Writing – 5 Additional Methods to Stimulate Your Creativity

In a previous article we looked at 5 simple ways to stimulate your writing creativity. This article covers another 5 suggestions to help you feed your creative muse. Try them out-in fact, decide to incorporate all 10 tips into your daily routine and be ready for the creative muse to strike!
1. Daydream. If you were the child in school that was constantly told to “stop daydreaming”, you already know that daydreaming is an important but undervalued art form. If you’re new to this concept, try it out–what would it be like to win the lottery, to rocket into space and orbit the universe, to trek to the Antarctic? What if you invented a new way to detect poisonous gas, or discovered a cure for the common cold? What would you do if you were stranded on a deserted island, or kidnapped, or told you are mankind’s last hope to bring peace to the world? Who knows what stories or articles your daydreams would spark? So go ahead, daydream; it’s time well spent.
2. Brainstorm. Brainstorming, mind-mapping and clustering are all methods of capturing and classifying ideas and thoughts related to a particular subject or theme. They are simple exercises to do, they take only a few minutes of your time and they could spark thoughts and ideas that will add life to your writing. In a future article we’ll discuss these creative processes in more depth; information on them is also available online or in your local bookstore.
3. Befriend interesting people. Who decides if a person is interesting? You do-perhaps it’s the local theatre buff, a school bus driver, an aspiring poet, the mechanic who fixes your car, the town historian, a university student who wears mismatched socks. Interesting people are all around us; seek them out and get to know them. Engage them in conversation; listen to their stories and their thoughts. What does the world look like through their eyes, how would you write their stories?
4. Write in a journal. A journal is for your eyes only; what you write never has to be read by another human being. Write about your days, your dreams, your private thoughts. Write about the argument you had with your boss, your plans to conceive a child, your hopes for the future, your desire to be famous (or not). If privacy is an issue, purchase a journal with a lock and key-in my youth we called these journals ‘diaries’, and they were carefully guarded from prying eyes.
5. Practice. Write. Write every day; like many other skills, it is possible to improve your writing skill by practicing. Join online forums and post your carefully-crafted opinions; find blogs that interest you and add thoughtful comments to the thread; start your own blog; start that novel you’ve been dreaming of–even if it never makes it to an agent or publisher, you will hone your writing skills simply by….writing.
Once you begin your writing journey, you may be surprised at what you will produce, and one day you’ll find yourself ready to share your words with others. We’ll cover more on that topic in a future article, so stay tuned. And best of luck in your writing success!