Creative Writing For Dummies: Anything Goes

There isn't anything I can teach you about being creative, that comes from inside of you, but there is a tip I can give to help with your writing.

This is different from what I usually write about, this is something deeper, more meaningful to me. That's what makes writing what it is; meaning. Sometimes you just have to let what is burning inside of you out.

How To Help Your Creativity Flow: Don't Quit

As I've mentioned before, being creative is like turning on an old tap, sometimes it comes out rusted, with the occasional burst of clarity, but the longer you run that tap, the longer you try to pump clear water out, the more pure it is. That's a lame analogy, I know, but I think it's a good one. I heard Ed Sheeran say something like that in an interview once, and it really stuck with me.

Keep at it, even when it feels useless, thoughtless, keep pressing on. I can't tell you how many times I've dropped my pen in frusteration and let it sit there for months, before picking it up again and having to get reacquainted with characters and writing style.

Batter your stubborn head against those walls until they break.

Sometimes, when you write, it's just for fun, I do that all of the time, writing novels and short stories. They're good, they're entertaining, they're just what you need when you need it. But the deep stuff, the really good stuff, comes from deep in you.

Find A Moment To Take A Step Back

Spend some time alone, walking in the woods, sitting in the middle of a crowded mall or café watching people wash around you. Doing so makes you feel as if you are watching life happen through a pane of glass. You feel separated from the world, but then you dive deeper, finding moments of clarity where you never felt so alive. Even if that living is sadness or pain, but hopefully happiness, take that and just let it fuel your fingers.

Here is a moment like that for me. I started writing this piece when I first stated living in Albany. I was driving to visit my brother at home after a long day of work.

I was exhausted, so I pulled over to take a nap, when I woke up in a parking lot off of I-90, I just started writing in my car. I couldn't finish the piece, I didn't know how, so I just let it be.

I had always struggled with poetry, I used to hate it. My forte was short paragraphs of pretty words and dark thoughts, but this time I had tried to write a poem, and as usual, had failed.

So the next day, when I was driving with my brother to the Adirondacks, I battered my head against that wall until I broke through.

Forcing him to take control of the pilots chair after I had pulled over, I let the words flow and I finished the poem.

This was one of my favorite moments where I found never giving up adds meaning to your work

I write about silence a lot, as you can see from this previous blog, but the poem below captures my fascination with it.

Silence is Violent

Staying alone in this house full of memories,

That’s usually filled by the laughter of family,

This empty home, it drains my soul,

The sullen winter snow is my enemy.

My own mind can’t even handle me,

Forest walks alone are my only therapy,

Even the silence of the woods gets the best of me,

My car radio went and died on me,

Keeping Mad Max quiet, just the wind to sing to me,

Tyler says silence is violent and I can’t help but believe that of me.

Here I am twenty-one and not a pilot,

Lost in the sound of silence,

Walking bleeding over a bridge of troubled water

Wondering why I ever bothered,

Trapped in this quiet,

The silence violent,

Mad Hatter and Alice lost in the riot,

While my head screams in response to Harley Quin in confinement.

They say there’s light in the darkness, but I never bought it,

They’ve never been inside my head.

My two hands grip the steering wheel,

Lost in my thoughts that fight for real, I’m overwhelmed by the turbulence of what I feel.

This silence has to go, and so I roll down my window,

But in the wind my mind still sins, and my skin is the only thing calmed.

And so I ponder in silence, trapped in this wishing well that I’m in,

Unable to save myself from who I am, wash these worries from pen and hand.

We all must deal with our demons inside, beat the tumultuousness inside our minds,

But these hounds bark too loud to hear, and my heart is too cold to feel,

So I let the quiet help me heal, And I drive alone on these four wheels.

Lost in time and on my own, when my own words can’t break the cold,

The noise is bitter, truth be told,

And sound is deafening, don’t you know.