Creative Writing 101: Strategies, Exercises and Support

What do you need to know about creativity in your writing? Certainly most writers won't even begin to write their first story without a gentle inner urging of some kind. We read, and we enjoy reading---so we already have ideas about the written works we love, what makes them superior, what gives us a thrill, what kind of writing we may feel is creative, or not. A phonebook can be a very creative endeavor---the people who put them together have a hundred choices to make, each a creative selection for the way the phonebook is laid out, the typestyle and size of the print, what names will be included or not, whether to put the business section ahead of (or behind) the residential section---and then all those glorious and colorful advertisements. An actor like Al Pacino can pick up the same phone book and read through it with the passion and elocution of a great Shakespearian theatrical work---that's very creative.

So we nurture this precious flame. We hold it dear, we coddle and cajole, we muse---we protect our creativity, give it health, and encourage ourselves however we can. Encouragement is something writers need perhaps more than other artists, because your written works, unlike a dance, or a song, or a sculpture---someone has to take the time and effort to read them, they have to be printed or published in some way, and your 'artistic-feedback-loop' is considerably different than when Al Pacino gets his warm-fuzzies from a full-house audience applauding wildly when he performs on-stage. It can take years of work before anyone, anywhere, even acknowledges that you are, in fact, a writer of some kind. But that flame---so bright and urgent in compassionate love---you just can't resist putting words to paper.

How do we nurture creativity? Knocking yourself on the head with a hammer is one way---and that works for a majority of serious writers. But seriously---we're talking about a mental process, something even the Dalai Llama admits he doesn't understand. Great mystics of the past---Saint Francis of Assisi, Mahatma Gandhi, various yogis and gurus or Brahmans---they don't understand it either. It's much more like nurturing your whole person, your entire being, your whole life-view or way of participating in things going on---much more of this, than pulling creativity itself out of a secret place, taking a quick look at it, analyzing it to death---and then expecting it to still function in the way we want. It really can't be known, and in a sense it really doesn't even belong to you. Nurturing creativity, in writing, is nurturing yourself, and your own sacred inner-being.

Creative writing---what is it really? In a word----fun!