Be Interested: Be Creative

Are you sick of sitting in front of a blank computer screen, waiting for inspiration to hit? Want some fresh ideas, and to tap into a greater level of creativity than you’ve reached before? Want to get those creative juices flowing?

If the answer is a resounding yes to all these questions, read on!

One of the best things you can do when looking for artistic inspiration in your writing is to delve into the depths of your personal experience and write about what you know. However, no one author can have the time to personally experience everything in the world. That’s why good writers will seek to broaden their horizons by developing interest in many different things and people.

No two individuals have exactly the same experiences, thoughts, feelings and ideas, which means that the study of people is endlessly fascinating. Whenever you engage in conservation with another human being, you are opening your mind to receiving new ideas and sharing in their experiences. This means you have a greater depth of knowledge available to you when you need to write.

Develop relationships with as many different people as you can to open your mind to new ideas leading to increased inspiration. You can even use online chat groups and writers’ forums to get to know other writers overseas, and gain international perspectives on the creative process that drives authors to write creatively.

Whenever you meet someone new show more interest in them than in talking about yourself. Strive to encourage your new acquaintance to share their ideas and experiences with yourself by asking questions and leading to dynamic conversation. Don’t just limit yourself to chatting about the weather. Allow yourself to discover the wonder of the individual in front of you and what experience defines them as a person by being interested in them.

Don’t just sit there and stress about a mental blank, start talking online or get out and about and relate to people to free your mind and start the creative juices flowing again.

If you are struggling for inspiration and are missing your creative genius, try visiting a local café and watch the people in the street passing by. Listen to conversations and allow your mind to wander as it processes ideas that are generating by being interested in what is going on around you.

I’ve watched the barista pour the coffee, and started to think about how strange it is that we have people trained just to make coffee in our specialised, industrial world and suddenly I found that inspiration had struck and my writing was back on track after my coffee.

Be observant and notice the little details in how people relate to each other and their environment around them. Sometimes just sitting on a crowded bus or train and watching others will generate new ideas and creative thoughts. Start dreaming about where they are going, who they will meet, and what they will do, and suddenly your mind is open to your creative muse.

New ideas will help your creative muse, and new ideas come from meeting, discussing, and relating with other people.

Become fascinated by the endless experience of different people and your creativity will certainly increase.

Develop your sense of curiosity and start to think about the objects around you. Thinking about who made them, why and how will encourage thoughts to start to flow again in your mind.

Be interested in people around you, people you can contact through the wonder of the world wide web, and the variety of things and man-made objects around you.

Allow your mind to tap into creativity by developing your sense of curiosity about everything and everyone you meet and your creative writing will be amazingly different.

Well as you may have noticed, I’ve been writing three posts on each topic and this has been the third one for I=Interested not interesting. I hope you have found some ideas to help you stay creative and fresh in your writing.

Next time I’ll be looking at the letter T in HABITS. T is about time and until then…

photo credit: Elsie esq.

Having an open mind about other people and allowing yourself to be interested in the people around you will actually increase your own creativity in writing.

Cultivate an endless fascination for understanding how other people live, think, create, enjoy, laugh, and cry, and you will find you can open your mind to expressing more emotions and can tap into the creative world of writing far easier than before.

Authors of all styles of writing need to tap into their creativity and write from a depth and breadth of experiences. Of course, no single person can personally experience everything in the world, but actively being interested in other people’s experiences can open up worlds of excitement, emotion, and enjoyment that you may not otherwise have known.

Here are some ideas on how to cultivate a real interest in other people and move into dynamic conversations that cover more than the weather or superficial differences between you.

1 – Actively Listen

Most people do not actually listen actively, they are too busy trying to interject their own experiences into the conversation. If you want to open your mind and tap into creativity, learn to listen actively to other people.

Active listening is about focusing your whole attention on what the other person is saying. It’s about thinking about what the person is saying, considering their body language and focusing your thoughts on what is going on in front of you, not worrying about when you get to talk.

2 – Ask Questions

One of the easiest ways of getting to know people is to ask questions.

Generally, people will respond with more in-depth answers if you ask questions that show an interest in what they are saying.

A good trick is to respond with a brief statement of your own experience (so that the other person doesn’t just think they are being interviewed or interrogated), and then follow up with a leading question for more information about the subject. Try something like, “I had a similar experience two years ago and found no-one really understood what was happening. Did you find it difficult to talk to other people about it at the time?”

Whenever you attend a party or a social event try to get into more dynamic conversations than about the weather. Ask people what they do for an occupation, and be interested in the answers.

Don’t just stop at “Oh, you’re a policeman” but continue the conversation with questions about how difficult the job is, the worst arrest they have made, or what it is like to carry a gun or have the social responsibility of the police. Ask about their favorite experience as a child, best holiday, preferred pet, cultural experiences, or how they used to celebrate Christmas, New Year, or birthdays in the past (whatever the party is about!).

3 – Do not Interrupt

You want to learn more about other people, so the less you are talking yourself, the more you will learn. Whenever there is a pause in the conversation, by all means share something about yourself then, and encourage the dynamic conversation to continue. However, interrupting a person will always prevent you getting to know them well.

4 – Keep an Open Mind

One of the most important things you can do is to keep an open mind about other people. Making quick judgments about someone on how they look, or because you think they fit into a stereotype is not conducive to creatively discovering who they really are.

Keep an open mind and allow the possibility of new thoughts and experiences to seep in through your dynamic conversations with others.

Follow these four tips at your next social function, and see if you have more in depth, dynamic and fascinating conversations with people, even if you have known them for years.

Explore the unknown facets of other people and enjoy the benefits of increased creativity in your writing.

I = Interested not interesting

Wow, we are well and truly on the downhill run in the CREATIVE HABITS series! We’ve just reached the 3rd last letter in HABITS – one I believe adds depth and color to the quality of our work. Let’s find out more about I=Interested not interesting…

We can’t know everything we write about intimately and personally. Yet writing from personal experience brings depth and focus to our writing.

How do good writers find a balance between writing what they don’t know and lacking the breadth of knowledge that comes from actual experience, and only writing within the narrow sphere of their own experiences?

They listen to, and are actively interested in other people!

Encouraging friends, relatives, chance met acquaintances, and even business associates to share parts of their lives with you, to talk about their experiences, and to discuss their opinions will not only enrich your writing but will also enrich your life experience too.

I have a friend who became a journalist for this very reason. When asked as a youngster what she wanted to be when she grew up, a policewoman, doctor, lawyer, nurse, teacher, fire fighter, etc, the answer would always be “all of them”. In real life though, no-one has the time to do so many things. You cannot be everything to all people, it’s just impossible.

Journalism allows my friend the opportunity, if not actually to have full experience of all of those occupations, to explore and discover what it is like for these people in their lives. Journalists share the world actively with people and develop a great sense of empathy for other people, because they need to know enough about the subject to write the news stories.

You don’t have to be a fully fledged journalist to learn from other people though. Journalism is a particular style of writing, which does not suit every author. However, keeping an open mind whenever you meet someone new will help anyone as a writer, no matter what they are writing about.

Be open to having more in depth conversations with people about more than the weather and you will soon start to find that snippets of conversations trigger creative thoughts, generate ideas, blend with other experiences, facilitate your own memory of experiences you may have forgotten, and will even help to form characters for fiction writers.

Our brains are truly marvelous devices and it is strange how the mind works.

Have a conversation with someone one day, and you could be using that experience within your own writing years later. Delving into the memory can be a fascinating exercise, especially for anyone who has made a concentrated effort to meet new people and to encourage sharing of lives. You may only remember a single sentence of the conversation, or remember the gist of the conversation at a time when you are writing about a similar experience and the memory can help to form the words.

Being interested in other people helps to stimulate new thoughts, ideas, and creativity, all of which are necessary for good writers.

Your personal experience grows with each person you talk to on a deeper level and this helps you to create writing that not only has a breadth and depth of experience but that speaks to the heart of the reader.

You are more likely to be able to relate directly to each individual reader when your writing shares an experience similar to their own.

Learn the trick of being interested in other people and see the difference it can make in your creative processes and writing quality.