by Annette Young
I am the first to admit it’s not always easy to plan your creative writing pursuits and to fit them into a busy schedule but with creative writing, you have to be able to keep the techniques fresh in your mind and to allow the words to free up and flow regularly. It doesn’t matter if it’s only ten minutes a day or a couple of hours a week, if you don’t write on a consistent basis, you will stop improving and your skills will plateau out. It may be tough finding enough time in the day to blink let alone to write, but seriously, to enjoy creative writing and to improve your skills, it really is a case of use it or lose it.
Here’s some quick tips to keep your desire to write strong:
1. If you don’t have much time spare, make the most of your time by thinking about your creative ideas during those moments when it is impossible to indulge creatively. Turn that walk to the shops into an idea generating one or, if you are sitting on the bus or on the train, take a sneaky look at some of your fellow passengers and imagine what their day will be like or, where they are going. If you are called into a long and boring meeting at work, imagine something funny – perhaps a slap-stick moment and try to picture the scene. If nothing else, it will make you smile at the thought.
2. Turn your lunch hour into a timed fiction fest. Give yourself 10 minutes of fast writing on a single idea and just let the words pour out onto the page. The end result may be excellent or, you may want to scrunch the paper up into a ball and throw it in the waste paper basket, but it doesn’t matter. You’ve opened up the creative channels.
3. If you have trouble sleeping, think of one key word – or a sentence and try to create fictional scenarios around it. If you take your mind off trying to sleep and bring your creativity to the fore, you will soon start drifting off but not before you have created some lovely ideas. If you get any really imaginative ideas, write them down quickly.
4. If you are struggling to find something to write about, invest in a copy of Challenging Creative Writing Projects (shameless plug) and you will be able to dip in and out of it at will while your brain starts pulsating with fantastic new ideas.
5. When your time is really limited, you might need an extra push to make you sit in front of a blank screen, so consider entering one of our writing competitions – here’s the latest list for you to download and peruse and spend a few minutes each day crafting an imaginative entry. Who knows, you could find that your spare hour turns into a productive and lucrative session.
6. Set yourself a serious challenge. Devise a specific word count per day or per week and make yourself sit down and write – start with 500 words a day which can be easily done in a lunch hour or before or after work. This keeps your brain oiled creatively speaking and you can increase the word count if you find that you are enjoying these sessions. Or, join our Write, Learn and Publish membership and set yourself a challenge to learn new skills and, enter as many competitions as you like without worrying about numerous entry fees.
Creative writing is meant to be enjoyed, it’s a great stress reliever, it can be fun for all the family and is great for children to be able to utilise their imaginations, and even when time is of a premium, if you set your mind to it, you will find that it is still possible to embark upon a creative activity and subsequently, you will feel the pleasure of your writing skills growing ever stronger.
