Fun Ways to Develop Your Creativity

Do you ever have those days (or even weeks or months!) when your creativity seems to dry up and you’re left staring at a blank page or laptop screen wondering what to write next?

A healthy supply of creativity is something we all need as writers, but it’s also something we need to nurture. The best way to do this is through regular practice; the more you do things that flex your creative muscle, the more you will develop a natural ability to be creative. 

Developing your creativity also has added benefits as it helps to reduce stress levels and improve your problem-solving abilities. Sounds like a win-win to me, so here are five tips to help get your creative juices flowing!

Observation

Paying attention to your surroundings is a great way to improve your creative abilities. Develop the habit of noticing what’s going on around you – use all five senses to observe what you can see, hear, smell, taste and touch. What are people doing? What kind of environment are you in? Is it familiar to you or are you exploring somewhere new?

Get in the habit of writing your observations in a notebook – listen out for snippets of overheard conversations, make notes on people’s mannerisms and body language, or describe an object or location.

Practice and hone your ability to find and write about the small details you notice. An exercise that  Bath Spa University tutor Dr. Alexia Casale gives her Creative Writing MA students is to pay attention to the things they notice in the world that others miss.

Leaning into what’s special and unique about you allows you to define and develop your own preferences, and allows your own voice to shine through in your writing.

Keep a creativity journal

Having a dedicated place to write down your ideas trains your brain to have more ideas! Use your journal to keep track of your creative process, develop your projects and to reflect on what you have accomplished each day or at the end of each week.

You can also add visual elements to your creativity journal – I like to add photos, postcards, sketches and doodles to my journal, along with a record of any writing events I’ve attended with a few notes about the experience.

Our creativity needs to be nurtured, so having a dedicated journal creates a space for this in our busy lives.

Try new things

This could be something simple like checking out a new recipe, or a longer term project like taking art classes or learning a new language.

We’re often taught to fear failure, but developing our creativity means getting comfortable with being uncomfortable (or even incompetent) as we try new things. Focus on the process rather than the outcome: what are you learning? How do these new skills add to your current skills? What did you enjoy the most about this new activity? What did you dislike?

Creativity is about taking risks and exploring the unknown, which in turn builds your skills and develops your self-confidence. Allow yourself to be bad at something when you start out, or even to discover talents you didn’t know you possessed. 

Bring creativity into your environment

Creativity doesn’t always have to be something we produce from within ourselves, it can also be how we organise and nurture our environment.

Adding a vase of fresh flowers to your desk, lighting a scented candle while you work, listening to uplifting music or treating yourself to a new notebook are simple ways to inspire your imagination and reignite your creative spark.

Use a mind map for your creative projects

This can be a great way to get your ideas out of your head and spark new associations.

Simply write down the central topic or theme in the centre of a sheet of paper, then link your related ideas around the central word to create a visual map of how they’re are connected. 

Using different coloured pens for different elements can help you identify related ideas and develop them further.

The Five Steps of A Creative Process

The creative process is different for everyone yet it generally follows the same basic five steps. Each step will be a little different depending on you as an individual and the creative medium you’re working with.

It’s not a linear process and it might take time to work through each of the different steps before you’re ready to move onto the next one. 

1. Preparation

This initial stage is a kind of pre-writing, where you gather your information and inspiration from other sources and start to become immersed with the material.

This could be formal research, either online or at a specialist archive or library, or it might be more informal, for example browsing new trends on Pinterest or checking out what’s recently been published in your industry or writing genre. 

2. Incubation

You need patience for this step, but it’s where the magic happens and your creative project starts to take form.

Once you’ve absorbed the information from step one, spend some time examining your material. Do you have all the information you need, or are there gaps that need further research? How do the different concepts and ideas fit together?

Allow your thoughts and ideas to marinate in your mind. This can be done consciously while you are brainstorming and making notes, or subconsciously – sometimes it helps to step away and do something completely unrelated so that you feel energised and refreshed when you return to your work. 

3. Illumination

Think of this as the breakthrough moment, the “Aha!”, the lightbulb moment when the perfect idea hits you and your ideas fall into place.

It often happens unexpectedly, maybe when you’re doing an unrelated activity or thinking about something completely different.

Make sure to grab your notebook or sketchbook and jot your thoughts and ideas down quickly before they get lost!

4. Evaluation

This is the reasoning stage. It’s the hard part, where you look at all your ideas and narrow them down to identify the ones that will work and the ones that won’t.

For each idea ask yourself:

• Is this idea worth pursuing?

• Does this idea work with the theme of the overall project? 

• Are there any tweaks or changes I could make?

• Do I need to develop this idea further, or maybe save it for a different project?

5. Implementation

Now it’s time to get down to work where your ideas, skills, knowledge, experiences and the things you’ve done during the previous steps all come together to create the final draft.

The outcome will be a finished piece that you can celebrate and feel proud of, and maybe even get paid for! 

Conclusion

Creativity doesn’t have a definitive process, yet it does have general steps in each stage of the process. Use the five step process in your work to help you solve problems, come up with new ideas and be more creative in your writing life.

And most of all, remember to have fun and enjoy yourself.