Here to Create

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Nov 15

Stuck in a Creative Rut? Read These Inspirational Articles and Break Free

by CSS

I’ve been so obsessed with writing recently that I’m completely neglecting my other creative interests. While I’m waiting for my Dragon NaturallySpeaking software to arrive so I can continue working on my novel for National Novel Writing Month, I’m going to try to reconnect with some of my other creative interests. To get inspired, I read a few articles about creativity. See if any of these get your creative juices flowing.

  • 7 Habits of Highly Innovative People
    “Have you ever looked at super creative or innovative people, and felt they are special beings blessed with gifts? Have you felt that you are not as fortunate? I used to feel this way. I have since learned that creativity is more about psychology than intellect, and there are no secrets to being creative.”
  • Do You Recognize These 10 Mental Blocks to Creative Thinking?
    “So, rather than looking for ways to inspire creativity, you should just realize the truth. You’re already capable of creative thinking at all times, but you have to strip away the imaginary mental blocks (or boxes) that you’ve picked up along the way to wherever you are today.”
  • How to be Creative
    “Everyone is born creative; everyone is given a box of crayons in kindergarten.Then when you hit puberty they take the crayons away and replace them with books on algebra etc. Being suddenly hit years later with the creative bug is just a wee voice telling you, ‘I’d like my crayons back, please.’”
  • 110+ Resources For Creative Minds.
    “Tips, tutorials, exercises and inspiration from the fields of visual art, writing, photography, blogging, design and invention. Next time you’re stuck for ideas or inspiration I hope you’ll find something here to get your right brain firing.”
  • Creative Thinking Hacks
    “The word creativity is frequently inflated by association, frequently appearing with overused, hype-laden words such as genius, brilliance, revolution and innovation. Hype mongers and creative intimidators throw those labels around like candy, scaring most people out of their own natural creative instincts.”
  • Are you interested in reading about creativity?
    “I find people’s descriptions of their own creative processes more useful than books that suggest creativity exercises, so that’s the kind of book that dominates on my list.”
  • 20 Sure-Fire Ways to Come Up With Great Ideas
    “Always be on the lookout for great new ideas, and they will come to you.”
  • How to Become a Creative Genius
    “When we measure the creativity of young children, virtually all of them will record as being ‘highly creative’. However, only a small percentage of adults register as being ‘highly creative’. What happened?”
  • And finally, 9 Tips to be More Creative from Here to Create
    “Many people think creativity is about having artistic skills. They say, “I can’t write, I can’t paint, and every time I take a photo I put my finger over the lens. I’m just not creative.” I say, “You can be a creative person. You are a creative person already, you just don’t know it.” Creativity is about using your imagination in every endeavor. It’s not just for artists.”

“Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.” Scott Adams

Creativity Inspiration

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Nov 6

What I Learned From Signing Up For NaNoWriMo

by CSS

This post is an entry in the What I Learned From . . . group writing project at Middle Zone Musings.

Forgive me for babbling on and on about the benefits of National Novel Writing Month, but when I saw this group writing project announced on Middle Zone Musings, the first thing I thought of was how much I’ve learned already from NaNo just from signing up. Even though I’m only about a fifth of the way through the 50,000 words I need to write in November, I’ve learned:

I can be amazingly productive when I’m sufficiently motivated. I talked a little last week about all the preparations I did before NaNo. Basically, I surprised myself by doing more housework in a day than I’d done in weeks, including tackling a cleaning project I’d been putting off for months. I also worked ahead on homework for what may be the first time in my life. Most importantly, I did all this without the usual 1:1 correspondence of work to procrastination. Amazing. I should decide to write a novel every time the apartment gets dirty.

I can focus. This shouldn’t be an earthshattering revelation, but I was starting to wonder. I’ve noticed lately that when I’m reading a slow-loading forum (like the NaNo forums), I start a thread loading, then I switch to Google Reader to skim half a blog post, then I switch back to the NaNo thread, and so on. Some days, my attention is fragmented like this for hours.

So I was glad to find out that I can still focus. When I get into a good flow with my novel, I can write for half an hour without looking up. And in that time, I can crank out 1,000 words. This is a big deal for me. Many of my former novel attempts have ended around 4,000 words, and that pitiful amount took long, exhausting days. I look at my word count for NaNo and I’m just astounded that I’ve produced so much in such a short amount of time.

I like to write. This shouldn’t be news either. But because I was always giving up on other writing projects, I was starting to doubt that I actually liked to write. I knew I liked to create stories (i.e. scribbling notes about characters and their troubles), but when it came to writing it out word by agonizing word, I always stammered and quit. The forced pace of NaNoWriMo has let me finally give myself permission to fail horribly. And that has freed me to enjoy writing again, for its own sake.

I’m looking forward to the other lessons that NaNoWriMo will teach me about myself and my writing. I’m sure there will be many. I still have 40,000 words and 24 days to go.

Inspiration NaNoWriMo

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