Have you ever wondered how to develop your creativity? Wouldn’t it be nice if you could turn it on like a water faucet? The ideas would just flow, freely and powerfully.
While that would be fantastic, it’s not realistic. True creativity is an elusive thing. However, we have more control over developing and enhancing our creativity than we may think.
{Shout out to cinematographer Ethan Hill for this week’s topic. Thanks for the great suggestion, Ethan!
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You can’t wait for inspiration, you have to go after it with a club.
Jack London
Creativity is like a muscle. We can make it bigger and stronger with consistent exercise just like our physical muscles. And while we’ll never be able to control when we are hit with those amazing bolts of inspiration, keeping our muscles strong will help those moments come more easily and more frequently.
Here are four ways you can develop your creativity, starting today:
1. Develop Your Creativity…by Practicing
This is the hardest one. It’s not fun, especially when we’re not feeling it. But just like doing a bunch of pushups or situps to strengthen ourselves, a lot of times getting to creativity is a dull and unexciting process.
It’s staring at a blank page and forcing ourselves to type something instead of giving up and moving on to more interesting activities. It’s doing the work—the inglorious, mundane work of forcing our brains to concentrate on the skill we’re trying to cultivate instead of taking the easy way out and choosing tasks that don’t require as much brainpower (um, guilty).
It’s doing this consistently, consistently, consistently, even if we feel like our content is crap (hello, friends! I feel ya!). While it may be crap initially, creating it is using that muscle, making it stronger, so that our inspirations will come more easily and more often—it’s a vital step we need to take to develop our creativity.
Practical practice tip: start a daily writing habit. Recently, I decided to do this. I set aside the first hour of my workday just for writing. Whether it’s working on articles for my own blog, creating content for guest posts, or trying something new (see point #3!), it’s a habit I’ve started that will get me producing content consistently, which is one of the building blocks of success for writers! (I mean, if you’re not writing, you can’t really become a published writer…)
2. Develop Your Creativity…by Going Somewhere
Be somewhere different. It doesn’t have to be somewhere exotic, although seeing as much of the world as possible is encouraged for quality of life, quantity of adventure, and creative inspiration, as well as—you guessed it—developing your creativity!
The point is don’t stay put. Don’t sit in the same chair day in and day out, staring at the same wall, and expect your brain to burst with new ideas.
While traveling is not always an option, we can get creative about changing up our location. Take a day and work from a different location or go on an adventure. It could be as simple as going to a park to write, scoping out a library in another town, or working from a coffee shop you’ve never been to. (Note: I will never not recommend coffee as a writing aid.) Or it could be as adventurous as taking a road trip to a state you haven’t visited, exploring the British Museum in London, or going on an African safari. Whatever you can do to get out and see a different piece of the world, go do it!
Our creativity has to come from somewhere, from something. Feed it new information!
3. …by Trying Something New
Writers who are serious about their work should always be collecting new experiences to add to their repertoire of writing material (we’re supposed to write what we know, which doesn’t have to be boring if we know what we’re about!). This could be anything from skydiving to horseback riding to hot-air balloon adventuring. (<— By the way, this is an absolute must on my bucket list—actually it’s the only thing on my bucket list because I don’t keep one, but I really want to ride in a hot-air balloon someday!)
But it’s not just experiences. Try something new in your craft. Normally write blog posts? Try your hand at poetry. You write screenplays? Try a nonfiction piece on screenwriting.
Do something outside your normal “go-to” project. S t r e t c h that muscle!
It might be ugly at first because it’s new, but do it anyway. I’ve tried poetry several times and found that I really enjoy it. Not ready to share it with the world yet (and that may never happen;)), but it’s a fun exercise, and I’ve created content I feel good about.
4. …by Asking Questions
Part of collecting information is being curious and asking questions. Why questions are the best:
- Why did the chicken cross the road?
- Why are school buses yellow?
- Why do people love scaring themselves so much?
- Why do we laugh when we’re uncomfortable?
- Why do mice make us nervous?
- Why do some people hate hugs?
- Why do we keep our deepest feelings to ourselves?
But don’t just ask them. Answer them. That is a vital piece of the creative process—finding new and different answers to unusual questions. To truly develop your creativity, be intentional and figure out the answers to your own questions. Sometimes it takes research, but with the right questions, it more often takes introspection, self-reflection, and observation of the world around us and how it works. And that, my friends, fosters creativity.
Also, don’t use Google. While Google can answer all of your questions (literally all of them), where is the creativity you were looking for? Coming up with your own answers, solving your own dilemmas—that’s what creativity is. So practice it!
What methods have you found that help develop your creativity? Share in the comments! I love collecting new ideas! 🙂
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