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Waking Up Your Muse
by
Carol Whiteley
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- Being creative means being unique & original
- Open yourself up & practice being creative
- Keep the ten keys to creativity in mind
Like creativity in any field—cooking, painting, gardening, or Web design—creativity in writing involves the making of something new or the reinventing of something old. Being creative means causing something unique to come into being and being original. It’s seeing something in a different way and putting your own special stamp on it.
The power of creativity is within each one of us. The challenge is to open yourself up to it—to approach your subject in a new and interesting way. To practice being creative, you might try the following:
- Follow a new path—if you always take the same way home, choose a new route and treat your eyes to new views along the way.
- Really look at something you don’t usually notice—the plumpness of a peach and its tender blush of color, the collage of patterns on the bark of a birch tree, the scents and sounds of the early morning.
- Immerse yourself in the arts—take up watercolors, master the art of French cuisine, learn a new language in a class or by listening to audiotapes, plant a flower bed, capture a sunrise with your camera.
- Immerse yourself in the world—listen to how people converse: in restaurants, on the subway, over coffee in the neighborhood café.
- Observe how people walk and dress; notice sounds and colors; experience silence; get the feel of busy streets, fields and forests, small towns, amusement parks—any variety of places and spaces that are accessible in your area.
- Let your imagination go—daydream, fantasize, play “What if,” make up stories about people you see walking down the street.
- Do something new—if you’ve always wondered what it would be like to play the accordion, take a lesson; if you’ve sometimes thought you might want to be a lawyer, sit in on a court case; if you like to sketch and doodle, sign up for an art class.
- Read, read, read—novels, the newspaper, magazines, comics, brochures, cookbooks, poems, memoirs, how-to guides, travel essays: anything you can get your hands on.
Ten Keys to Creativity
To sum up, what you need are the ten keys to creativity. Keep each one in mind as you begin to write.
- Curiosity
- Passion
- Determination
- Awareness
- Energy
- Openness
- Sensitivity
- Stick-to-it-iveness
- A listening ear
- An observant eye
… from The Everything Creative Writing Book.
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