Stimulating creativity

Stimulating creativity

1. Develop a writing habit

   • Make time
   • remove obstacles
   • Don't procrastinate
   • self - understanding

2. Keep a notebook

   • File of interesting phrases / images
     • life experiences
       • thoughts & feelings
         • memories
         • pen portraits
   • daily events
     • rants / raves
       • joys & gripes
     • ideas for poems
     • single words
     • clippings from papers / magazines
     • responses to books / poems
     • notes from research
   • story / poem ideas & drafts
   • dumping ground

3. Postpone perfection

   • Rough drafts
     • write for yourself not for others
       • intrinsic rewards
     • accidental discoveries
   • rapid impulsive writing
   • atmosphere and detail, not correct grammar, punctuation

4. Freewriting

   • Let words tumble out
     • write anything
   • pick out any interesting phrases
     • these are stock for future
   • on a subject 4-5 minutes

5. Clustering

   • Visual map
     • word or phrase
   • develop interesting points further
     • Focused freewrites
       • explore big themes
         • personal and specific
   • Use when you get stuck

6. Observations of theenvironment

   • anything interesting!
     • snatches of conversation
     • descriptions of people
     • sudden insights and ideas
   • Notebook - record while they are 'hot'

7. descriptive tools

   • comparisons - driving rain as 'thorns'
   • similes - something is 'like' something else - 'thorns like glass'
   • metaphors - something is said to actually 'be' something else - 'his violence is a cooled volcano'
   • contradictions