How to Write Creatively Sarah Fenter

How to Write Creatively Sarah Fenter Cochise College Student

“The creative process ... It demands love, time, and devotion, and therefore, creators are passionate toward their creative work” (St-Louis and Vallerand). The first step to writing creatively is to just write. Whenever I write, whether it be formal, technical, creative, etc., I just start writing; my good friend Joshua Novinger agrees, Think of a line that just sounds cool, or beautiful, or resonates with you and write from there. Don’t be afraid to do things that scare you: dialogue, a joke, planning, being spontaneous, try new ideas and techniques. You’ll grow. Not knowing where you are going, and trying new things is all part of the growth process; experimenting is important because it lets you hone a technique. A friendly fellow writer I know has a unique technique he uses when he generates his artistic pieces:

A lot of times I utilize creative persona writing as an outlet/ therapy for many past experiences whether successes or set backs. The more introspect I become…the more I believe my audience is able to feel my vulnerability or my general mood or message. Whether it is my story or me telling someone’s story and capturing the essence…I believe it allows me to commu nicate more effective to talk in first person versus third person and feels intimate…whereas third person can be effective to me it comes across as someone saying,“I heard” (Mazone).

My technique includes a lot of free-writing and happens to be quite chaotic; sometimes I come up with the middle part of a piece first, or I come up with a sentence I really want to use, or I copy and modify a realistic dream I had, but I start with free-writing like an athlete stretches before a run. This free-writing stage can last a while, and depending on what I’m writing, I’ll use all of it, some of it, or none of it. A friend of mine, Angie Garner provides a good insight to the unpredictable nature of creative writing, stating:

As far as writing is concerned, I’d say there’s no one way to stumble upon an idea. It’s often that my stories and poems are born of circumstances I caught at a glance: the way light falls through the leaves and lights up a single eye on someone’s face, a pair of dogs meeting through a fence, a startling and complex bit of impossible graffiti. A writer observes the mundane and grants it meaning.

Numerous famous writers have said that their piece was inspired by something, a muse must come before they can write, a dream must be had before pen is set to paper, and as one of my favorite writers said: “Most writers - poets in especial - prefer having it understood that they compose by a species of fine phrenzy - an ecstatic intuition - and would positively shudder at letting the public take a peep behind the scenes …” (Poe). However, as much as I love Edgar Allen Poe, I must disagree with him; waiting around for inspiration is very inefficient and an unreliable way to be a creative writer. You do not have to wait for inspiration to write creatively, having a schedule for working on creative pieces brings inspiration for those pieces (albeit slowly sometimes). Scheduling time for practicing creative writing will always improve your creative writing because it allows the brain some dedicated time to develop and improve the thought processes required to write creatively. Taking breaks from bouts of creative writing is also important because sometimes the brain needs a break from using those thought processes so that they do not become worn out. To improve your creative writing, at any level, it is best to practice. Practice what you know, what you don’t know, or what you want to try out, because practice is how anyone gets better at anything. The creator of the famous and beloved Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling, shares some advice on reserving time for writing practice:

Be ruthless about protecting writing days, i.e., do not cave in to endless requests to have “essential” and “long overdue” meet ings on those days…Some people do not seem to grasp that I still have to sit down in peace and write books, apparently believing that they pop up like mushrooms without connivance. I must therefore guard time allotted to writing as a Hungarian Horntail guards its first born egg (Ahlin).

As a creative writer to prospective creative writers: practice is what will make you a creative writer. Every time you write creatively, a poem, a short story, a memoir, even a dream narrative, you exercise your creative ability like a body builder exercises his muscles at the gym. A creative writing class is like a gym for your writing, and the instructor of that class is like your personal trainer, training you to write as well as you can. Revision is similar in its ability to improve your creative writing because it refreshes your piece(s). Practice may be like exercise, but the editing process of revision is like refining. It takes several passes through a polishing machine to make a stone shine like a star; likewise, if you want your piece to be of a higher quality you should pass it through fresh eyes

several times. Whether it is your eyes or the eyes of another, a revision will improve your piece; as Stephen King says, “To write is human, to edit is divine.” The important things to remember when revising are:

1) the more experienced the writer is who looks over or revises the piece, the more productive the revision will be,

2) multiple smaller examinations during the revision improves the quality of the revision, and lastly,

3) only revise what you want or agree with; it is your piece after all; when you make it perfect to you, it is certain to appear perfect to others; such as your peers.

Peers are an amazing tool. Having a peer read or review your work is equivalent to having a second brain to write with. I don’t believe that more than one brain is required to write anything, but as the saying goes - two heads are better than one. Having a perspective outside of your own can show you things that you cannot show yourself. Like with revisions, the more experienced the writer is who analyzes your piece, the more you will get out of the analysis. A peer review for your piece is alike to a dress rehearsal for a play; you get to see how your piece does before you just set it loose on your readers. Practice, revision, and peer reviews are what makes a creative writer proficient at his or her craft.

Good luck with all of your creative pursuits.

Works Cited

Ahlin, Charlotte. “15 J.K. Rowling Quotes That Will Inspire You To Get Writing,” Bustle, 12/22/2016, www.bustle.com/articles/200871-15jk-rowling-quotes-that-will-inspire-you-to-get-writing.

Garner, Angie. Personal Interview. 22 November 2018.

Harper, Prof. Graeme. On Creative Writing, Channel View Publications, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central, ebookcentral-proquest-com.coch ise.idm.oclc.org/lib/cochise-ebooks/detail.action?docID=543903.

King, Stephen. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. Scribner, Stephen King, 2000. biblioteka.teatr-obraz.ru/files/file/English_cinema/Stephen_ King_On_Writing.pdf

Mazone, Don. Personal Interview. 20 November 2018.

Novinger, Joshua. Personal Interview. 21 November 2018.

Poe, Edgar Allen. The Raven and The Philosophy of Composition. The Gutenberg Project. 10/14/2017, www.gutenberg.org/ files/55749/55749-h/55749-h.htm.

St. Louis, Ariane and Robert Vallerand. “A Successful Creative Process: The Role of Passion and Emotions.” 2015, semanticscholar.org