How do you stay creative

[Teresa Edgerton]

Not really unusual. I change fonts, or switch to italics, pretty often, just to give myself a fresh look at what I've got before I continue on. I know other writers who do it, too. It seems to flip a switch in the brain. Although just changing from one "ordinary" font to another works for me, from TimesNewRoman, to Georgia, or BookAntiqua -- something like that -- not anything exotic.

[chrispenycate]

Anything but Courier, which reminds me of the third carbon from the first mechanical typewriter I tangled with. Well, not Lucinda script, perhaps.

Actually, I'm not certain I actually am creative, at all. Derivative, but very deep derivative; one tiny idea can launch such a spate of consequences, the "well, it must be like this"s, and my characters handle most of the dialogue for me, and as much of the action as I'll let them close to – if given free rein they tend to end up on the wrong continent, doing things inessential to the progress of the story, and I'm forced to write someone else to go and get them back…

I suppose generating characters in the first place is creative, or getting depth into a universe.

[hopewrites]

I agree. Creativity has such a multiplicity of levels. I use different tactics to get to or stay on each different one, so that sometimes I forget I'm being creative at all. But by and large I think it is one of those being things that one must explore for one's self. Like being one's self

[RJM Corbet]

Perhaps everyone is reasonably creative mentally. Obviously there are also hugely creative souls who just burn and explode with ideas all the time.

But perhaps it comes down to the 99% perspiration thing?

As Brian observed in another thread, it's one thing to have a vision, and another to capture it in words that attract other people's interest long enough for them to want to keep reading about it?

To me the writer's duty is not to stop until he/she is satisfied he's captured the whole idea, not just part of it. Mental laziness is the writer's worst enemy. Like: 'Oh, that will do' when you know you've only kind of winged part of the idea?

But being a natural born storyteller is probably a writer's greatest asset?

[James Coote]

8 - I sing in the shower!

Also working on 33 - finish something. It's proving tricky though

[RJM Corbet]

I like 4: get away from the computer ...

[HMart]

"Take Breaks" is the answer for me. My imagination, so I've been told, hasn't left me. I have no trouble coming up with any number of strange scenarios and things to place around them. My problem is, I get bogged down by too much streaming from my thought process.

Breaks allow me to collect the spillover and plug the leak. I suppose that also explains my structured, over-edited, writing style.

[Lilmizflashythang]

I just write almost everyday. Then again, I count outlining as writing. I can't shut off the ideas. That's a good thing though, isn't it?

[Venusian Broon]

- Think a lot
- Ask Questions a lot
- Always write down every scrap of your original ideas, whether it's the colour of your protagonist belt buckle to whole novel outlines. If you perservere you will develop a large reservoir of ideas and original thoughts that you can dip into all the time...
-...but if you have a deadline, i.e. you have to end a short or write a segment of a novel and you have no idea what to do. Then I'd recommend thinking about the problem that is blocking you hard for an hour or two (curtains drawn, eyes shut, damp flannel over forehead, complete silence, sort of thinking) then put the project on hold and go and deliberately do something else.

This gets the subconcious working on the problem and you'll be amazed at how quickly a great idea will come up to solve your blockage/creative problem. (and also usually spark a big burst of energy to get it all down.)

[Stephen Palmer]

Originally Posted by Venusian Broon

This gets the subconcious working on the problem and you'll be amazed at how quickly a great idea will come up to solve your blockage/creative problem. (and also usually spark a big burst of energy to get it all down.)

So true. I usually find it happens during a long walk.

[RJM Corbet]

Originally Posted by Stephen Palmer

So true. I usually find it happens during a long walk.

Yes, same here: up on the moors.

Does anyone else keep a diary? Not a Samuel Peyps day by day diary of events in a book, but an ongoing thought diary in longhand, on loose pages and dated at the top? I like writing with a lovely Parker 'proper ink pen' I got as a gift, and I like black ink. The pages just accumulate and get chucked in a heap, but the stream-of-consciousness writing helps crystalize the germs of ideas into words and sentences?

And of course the soft notebook that lives in your in the back pocket comfortably, like a good wallet, that you're not aware it's there ...

[Venusian Broon]

Originally Posted by RJM Corbet

Does anyone else keep a diary? Not a Samuel Peyps day by day diary of events in a book, but an ongoing thought diary in longhand, on loose pages and dated at the top? I like writing with a lovely Parker 'proper ink pen' I got as a gift, and I like black ink. The pages just accumulate and get chucked in a heap, but the stream-of-consciousness writing helps crystalize the germs of ideas into words and sentences?

I used to - well not really a diary with dated entries- but loads of scraps of paper into a big plastic box. However I'm left-handed and a science graduate and doctorate holder, so I can barely read my own appalling handwriting after a while (I think it has a half-life of about 8 weeks...)

Hence now, every thought gets added to a big word document instead.

I find it rewarding every so often, around a blue moon, to go in and read these scraps, restructure and see what gets sparked off.

[RJM Corbet]

Originally Posted by Venusian Broon

... a science graduate and doctorate holder, so I can barely read my own appalling handwriting after a while (I think it has a half-life of about 8 weeks...)

I thought that only applied to medical doctors? And I always assumed they at least could read their own handwriting

[chrispenycate]

Originally Posted by RJM Corbet

I thought that only applied to medical doctors? And I always assumed they at least could read their own handwriting

No, all scientific and technological colleges train their students in illegibility, illiteracy and incomprehensibility; I just missed some of the lectures. Believe me, the red ink I squander on some graduate theses would the multitudinous seas incarnadine, making my efforts here seem quite understated.

[thatollie]

#30 all the way.

I don't need to be as creative as everyone else because I've documented every idea I've had for the last three years.