How To Be More Creative In 5 Simple Ways (Part 1)

Simple prompts to ignite inspiration.

Small Sparks for Your Day are a brief interlude. A coffee break together. For a moment.

With Alice, a writer of lots of books, mum of multiples, and dog-owner.

xoxox

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Being creative doesn’t just apply to professional artists: it applies to us all. We forget this, often, in the hurly burly of the day-to-day. But figuring out together what ‘being creative’ means to you, how you can find more of it, and why is key.

These tips are to help you figure it out with me.

Being creative can mean many things: be open!

When you were a kid, you likely existed in fireworks of creativity without even thinking about it: maybe you asked why, or drew potatoes that you saw as people, or told stories and sung to invented audiences.

These tips are to help you find those sparks again. My creativity is rooted in writing, and yours might primarily be that, too. Or perhaps you play the piano, or garden, or make origami, or take apart engines, or code, or _______? For a moment, in the swirl of your day, let your imagination fill this in. Over the last few months, I’ve had a strange urge to make paper flowers. Paper flowers! I’m discovering a whole world.

You don’t need to be good at something: make a mess.

You don’t have to be good to justify being creative. This is the biggest mistake I see adults and older kids make when they attempt a creative act: they judge it.

And they stop.

When I’m writing, I trust the process that the first draft can and needs to be a mess. My inner editor glimmers, this is no good, she cries, but I turn that voice down actively (which takes practice). The only way to make my writing better is to dare to scrawl on the page in the first place.

Please throw things into total, terrible disarray.

Do it again.

Do it anyway.

Make time for something creative every day.

I can hear you through cyberspace.

I don’t have time for that. I’ve got the serious business of life to live and no time for messing around with acrylic paint.

But I believe that doing something creative IS the serious business of living. It makes us better: better workers, better parents, better citizens, better better better all round if we find our creativity. Okay, I hear you. You’re still not finding time… try five minutes.

Seriously.

In five minutes you can write a few words. Or you can doodle. Carve out half an hour once a week. Make yourself make a little time, then take it from there…

Daydreaming is key.

That can mean lying on the couch for five minutes. Perhaps looking out the window. Sooooo often we’re too busy to daydream. And maybe today you are. Life is a shitstorm for so many people.

But maybe, maybe, you can find five minutes this week when you can do nothing. I make myself a rule that when I’m waiting for something, in that trapped edgy state where I’m waiting (outside school, on hold, at an appointment) I can’t fill that. No scrolling.

Nothing.

I get itchy. And then I get a little bored.

In that boredom, ideas bloom.

Your imagination is ready for you and if you let your mind roam free, even for a short time window, you’ll glimpse an entire landscape. Move ‘five minutes of daydreaming’ onto your ‘to-do’ list and see if that opens space.

Insist to yourself that it’s worth ‘it’.

I’m telling you how I approach my writing life and I hope you can take that to your own creative life. But what do I mean by ‘it’? I mean that you need to take your creative self seriously.

Telling yourself that it’s worth making creativity a part of your life is the first step to actually living a more creative existence. In a world where AI can ape creative writing acts in seconds, which I’m writing about for you this month, your creativity is more important than ever before.

Why?

Because there is something unique and fantastic inside you that makes you YOU. Our creativity helps us find it. ‘It’s’ worth it. You’re worth it.

It’s not frivolous. It’s essential. I believe it. I hope some of these tips help you believe it too.

Thanks for reading. This is the first of a two part series and I’ll share the other five tips soon—if these are helpful! I hope they are. Please let me know what you do to make creativity a part of your life.

xoxoxo

Alice  

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If you’re new here, my name is Alice Kuipers and I’m a writer, mother and dog-owner transplanted twenty years ago to the Canadian prairies from England. I’ve published fourteen books in 36 countries and my writing has been described as: “For storytellers and story lovers,” by Kirkus Reviews; ‘Gorgeous, heart-ripping, important,” by VOYA; and “Intense and wonderful” by Bif Naked.

Join me for a coffee break on here.

Read: I’m still reading Kala slowly. It’s so beautifully written and a lesson in Interiority and Voice.

I love

Luisa Skinner

and

Kate Harvey

this week, and I was also completely taken in by this by

Sophie Ingleby

. So much so that I wrote a whole essay about it, but that’s for next week.

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Do you want to write a book? Come and work with me and our amazing team at The Novelry:

https://www.thenovelry.com/

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Did you miss?

This summer, I shared this piece about Finding Flow. Tell me what you think!

Thank you for reading. I’m so grateful for you. Your comments, time, attention and words mean a lot to me. As you’ve maybe seen over on my Instagram, we’ve been dealing with some hard things with my mother-in-law and I love that I get to write here, for you.

xoxo

Alice