I have found lately that by not looking for a way of doing something actually helps my creativity.
What do I mean by this?
Take any subject and it can be Googled to death. You will soon discover that what you are looking to do is buried in standards and ways of doing something in a certain way.
Poetry is a good example of this. Acceptable formats are drilled into children from an early age. As a result poetry is dying on its feet. Why? Because it is in the main dull; sinfully dull. Weighed down in right and wrong. Who enforces these rules? And for what purpose? I love writing poetry, but I’ve never bought any. I never chat to even my closest friends about it because they associate it with all that is wrong with how we express ourselves. Structure is great for railway timetables, space shuttle launches and Germany, but with ones creativity and inventiveness? Please.
Think of all the things that you have been put off doing by someone, who is no more qualified or better at doing it than you. There are too many faux “teachers” and plenty of those who want to “do” but are put off by needless stifling.
Creativity and innovation just won’t happen in a world that listens to those who organise everything into neat drawers that are alphanumerical and colour co-ordinated. And this is not a particularly radical notion. It is merely about delivering what you intended to deliver through your work, rather than conforming it to barriers that exist for no determinable reason.
A poem will not make sense to everyone. A photograph need not be perfectly cropped. A symphony can be unfinished.
This is not to say that chaos should rule, but a lifting of unjustifiable, even mythical rules in the work that you do will unleash a lot of inner creativity. So I invite you to do your thing without keeping it inside an applicable, often mental, set of rules.
Why is this relevant?
I have fun writing now. Before I was looking over my shoulder at the punctuation police. Tutting when a red line told me that my English-English was not correct American-English. These things shouldn’t distract you or change your style. I certainly won’t be paying any attention to them.
