Nurturing your creativity

"If I have a poem to write, I need to write that poem, whether it will sell or not. I need to create what needs to be created. I cannot plan a career to unfold in a sensible direction dictated by cash flow and marketing strategies. Those things are fine, but too much attention to them can stifle the child within, who gets scared and angered when continually put off...

Since my artist is a child, the natural child within, I must make some concessions to its sense of timing. Some concessions does not mean total irresponsibility. What it means is letting the artist have quality time, knowing that if I let it do what it wants to it will cooperate with me in doing what I need to do...

As an artist, I must be very careful to surround myself with people who nurture my artist, not people who try to overly domesticate it for my own good.... As an artist, I do not need to be rich, but I do need to be richly supported. I cannot allow my emotional and intellectual life to stagnate or the work will show it. My life will show it. My temperament will show it. If I don't create, I get crabby...

Creativity is oxygen for our souls. Cutting off our creativity makes us savage. We react like we are being choked.. Creativity is a spiritual practice. It is not something that can be perfected, finished, and set aside. It is my experience that we reach plateaus of creative attainment only to have a certain restlessness set in." Julia Cameron, The Artist's Way


Being an author can sometimes stifle your creativity after you become published. There is the temptation to write what sells and sacrifice the creative side. You can get so caught up with the quest to sell one book, market it so sales are good so you can get another contract, that you fail to nurture the creativity that urged you to first write.

It's important to nurture the creative spirit, the spark inside you that wants to express something that may not be practical in terms of the market or sales or in a goal to get published. Like Julia Cameron said, you don't do this to the extent of being irresponsible. But it IS a good idea to nurture your artist within, and write just for the sake of exercising creativity.

There are all manner of obstacles that can block creativity. I know some readers, and some authors, say that you can learn from a negative review. Yeah, well, maybe. But if you read a negative review of your book and start corraling your inner artist based on what the reviewer said, you end up hurting the work. You stifle your creativity, and that can be extremely damaging.

The trick is finding balance. Does this mean if you have a successful career as an author, you forgo what you're writing now that is selling to write only books that nurture your inner artist? No, of course not. But it does mean that if you are prompted to write something that you are dying to write, to create, you indulge your muse. Locking it all up damns the flow of creativity and can make you become frustrated.

This is why I say that everything you write shouldn't be targeted merely for publication. You need to give your creativity the oxygen it needs to breathe, and even if the result is something that won't advance your career or your chances of publication.

Nurture the artist within and you will rediscover the joy of creating again.

Naked writing

I did some naked writing this weekend and it felt great.

Naked writing isn’t writing in the buff. It’s what I call writing without the covering of purpose; either a book contract or a plotted manuscript or any idea of where the hell it is going. Naked writing is a little bit stream of consciousness that erupts from your mind. You grab a pen or the alpha smart and just let go. It’s just you and the keyboard and nothing between you, like air and your naked skin.

Naked writing is freeing. It comes without the constraints of editor’s comments, revisions, criticism from a critique partner, or the doubts raised from a bad review or low contest scores, or even reader expectations. Naked writing is you and writing at its purest. It’s taking an idea and running with it, writing without worrying about following a path, and writing whatever inspires you.

The naked writing I did was after we’d visited a river I love. I got an idea for a new paranormal while we cruised the river. I saw danger lurking among the red mangroves, envisioned the hero with his sullen, embittered wariness, and the heroine filled with desperate hope. I saw a little blue heron fishing among the shallow, murky riverbank and it became not a bird, but a spy, an invader, a threat.

I just wrote and wrote for the pure pleasure. It was the first time in a long time I’ve done any naked writing. I have two looming deadlines and the writing wasn’t for those. I’m not contracted for any more Nocturnes, so there was no purpose in this writing. I probably will never sell it. I wasn’t thinking story ideas for a new proposal or to sell another book. I was writing for the sheer joy of creating, and letting my imagination fly.

I was getting naked with my writing.

Being a writer is great, but it does have its straitjacket moments. Susan Elizabeth Phillips says, “Protect the work.” One aspect I see of protecting the work is pushing aside all the layers that can come between you and the essential spark that is your creativity. Like too much clothing in a Florida summer, they can smother us. That’s when we need to toss everything off, and just get naked with our writing.

Try it next time. You might just find how fun and freeing running naked can be if you let your imagination fly as you write.