I can’t stand hearing people say they’re “not creative.�
That happened to me recently, after I sliced a finger and wound up in Urgent Care. When the doctor heard that my fiancé is a graphic designer, he launched into a well-rehearsed monologue:
“Oh, my mom is a graphic designer; she’s so creative! I do some design too, but only really as an outlet. I’m nowhere near as creative as she is. I just do it to relax. I mean, I can’t read medical texts all the time.�
Eventually, his rant became more uncomfortable than my still-bleeding pinkie.
I wanted to ask him if he truly thought medicine wasn’t creative.
Had he never encountered a problem he wasn’t explicitly trained to handle in medical school? Had he never improvised, or developed a different way of doing something?
If he really wanted to get better at graphic design, what was stopping him?
For generations, we’ve drawn a line between logic and emotion, creativity and structure: Spock and Kirk. Holmes and Watson. Sense and Sensibility.
And certainly, the distinction exists. Diagramming sentences is one thing … feeling moved to write an inspiring line of poetry, another.
But we’ve gone much further than classification.
Somehow, creativity and logic have attained a mythical status as two oppositional forces, pitted together in an eternal struggle for dominance. Not only is this myth wrong and unnecessary, it’s damaging.
If you believe creativity is something you’re born with, and that some kinds of tasks are creative while others are not, you’ll miss thousands of opportunities to improve.
Two selves, one writer
Maybe the reason this dichotomy bothers me so much is because I’ve always found myself somewhere between the two.
I’m the daughter of two self-professed “logicalâ€? people — my mother is a software developer, my father a medical imaging engineer.
But my dad built beautiful doll beds and full-size playhouses when I was a kid, and my mom loves interior design (though she’d never admit to being any good!).
When I was in sixth grade, I wanted to be like my mom and learn to code. By high school, I was enmeshed in the theater and choir programs and wanted to be a writer.
Let’s not comment on which of my earlier selves had a more prosperous career plan. 😉
I’ve carried both of these “selves� with me, and it’s become obvious that creativity and logic are part of every human endeavor. Every field needs processes, documentation, and structure, just like every field needs innovation, fresh ideas, and creative problem-solving.
Specifically, however, I’ve found that writing requires a particularly delicate balance of both skills.
Writing: a delicate balance
Unlike mathematicians or musicians, writers don’t have one clear stereotype.
On one hand, there’s logical grammar nerds and vocabulary junkies, and on the other there’s creative poets and imaginative novelists.
Writers dance the line between creativity and structure, often so seamlessly we don’t realize we do it. On some days, we find ourselves drawn to routines, processes, and research, while on others we are struck with inspiration and forget our routines exist.
It appears a great writer’s life is a contradiction.
But sometimes, I think the secret to being a great writer is knowing when to fall back on processes, and when to forge ahead with inspiration.
In the end, however, after a piece of writing has been published, it often just appears like the product of sheer creativity.
New writers, especially, fall prey to the “genius” myth. It looks so easy to put words on a page, it can be easy to forget the structure and experience that make a great writer’s words more poignant, more gripping.
Try it for yourself
The next time you’re stuck, go back to basics.
There’s always a reason for writer’s block, and usually it occurs because you need more raw material.
Go do your research: read a book about your topic, talk to your target audience, look at Google Trends for keyword data.
If you want to become a better writer, study the greats. Choose a few passages and copy them by hand, analyze their sentence structures. What does that writer do that you could steal for yourself?
If you want to improve your vocabulary, head to your bookshelf and pull down a few books by authors you admire. Then write down all the words you love, and define them. Keep going. You might not feel any different after you’ve defined 10 words, but after you’ve defined 200, you’ll be getting somewhere.
Inspiration may feel like it comes from nowhere, but it’s really just a part of your creative process that you build over time.
What did you do today to keep in “form?â€?
In 1972, in a note to herself, Susan Sontag wrote: “A writer, like an athlete, must ‘train’ every day. What did I do today to keep in ‘form?’�
Writing is a creative endeavor, yes. But it’s also a craft that can be learned.
You might be able to become a better writer by sheer force of will, but if you want to get better, faster, you’ll have to embrace the process.
Reader Comments (10)
Michael LaRocca, Business Editor says
When I was in elementary school, a creativity consultant had me look at a picture and tell a story. Well, I was making sure it actually ended at the story, which I guess I wasn’t supposed to do, so she sent me away before I could tell the story, which did work, then declared I have no creativity. I’ve had ten novels published. How many has she published?
Okay, that was just snarky. I think I show plenty of creativity in the kitchen, or in that Othello program I wrote in BASIC, or in the way I play guitar, accuracy be damned because I was 54 years old when I started teaching myself.
The best teams are the ones where we don’t all have the same abilities, where their strengths compensate for our weaknesses and our strengths compensate for their weaknesses. If that team happens to be the left side of my brain and the right side of my brain, that’s a fine team too.
Sonia Simone says
That kind of stuff makes me crazy. One misinformed teacher can damage the creative confidence of so many kids. Anyone who teaches any creative form has seen a lot of the fallout of this — I certainly have.
I like that team idea. 🙂
Loryn Thompson says
Oh my goodness, creativity consultant?? That’s ridiculous, and a horrible thing to do to a child. It sounds to me like you’ve done pretty well for yourself in the end, though!
Thanks for the comment, Michael 🙂
Connor says
I find getting outside in the fresh air really helps when the dreaded writer’s block strikes. For more content ideas it’s always helpful to get new perspectives on the issue you are writing about, too.
That’s especially the case for longer pieces where I find myself sometimes becoming ‘word blind’!
Loryn Thompson says
“Word blind” is such an interesting way of putting it! I know exactly what you mean. I wonder what’s going on in our brains there… might be something to research! Thanks for reading 🙂
Ben Hardman says
Fascinating read Loryn, this really resonated with me. I’m a very structured person, I like order, routine (mostly), hate being late, studied a science at university, but I am a former primary school teacher and now work in a ‘creative’ marketing role. I’ve found myself MANY times battling this so-called juxtaposition between creativity and structure, and continue to debate it in my mind to this day (I have just never seen myself as creative). In truth, as you say, there is a fine balance between the two that is needed. I think more people (especially children in schools) need to know this because it can really shape and put blinkers on your future. Great blog.
Loryn Thompson says
Thanks Ben! You’re totally right about how this can shape your future. Creativity and logic are both skills that can be learned, if we identify too much as one or the other we don’t give ourselves the opportunity to try 🙂
LJ Sedgwick says
I think that it’s totally possible to manage different types of creativity under the banner of ‘writer’. I can put on my more logical hat and write academic work about horror films (which in itself requires creativity in how to communicate the results of any textual analysis) and then I can swap to my novelist hat and do some creative writing. I don’t think you can have logic without creativity any more than you can have creativity without logic!
Loryn Thompson says
Exactly! Some things might require a different mix of the two skills, but ultimately they’re omnipresent in all the work we do.
Thanks for reading!
Mike says
I think that it is a great analogy to compare a writer with an athlete. It doesn’t matter how much natural talent you have, you will never get the best possible result unless you have the right training regime and get enough practice.
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