Create Your Own Language!

I had an email from someone recently saying they sometimes didn't write because they were scared that they didn't always use the correct spelling and grammar.

It reminded me of times in the past when I've got bored of writing poems that are too similar and have experimented with my own language, and written purely phonetically, on how the words sound rather than what they mean.

It was very liberating and since then I've often dropped the odd "made up" word into poems and other creative writing, just because it felt the best fit at the time.

What are your experiences of inventing your own language, or your own unique way of creating?

Share your comments by clicking the link below:

Be More Creative: The Pursuit Of Progression Not Perfection

As a Creativity Coach, time and time again I hear of creative people who create wonderful, stimulating, interesting works and pieces of art, but are so personally disappointed by the results, they virtually give up creating afterwards.

It becomes, in their eyes, their flawed legacy, their ugly and imperfect offering to the world that can never be repeated.

However well their creative project was received by the outside world, the creator still feels they could’ve done better, could’ve given more, and so they feel that they've failed.

“If only that penultimate line had more emotional resonance”, says the poet.

“If only I’d have used a slighter darker shade of red”, bemoans the painter.

“If only I’d increased the shutter speed after the first few shots”, complains the photographer.

Travelling on the “If only” train is a one way ticket to disappointment, frustration and ultimately becoming less brave, experimental and creative.

Constantly trying to be perfect nearly always ends in a feeling of abject failure.

So what if we change our outlook and expectation a little?

What if instead of an obsessive pursuit of perfection – a perfection we usually can’t even describe or imagine anyway - we instead pursue progression?

What this means is that with each new project, with each fresh piece of creative work we produce, our aim is to progress our creativity.

So instead of expecting our next novel to be the most incredible piece of writing we (and anyone else in the history of human literature!) can possibly produce, we just want it to be better than the last.

We want some feeling of accomplishment. A feeling that we’ve moved on a little, developed as an artist, that we’re wiser in our choices, deeper in our knowledge and experience, more effective in the creative expression of ourselves.

This doesn’t mean we’re selling ourselves short, underachieving or letting ourselves down.

It means we realise that creativity is a way of life and a ongoing journey. We realise that however talented we are, we can’t go from nowhere to creating flawless masterpieces in a few weeks.

Creative evolution is a lifetime’s work. And it’s something to be enjoyed and experienced as richly, passionately and fully as possible.

So, which road are you going to choose?

The road of the pursuit of perfection, where you’ll probably soon end up in the ditch with a blown engine after pushing yourself too hard, too fast?

Or the road of the pursuit of progression, steadily travelling onwards and upwards, taking care of yourself along the way and being fully open to enjoying everything around you?

The pursuit of progression can be summed in a simple mantra.

“I will offer the best creative expression of myself I can at this time.”

Once you give yourself that permission, to give the best you can right now, instead of feeling restricted because you’re constantly in fear of failing to reach absolute perfection, you’re free to reach much further.

Then learn from each experience, take that forward to the next and reach again, this time further still.

:: Share Your Experience ::

What are your experiences of pursuing perfection, and how this has actually stopped, or severely limited your creativity?

And what ways have you learnt to overcome this pursuit of perfection?

Share your comments and experiences by just clicking on the comments link below.

Scribbling Outside The Lines: 7 Reasons Why It's Good To Make A Mess...

When’s the last time you really made a mess?

Now I don’t mean spilling a cup of coffee in your lap, or knocking over a pot of paint while decorating. We’re talking here about making a mess in your creative work, discarding and flowing over the usual confines and boundaries you set for yourself.

Reaching out, cutting loose, scribbling in the margin, colouring outside the lines, creating freely and without inhibition or restriction, just for the joy and pleasure of creating.

If you’re like most of us, the last time you made a mess was probably quite some time ago. Maybe you don’t even remember when.

We so easily get into a set pattern of creating – a pattern that yes can often help us create very prolifically – that we forget to try anything new.

A large part of being creative is about innovating and reinventing.

We can find a winning formula for a novel or a song, then turn out more of the same time and time again, each one a slightly different variation on a trusted and safe template.

And by doing this of course we can be prolific and very creative in terms of our volume of output, and at the same time do a great impression of a photocopier.

But how much are we challenging ourselves with each new work?

How creative are we really being?

Sometimes maybe we don’t even get to that stage of producing a high volume of very similar work.

Maybe our fear of making a mess means we sit surrounded by wonderful new materials, paints, film, canvases and other creative equipment, terrified of starting something new in case we make a mess and “waste” those shiny new materials?

Whatever the background story to why you don’t make a mess more often is, cutting loose and just creating is actually very healthy for our creativity.

Here are 7 compelling reasons why:

1. It takes you into new territories. You'll discover things about your creativity you never would have otherwise. Maybe after years of writing novels, you find through experimentation you actually love writing short poems.

2. It reduces perfectionism. Trying to make everything you create absolutely perfect is one of the most dangerous creativity killers. Making a mess and just practicing NOT being perfect can be very liberating and help increase your creativity overall.

3. It's good for your health. Being more carefree and not stressing out about every tiny detail of every creative project is so much better for you! Imagine if you had no emotional attachment to the outcome of your next creative project. What would that be like?

4. It allows you to practice giving yourself permission. Only you can ultimately give yourself permission to do anything, including creating. And it's often this fear, this resistance, that holds us back after everything else is in place and everyone else has said "Yes! Go for it! Create what you love to create!"

5. It's liberating. If we create in the same boundaries all the time, it becomes mundane and too routine. It's good to break free from the creative straightjacket we bind ourselves in and run in the long grass, rather than sitting sedately on a perfectly manicured lawn.

6. It connects you to something deeper. Sometimes creating the best we can is about listening to, feeling, and channelling something deeper, higher, wider and bigger than ourselves. Unless we're prepared to get messy and venture into those areas, we're not going to find that intensity and reward that only truly deep creating can bring.

7. It's brilliant fun! Being a bit wild and free with your creativity - whether it's writing, painting, signing or anything else - allows you to have fun, forget about the outcome or "end product" and just ENJOY the creative process, something we often don't realise we've actually forgotten how to do.

Which of these reasons encourage you most to be more wild and messy with YOUR creativity?

Pick a new project today, however small, and just throw yourself into creating as messily as you can. You could amaze yourself at the effect it has on your creativity.

:: Share Your Experience ::

How messy do you get with your creative projects? What are some of the things that hold you back?

Share your comments and experiences by just clicking on the comments link below.

Creativity: The Questions You're Most Afraid To Ask

What are the questions you're most afraid to ask about your creativity?

I've found time and time again that the questions my clients are struggling with AREN'T about huge projects and complex issues such as -

"How can I develop the interpersonal relationships of the 13 characters in my new novel?"

"How can I design and code my own website in the next 3 months?"

or

"How do I put on an exhibition of 25 of my paintings in a local gallery?"

The questions most important and relevant to the majority of us - the issues that reappear time and time again and burn inside us desperately - are far more simple, more fundamental, more personal, more NOW.

Questions like:

"How do I know when I'm getting stuck creatively?"

"How can I write my first article?"

"My confidence in creating anything is so low. How can I start to build it up again?"

"How do I find the courage to paint again after 3 years without picking up a brush?"

"How can I find more a little more time each week to create the things I love creating?"

"I have some ideas for a short story but how on earth do I start writing it?"

"How do I finally finish a creative project without giving up half way through?"

Maybe you've found yourself asking similar questions?

That's what I'd like to know.

What are the questions YOU'VE been, until now, afraid to ask about your creativity?

Afraid to ask because you thought they were too basic, too fundamental, too insignificant, too unimportant?

No question you need to ask about your creativity is insignificant.

If it's important to YOU, and it keeps reappearing, then it's obviously something that you'll benefit greatly from once you start to address it.

And the first step to addressing and answering your most important
questions?

Ask them out loud. Get them out in the open.

You may surprised just how many others are asking the same questions, and struggling with the same kind of creativity issues.

So just click right now on the comments link below and share with us:

What are the questions you're most afraid to ask about your creativity?

I'm looking forward to hearing all your questions, thanks in advance for being brave enough to share them...

Increase Creativity By Nurturing Your Ideas: Don’t Leave Them Standing Cold & Naked In The Rain!

One of the best ways to increase our creativity is to take better care of the ideas we have.

Our creative ideas are the food, water and essential nutrients of our creative lives. Without new ideas, we’re stuck, stood still, lost without direction. Without an idea as a starting point, we can’t be creating.

So it follows, a steady flow of creative ideas is essential to maintain a healthy and constantly evolving and flourishing creative life.

And, the best part is, EVERYONE is capable of having great ideas. Ideas that can surprise us, springing up from nowhere and hit us firmly round the chops with a “I’m-just-so-obvious-why-haven’t-you-come-across-me-before?!” kind of audacity.

But having the ideas is often the easy part.

It’s what we do with them the moment AFTER they’ve given us that playful slap around the face that’s crucial.

How many of the great ideas you’ve had in your creative lifetime up to now would you say you’ve followed through and developed to their natural full potential? 75%? 50%? 10%?

What percentage of all the ideas you’ve had have been followed by the thought: “What a brilliant idea, I must make a note of it”, then forgotten just moments later, left to disappear lost forever back to the mysterious darkness from whence they came?

It’s likely the second number is significantly higher than the first.

Not recording our ideas in some way is the equivalent to leaving them standing cold and naked out in the rain. They’ll either catch pneumonia and die, or run for cover somewhere far away. Somewhere warm, dry and welcoming, where they’re welcomed in, wrapped in a huge soft towel and sat in a comfy chair by an open fire with a delicious mug of cocoa...

So what can we do to ensure we take better care of our ideas, and put more of them to good use?

The secret is in the recording of the idea and there are two key parts to this, each as essential:

Essential Part 1. WHEN we record the idea. This is so important. We must record the idea at the moment it hits us, while it’s fresh and vivid and most alive to us, ascending like a blazing shooting star against the night sky.

Leave it too long and it’s magic starts to fade, leave it longer still and it’ll slip from your memory quicker than a wet bar of soap dipped in baby oil.

Essential Part 2. In HOW MUCH DETAIL we record the idea. To give our idea the best possible chance to develop into something amazing, we must get its pure essence down quickly, yet in a richly detailed form.

We need to get a snapshot of the idea that’s as visual and memorable as possible. We want to capture the idea so strongly that when we return to it, whether that’s tomorrow, next week or next year, it bursts back off the page with all the energy and excitement as when it first came to us.

Do everything possible to catch this essence when the idea first hits, and you’ll find when you return to it it’s so much more inspiring and ready to grow into something incredible.

So, the next time a great new idea hits you, what are you going to do?

Leave it standing naked and shivering in the rain? Or welcome it in and nurture it?

Go on, put another log on the fire, some milk on the stove and get that big fluffy towel out ready...

:: Share Your Experience ::

How do you go about capturing your ideas? What methods have worked for you? What new techniques can you introduce so more of your creative ideas evolve from something promising to something amazing?

Share your comments and experiences by just clicking on the comments link below.

Music To Create By...

When I'm writing, I like to have music on in the background to support and enhance the frame of mind I want to be in.

If I'm writing articles and want to produce them quickly and consistently, I'll pick some music that is kinetic and rhythmic and moves me along.

Some of my favouite albums for this are Incunabula by Autechre, dubnobasswithmyheadman by Underworld and Tom Tom Club by Tom Tom Club. Although that last one oftens results in some quirky improvised hip shaking slightly at odds with my steadily typing fingers.

If I want to create in a calmer, more thoughtful mood, create more deeply and personally maybe, then slower, more ambient music fits the bill.

The likes of Submers by Loscil, Takagi Masakatsu's Journal For People or Opus Pia, and anything by Aarktica are all on heavy rotation on the stereo.

Different music for different needs.

And of course sometimes, I'll just enjoy the silence...

So what music do YOU create by? And why?

Share your comments by clicking the link below:

How’s Your Creative Karma? 10 Ways You Can Increase Creativity By Giving Before Receiving

When we’re feeling creatively stuck and struggling to get the creative juices flowing freely, often the last thought in our mind is of offering support to someone else.

We can become very inwardly focused, wanting to use and protect every ounce of spare creative energy for ourselves to feed our own creativity.

Any suggestion of taking a break to be supportive to someone else we see as an unnecessary distraction, a way that can only lead us to becoming further adrift from that creative flow we’re already losing.

It’s as if all our creativity is being held in a reservoir behind a huge dam, and if we take our eye off protecting our creative reservoir even for a moment, the dam will start to crack and the creativity resources we do have left will gush away in seconds.

Sometimes it’s better to be more like a river than a reservoir.

A river flows freely. At any point on the river, water flows to it and away from it, passing in a few seconds. As soon as the river gives water and flow in a downstream direction, it receives fresh water and flow from upstream.

It gives, then what’s given away is replaced.

Here are 10 ways you can increase YOUR creativity by giving before you receive. Imagine it as a form of Creative Karma:

1. Offer your time at a local creative class or event. People are often delighted to receive help in organising and setting up creativity events. Find out what’s going on in your area and offer an hour or two of your time.

2. Donate books on art and creativity to a good cause. Whether it’s to a charity shop, a hospital ward, a doctor’s reception area or somewhere else, your donation will be gratefully received, and may spark off a stranger’s sleeping creativity.

3. Let people know when you enjoy their work. Whether it's an author who’s book you’ve just finished, or a painter who’s work has particularly inspired you, most artists have contact details readily available, so let them know how their art enhanced your life.

4. Form a group for creative friends. Offer to set up and host a reading, writing or craft group for some creative friends. You can support each other in your own creative work or start collaborating on a new creative project together.

5. Offer to volunteer at a local school. Many schools will welcome help in hearing children read, or in art and craft classes. Get involved and support existing classes, or you could even set up a new after school art or craft group yourself.

6. Give your services to a community building or project. Maybe it’s a new park or garden where help is needed in designing their landscaping or a community hall that needs the interior freshening up and modernising. Offer your creative abilities and feel part of the community.

7. Post comments on blogs and websites. If you read a post on someone’s blog you enjoy, let them know and post a comment. It’s a great of way of supporting those who’s work positively touches your life. You can even remain anonymous if you wish.

8. Design posters and leaflets for a local voluntary organisation. If you’re good at graphic design, or simple know how to produce eye catching and colourful posters and flyers, offer your talents to a local voluntary organisation to help them promote their events and services.

9. Help a friend decorate or redesign their home. Many people simply don’t have the design eye for creating a home they both love to be in and are creatively inspired by. Offer your help in designing, painting, making curtains, covers, furniture, or wherever else you’re able to offer your creative talents.

10. Get involved in a theatre group. Even if you’re not an aspiring actor, most small theatre groups welcome help with set design, lighting, sound and so on. Use your skills to support them however you can.

Getting involved in any one of these activities will be much appreciated by those you’re helping. And as a bonus, you’ll get the chance to be creative maybe in different areas that you’re normally exposed to, as well as the unique feeling that by giving your time, ideas and talents, you’re positively affecting the lives of others.

So enhance your Creative Karma and make contact with someone you can help today!

:: Share Your Experience ::

How have you improved your own Creative Karma by supporting others creatively recently? And how are you going to offer your support and creativity over the next few months?

Share your comments and experiences by just clicking on the comments link below.

Creative Self-Sabotage: 9 Ways You Hold Your Creativity Back Without Realising

All of us who are creative experience writer’s block or creative block of some kind now and then.

It’s a constant challenge, but at least we know what it looks like, how it manifests itself, what it feels like and how we can combat its effects.

But there’s another even more dangerous kind of creative block.

One that we bring upon ourselves, often without even realising. It’s more subtle and devious than just sitting at a blank page not knowing what to write.

This type of creative block is more self induced, it’s a form of Creative Self-Sabotage. Without knowing it, we engage in many activities (and deliberately avoid others) that all contribute to us being less creative and finding creating more difficult.

Here are 9 of the most commons ways you engage in Creative Self-Sabotage and hold your creativity back, maybe without even knowing:

1. By keeping your creative identity secret. How many people know about your creative projects? Do you shout about your creative side proudly from the rooftops or hid it shamefully under your bed in a dark corner?

2. By maintaining an “I can’t afford it” attitude. Whatever creative equipment or supplies you need, saying "I can't afford it" shuts of the possibility in your head. Instead, say: "Creating is very important to me. What other ways are there of getting the equipment I need?"

3. By comparing yourself unfairly to others. How often do you see the creative work of famous writers and artists and think: "I'll never be that good so there's no point me trying to be. It’ll save me a lot of heartache if I give up now." The greatest thing any of us do is unleash our own unique creative talents and be the best WE can be.

4. By not prioritising time to just create. How much time each day do you set aside just to create? An hour? 20 minutes? 5 minutes? No time at all? However busy we are, we can ALL prioritise a small regular time slot each day to create.

5. By keeping time-wasting habits. Watching mindless TV, internet surfing and “research”, answering "urgent" emails, reorganising your stationary. These are just some of the ways we indulge in time-wasting habits rather than committing the time to creating something meaningful.

6. By never finishing a project. If you only ever get a short way into a project before you abandon it for the next great idea, over time you’ll build in your head a picture of someone who doesn’t see things through, or is not committed to their creativity. This can only slow your creativity down further.

7. By working "compulsory" overtime on a day job to avoid creating. Do you find yourself at your day job later each evening and earlier each morning? Then realise you’re saying to yourself: “When I have to work such long hours, it’s virtually impossible for me to find time to create”?

8. By supporting others at the expense of yourself. Supporting other people’s creativity is fantastic. But when you find you’re saying with resentment: "She's far more deserving and likely to succeed than me, my energy is better spent supporting someone with a chance of making an impact on the world”, it doesn’t serve anyone well, least of all yourself.

9. By not recording your ideas to give them a chance to grow. How many wonderful ideas have you let slip through the net and disappear forever because you didn’t note them down? The habit of recording ideas and letting them grow until we’re ready to return to them is incredibly powerful and valuable. It also gives us permission to have more ideas because we know they’ll be captured and not wasted.

How many of these subtle but dangerous forms of Creative Self-Sabotage do YOU recognise as having engaged yourself?

Raising your awareness and noticing when they creep up on you is the first step to reducing them, and as a result you’ll increase your creativity in both quality and quantity.

:: Share Your Experience ::

Which of these forms of Creative Self-Sabotage do you recognise? Which ones are most damaging to your creativity? How are you going to start to reduce their negative effect?

Share your comments and experiences by just clicking on the comments link below.