great discussions about memory, time, and life. I hope I get to see the sculpture/installation some time ‘in the flesh’ but with current travel restrictions, it might be a while. Hopefully, we can collaborate some more! So think about who you know in your circle — who are the creatives you could collaborate with? Then ask them!
So if whether you’re ready to give your creativity a boost or to resurrect your flagging creative soul, there are all sorts of ways you can give yourself a creative boost…and let your creative soul fly!
~thanks for reading~
Lisa is a creative soul who flew to Finland from Australia to live a few years ago. Since landing, she has developed her creative self, working with others, challenging herself, trying new things, and growing her creativity. If you’d like to keep in touch, check out Northern Notes.
