Writing tips
Dealing With ‘Crisis in Creativity’: Writer’s Block & Overshoot of Ideas
Suggestions From Our Paperians
Whenever we talk of a writer, the image that our consciousness conjures up is quite idyllic: someone in a cozy corner with an aesthetic ambience, writing tirelessly with a slight frown and sipping that hot cup of coffee. However, this is a constructed illusion that creates romantic definitions for the craft of writing. And somewhere we need to bust these niche myths about writing.
Like any other skill, writing is not an effortless process. It is not just the sum of a certain ebb and flow of creativity. There are bumps on this road as well, which we can conveniently term as Crisis in Creativity. The catch is that they are indiscriminate and might impact anybody’s writing process. Hence, to continue to write, we need ways to counter these bumps.
In the Chapter #28 of The Folded Paper’s “Writing & Creativity Jam” meetings, where we experiment with writing and creativity, we asked around about the major “bumps” in writing and some quick fixes to them. Following is a compilation of all the crises and some solutions that our Paperians suggested from their writing habits which could be game changers for all of us.
1. You will be fine, you just need lists!
The most common crisis is writer’s block that can be defined as a dry run of ideas and creativity. This can be a serious condition and reasons like lack of inspiration, extreme distraction etc., can be responsible for the same. To overcome this, Paperian Amit has a solution. He depends on the utility of a very important organizational tool — lists.
He maintains two lists: one is the list of raw ideas and the second is for completed ideas. Whenever he faces any dearth in creativity, he refers to these lists for inspiration. Thus, these organized lists act as repositories of ideas to choose from whenever he encounters a writer’s block. This habit is not very hard to emulate! Even we can make such lists with categories that suit us and use them when we face a crisis in creativity.
2. Don’t wait, just grab ‘em!
Lack of inspiration can be a stubborn brainworm and Paperian Hardik has an interesting proposition to prevent it. He seeks for in in the most run-of-the-mill places and writes about them. He collects writing ideas from randomly picked up metaphors and expressions from books, films, magazines etc., and scribbles about them. This is a perfect example of how to make optimum utilization of our external environment in writing. Next time, we come across an interesting expression, let’s note it down and write about it. After all, inspiration, inspiration, everywhere…..
3. (Sorted) Mess is a sign of the Genius
Our mind is a messy amalgamation of ideas/thoughts that are spontaneous in character. At times, a faster “ebb and flow” of ideas can be tasking. As much lucrative as it sounds, overshooting of ideas creates unnecessary traffic and can lead to serious confusion. Ultimately, the creative potential is lost and our output is null. In such a case, serious decluttering and sorting of ideas is required. Now, here we can take help from Paperian Amrit’s practice of creating “mind maps”.
Mind Maps are an organizational tool that takes help of pictorial details to categorize ideas and aid us in memorizing them better. Hence, with the use of mind maps, we can organize and structure our thoughts better. Given below is a link to a Mind Map created by The Folded Paper community:
https://www.instagram.com/p/B_l0q8_Atpm/?igshid=16djis4kfqhyo
Another way to declutter and sort our ideas is “to say yes to our thoughts”, which is also a very important philosophy of our community (Read about TFP’s philosophy here: https://link.medium.com/tZoq5cSQHbb). Paperian Harini JBL uses this approach for decluttering. In this process, she writes continuously without any judgement and gives expression to her first thoughts. This helps her to compile her ideas in one place and improve it eventually. So, the takeaway for us is to write, even if the write up doesn’t make any sense in the first attempt. After a while, the flow will define itself.
However, if this doesn’t work then we have another quick-fix from one of our guests at the meeting, Prateek Sultania. He recommends another interesting approach to “decluttering”. He invests a prelusive 10 minutes before writing wherein he arranges his ideas in his mind and eventually commits to paper to develop on it further. This can be an interesting option as it can increase self-reliance and confidence in and clarity about the idea and help us have better control over our thoughts.
All these ideas will be really helpful for us to declutter our minds, as it gives time to analyze our ideas and sort them out. Next time there is a “pouring-out-the-brim” kind of situation, just think what the Paperians did!
4. End is the new beginning
Any write-up can be simply broken down into three parts: a beginning, a middle, and an end. They are the individual components of a write-up but not necessarily the flow. Writing has never been a linear process; we could start anywhere. We just need to remember that it is a group of ideas that are coherent. More often than not, we have the idea intact in our minds, we even have the end in place but we don’t understand where to/how to begin.
For this, Paperian Anmol has the perfect solution up her sleeve. She starts writing with the end in mind and works through her idea in an upward fashion. For example, if she has an end in mind that concludes with the idea, “happiness in little things”, she will write the ending and write in reverse fashion as to how the conclusion will be achieved. Although it comes across as unconventional, we can give it a try because writing isn’t always linear!
While brainstorming ways to counter crises in creativity, we also came across a few processes that can be creatively destructive. It can conveniently be a general assumption that a lot of us might be able to resonate with such habits — constant comparison, fear of judgement, lack of motivation to write, a heightened sense of inferiority complex etc., were a few self inflicted or constructed crises that we came across. In these situations, a hack might not be as effective as in other aforementioned cases. Hence, one of the solutions is to write with a community.
Writing need not be an isolated activity all the time, it can be done together with a set of people positively driven towards just one goal and that is to write, write and write only.
And this is what we do at The Folded Paper (TFP). Writing is not a crisis free zone and we can never be singularly apt at disaster management. So, as a community, we try to navigate our ways through the crises in creativity.
If you’re motivated to write and navigate this journey with passionate writers, then join Harini JBL, me and the other members of our community at The Folded Paper, Writing Community.
About The Folded Paper
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