How to Increase Your Creativity and Success by Increasing Novel Thoughts

Add new experiences and excitement to your life to increase your writing success.

Most writers get into a rut at some point in their writing career where it seems like they can’t generate any good ideas. You may have experienced this and found that it lead to a decrease in your motivation to write. I have been going through this for the past several months.

Before this downturn began, I was writing up a storm. I was generating new ideas and interesting ways of putting existing information together to create different ways of understanding it or using it to exemplify new areas it hadn’t been applied to before. I was writing new fiction and poetry on and off Medium and working on projects that I could self publish through Kindle.

Being able to generate new ways of perceiving information and come up with novel ideas for stories and poetry is a wonderful feeling. It makes writing, if not easy, then at least inspirational and satisfying. There is also a sense of enjoyment and achievement that results, leading to an even greater ability to generate interesting work that isn’t just a recap of what’s been written about a million times before.

My stats were growing, I was forming relationships with other writers on and off the platform, and I was creating ideas for new directions for my writing and possible collaboration with other writers.

Then I started experiencing days when things didn’t go so well. I couldn’t seem to generate a good idea to save my life. What was at first only a day here and there grew until it was almost every day. My numbers started dropping and my motivation went along with them. Last month I was down over 70 percent on figures and earnings and I wasn’t sure that this trend wouldn’t persist until everything was at zero.

I made up my mind this wouldn’t continue and set out to determine the best way to counter the problem. I hadn’t really put what I did into conscious thought until reading an article this morning by Raul Ballesteros which pointed out the similarity of our thoughts from one day to the next. He discussed this point from the perspective of replacing negative thoughts with positive ones. While this is an important thing to do for our emotional and physical well being, I thought of how this could influence our writing life and success.

Similarity of Thought and Creativity

Most of our thoughts from one day to the next are the same. Some have estimated this overlap to be as great as 98 percent and as many as 80 percent of them are believed to be negative. These numbers differ somewhat based on the individual, but the importance of the point remains. Our thoughts are habitual. We get used to thinking in certain ways and continue to do so, as long as there is nothing to change them or help trigger new ones.

This can be a problem for writers due to the solitary nature of the discipline. Many of us either write at home or at a nearby coffee shop or other establishment. Plus, there is advice for creating a set routine and schedule, then keeping these things consistent each day in order to remain productive.

The idea of having a set routine, especially one that takes place in a solitary manner, however, is more a matter of discipline, not creativity. It is being regimented enough to make yourself sit and work when there are no social contingencies for doing so.

For some of us, the general ideas are there, but making ourselves do the work to develop them and set them down sometimes is put off with procrastination. Routine and schedules help us combat the more tedious aspects of writing. At the same time while the uniformity can help us complete writing projects when we feel less than enthusiastic about the process of producing a finished work, it doesn’t help with expanding our imagination or to innovate.

Not only is creativity important for us to maintain our motivation, it’s important for attracting readers and turning them into loyal followers. The more creatively a writer presents their ideas, the more likely it is that people will want to take the time to read it, and that they will want to read more written by the same writer.

When we think the same thoughts day in and day out, while initially there may be enough variability to create new and interesting works, eventually there are fewer ideas that haven’t been examined that are interesting enough for us to explore. Without an influx of new ideas, writing can begin to feel like pulling teeth and it can become such a struggle that a writer may dread writing.

For me, this sense of dread combated with procrastination lasted not just for hours or days but for weeks then months. I felt like all I could produce were old, tired ideas. I gave up and relied on those forced ideas that few people seemed to want to read about. But while they say necessity is the mother of invention, it is also the mother of desperation and when my total monthly income dropped below $500 I knew something had to change.

New Experiences Lead to New Thoughts and Creativity

When I started having trouble writing, I knew I was getting depressed. What I hadn’t realized was that being alone to work for so much time was also contributing to my depression and anxiety. I wouldn’t take time to do anything because even though I wasn’t writing much, I felt like unless I did, I shouldn’t go out and enjoy myself. There was also the constant worry about money and what I would do when my savings ran out.

But then my brother came to town and four days later my nephew came to play a gig. So for the better part of a week, I was kept busy with activities that were fun and that I had every excuse to push myself to do.

Instead of letting myself fall back into the blackness that I’d been in before, I made myself start going back to my writing groups and looked for other activities on Meetup. I went to free art gallery openings, symphony concerts, outdoor movies and Shakespeare in the park. I went on motor boat rides, went to touristy attractions like Navy Pier on fireworks nights and even just spent time talking with neighbors I’d never met before.

I kept a notebook with me for ideas. I seemed a bit rusty at first, but then the ideas started to come. By the end of the second week I had filled the notebook and my friends laughed as I grabbed cocktail napkins to scribble subsequent ideas on that day. It was either that or go home!

Implications

The implications are clear. It takes new experiences to create new ideas and to trigger the creativity that lets us constantly find novel ways to combine and present information and to frame what occurs in our lives to share with others. Without new experiences and contact with other people who have different opinions, backgrounds, interests, hobbies and ways of viewing the world we will keep thinking the same thoughts over and over. This will hinder our writing effort and the joy and satisfaction we get from it. If you feel stuck, try putting yourself in new situations and surround yourself with different kinds of people. Then watch the ideas flow!

Thanks to Raul Ballesteros for the inspiration for this piece.

Natalie Frank (Taye Carrol) has had work featured in Haunted Waters Press, Weirdbook Magazine, Siren’s Call Publications, Lycan Valley Press & Zero Fiction among others. Her poetry has been featured in several anthologies including Untimely Frost among others. She is Editor for 1-One-Infinity, The Partnered Pen & One Table, One World and is Editor in Chief for Promposity & Mental Gecko. She is also the Managing Editor for Novellas and Serials at LVP Publications. Her collection of poetry, Disguised I Breathe, In Love I Hold, can be found here on Amazon.

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