Writing in this way looks as if you’re speaking to the reader, and it is more pleasurable to read. If you doubt this go ahead read an article in a magazine and the articles that like, will be the ones in which it appears that the writers are talking to you. You can almost picture the person on the other side of the table having a conversation and makes you feel good you enjoy reading it. This is what I’m talking about.

Whether you decide to write to speak better, or use speaking to improve your writing, you will indeed end up doing both. The blurring of writing and speaking will improve your overall communication with the rest of the world. It will improve your telephone conversations so that you get to the point quicker and with more emphasis.

It will also prevent people from misunderstanding what you are trying to say. Writing skills help people in everyday communication. Those people who are really good speakers also note that their writing starts improving because when they speak to people they watch the facial feedback, and they start to understand which types of sentences and words provoke the proper reaction, and by using this knowledge to improve their writing; they find their skills expand exponentially. I hope you will consider blurring your speaking and writing communication skills.

Before I started doing a lot of writing, I was a very good speaker and having dabbled in politics I’ve given quite a few speeches in my life to audiences of all sizes up to about 1000 people. And I’ve done many TV interviews, one of which was seen by 60 million people. I always considered myself a very good speaker for some reason, perhaps all the practice I got in my own business, but never really considered myself a very good writer.

One day I realized that writing and speaking are very similar and if you write as if you are talking to a group of people or an audience you’re writing takes on a whole different shape and meaning. And believe it or not it is even also better received. For some reason people like to be talked to or converse with the writer. If you write as if you’re having a conversation with them they are more apt to read what you’re writing.

This is why writing and speaking go hand-in-hand, even if you often observe people that are good at one or the other, but not both. A very good writer can become a very good speaker or a very good speaker can become a very good writer. This is because the skills involved are methods of communication and our language. I hope you will understand this and think about it on a philosophical basis because I guarantee you it will either improve your writing or your speaking, or both at the same time.

To actually have a conversation in Japanese you need to listen and listen hard. To do this you need to spend time practising your listening skills using a number of resources.

Passive resources for improving your Japanese listening skills

I use radio and television in the background to support my language learning. So instead of just switching on to the usual English channels I consciously choose to put on a Japanese speaking station. What you gain from this is a good ear for the way the language sounds. You will also pick new vocabulary and colloquialisms that will not be in a text book.

Active resources

Most of my DVD collection has subtitles and audio in a choice of languages. I often use this feature to acclimatise my brain to listening. The subtitles also help to confirm what you are hearing. You can rewind back and check out certain phrases. You are really checking your hearing out with this exercise. Of course you may have to do this alone as other people might not appreciate what you are doing.

There are many Japanese language courses on CD and MP3 that I have playing in my car wherever I go. I do not worry about doing the course material while I am driving but use it as listening practice. You do need a fair few to stop this being boring. I am reasonably fluent in Japanese now but even when I was just starting out I would listen to the beginners and advanced vocabulary CD’s for the express purpose of improving my listening skills.

Friends who speak the lingo from Tokyo.

Live conversation is the unbeatable way to improve your learning skills. I have a Japanese friend who I spend time with not only because they are good company but also because they help me learn Japanese. I am also helping them learn English so it is a win win situation. You get coaching on your accent and practice listening in a natural environment that is non threatening.

Here are 9 tips to leveraging your writing and speaking to attract new clients:

1. Start a Blog that deals with your specific niche market. Keep your postings to under 300 words and try to post at least three times each week.
2. After you write a post, expand upon the information and ideas and turn it into an article. Be sure you are including your top keywords in the title and in the body of your writing. Submit your articles to several article directories.
3. Combine several of these articles you have written on a specific topic within your niche and turn them into a Special Report. These reports are generally from eight to twenty pages and are filled with good, useful content. Convert them into PDF format for ease of distribution to others.
4. Use other articles for e-booklets, tips booklets, and printable booklets. These will become your brochure and will enable you to be seen as an expert in your field. Always write on the topic that is your specialized area of expertise within your niche.
5. Combine even more articles and other writing and publish an e-book. This should be eighty pages or longer, but do not exceed about one hundred fifty pages. People like to print their e=books out, and anything longer than that becomes unwieldy. If clients have been reading your articles and e-booklets they should be ready to purchase your e-book. By this time potential clients will see that you have knowledge they want to tap into and be willing to pay for that knowledge.
6. Hold a free teleseminar. There are several companies that offer the bridge line for only the cost of the long distance call. Use one of your articles or an excerpt from your e-book to make an outline for the content of your call. Before you finish the teleseminar invite listeners to go to your website and purchase your e-book, sign up for more information, or email you with further questions.
7. Offer an e-course to those who are willing to opt in to your database. The e-course can consist of five to seven emails sent out at specified intervals. This course should be directly tied to your area of expertise. At the end of the e-course offer your readers more information in the way of e-books, more teleconferences, or mentoring.
8. Turn your teleconferences into CD’s and mp3′s that your readers can purchase. Also, have the teleconferences transcribed and offer the transcription to clients who would rather read the information you are giving.
9. Look back at what you have done and repeat the process. See what your clients liked best about what you gave them Ask them what information they would still like to get from you and in what format they would prefer it to be delivered. Your readers and listeners will let you know what you should do next. Listen to them!

You will find that you can take one or two articles and build your business with that as a foundation. Some people like to come to live teleconferences while others prefer to wait for the replay and listen to it on their computer or mp3 player. Still others will want to have a CD to listen to in their car. Some people will want to read your information on their computer and others will want to print it out and put it into a notebook. Give people the option of getting the information you want to deliver in the format that is most convenient to them. If you start with a Blog and move into e-books and teleconferences you will build your database and your business in a very short time. This is all due to the concept of leveraging your writing and speaking.

In this century, ideals no longer have as much control over reality as it was taught to have been by great thinkers like Plato and Aristotle. Emphasis these days has shifted from what “ought to be” to “what is”.

Consequently, a thousand and one media now exist, all transmitting and disseminating information but with little communication. Little communication because everyone has become a media in himself/herself thus the conventional mass media though have great impact still, but are only chosen according to each man’s self-augmenting needs.

In this era world over, socio – economic systems no longer reward anybody for his/her labour, rather every one sells himself and his abilities out to get him/her rewarded.

You are therefore, daily accustomed to seeing young men and women carrying gadgets of social communication, including laptop and note book computers, enabled telecommunications handsets that do not only allow easy and efficient accessibility to business partners, consumers and clientele, but also serve as ready modems to the World Wide Web.

The challenge every individual must face now is how to be relevant in the stiff competition that has arisen from modern trends, in order to make his/her ideas and personality sell. As it must be insinuated from the scratch, that no one makes your point for you if you fail to make it; you are simply left out.

On this note, when you hear, read about or actually know someone personally who you assume is asserting the rights of the less privileged, wisdom demands that you look again, as you will see that they are only agitating for their share and more of what the “system avails”.

Furthermore, in this century, one can’t ignore the fact that his level of exposition to relevant information determines his/her level of transformation, which in turn, determines his/her overall success.

It is undeniably glaring therefore, that to stay above the floods and hold sway in his/her field, everyone must, in these times, must necessarily acquire skills in self-expression. This is what makes it important for everyone to understand the basic techniques of creative writing.

So, whether as a student with huge interest in skill acquisition to critique, create and analyse creative writings, or perhaps your interest lies only in the appreciation of a particular genre for pleasure, this article is baited to improve your outlook, as it contains a concise, yet elaborate practicable guide as well as academically sound perspective to self-development in creative thinking that will prune your writing skills.

What is creative writing?

The term “creative writing” suggests the idea of making to exist by writing. However, the process of creative writing goes beyond the incubation of ideas to create a notable world. As a field, it encompasses every acceptable technique and methodology of self-expression, by which your creation achieves beauty and at the same time, achieves meaningful communication in reflecting human situation as universally empirical.

However, while being empirical in science may mean a pattern of strict adherence to a prescribed process of understudying phenomena, in creative thinking, this refers to the fact that whatever world you create by your writings must be similar with human experience enough to stimulate desired emotional response in a dimension that everyone who has had a similar experience would be able to identify with the characters and social situation created in your works.

Based on the above, creative writing may be seen as a means/tool of presenting in a manner to achieve pleasure/entertainment, inform or teach a lesson informally and to achieve beauty without undermining the universally accepted standards of and devices of self-expression and presentation.

Creative structures

That creative writing is creative alone disqualifies the word structure in its literal meaning. Not that it has nothing to do with its physique, but structure in creative writing is deemphasised from the physical form of having a head up, hind limbs behind and trunk at the centre.

Here, what it implies is that there are ideal features a creative piece must have, and not the order of occurrence of these features.

Broadly, every creative work of art has some type of the following:

• Introduction – a catchy, interesting beginning that must say what it is all about, why it is important and possibly how it is presented. In complex works, you may need to detail introduction to include explanations to certain functional concepts.

• Connection – were we to compare this to an animal, connection should be a neck, as it links the introductory with the body of the piece. This could be a maxim, figurative expression or connected sentences that accurately serve as build up to introduction and foundation to the body. Using connective terms here always makes it easy for digestion.

• Explanation – the body of your creative piece accommodates all details. The devices used must all be weaved together to create a beautiful image with lasting impact.

• Conclusion – this may just be a couple of sentences tied in to the piece and corroborating the entire work from alpha to omega, or may be a quote, a short story or whatever device your creativity dictates.

For the purpose of emphasis, take it again that the order and style of these rely extensively on your creativity as a writer. It is your duty to choose a style most suitable to your work.

Elements of construction

Achieving creative masterpieces requires a writer as creator of worlds and scenarios to know understand and adhere to the elements or techniques of writing. These elements discussed here are what make or unmake your writings.

• Universal standards/landmarks: like the creative writer of the Stone Age, the modern man must recognise the existence of certain acceptable standards that are practised all over the world. In as much as the arts have no formulae, there are yardsticks that will make your piece either good or bad. Believe it or not, not minding your mechanical accuracy, people know when work is good or bad and they will tell you by the way they react to it.

Telling a good and interesting story alone does not make your work fit for eternity but to these, you must synchronise the ancient landmarks of the profession.

If for instance, your genre is poetry, not minding the incidence of the “free verse”, landmarks should be seen as opportunity to express yourself beautifully and meaningfully rather than an obstacle to avoid. You can try to imagine what poetry would be without figurative expressions and the use of such devices as rhyme, rhythm, and meter etcetera. The poet must know the basic types of poetic designs that have been identified and their respective features, as his/hers must fall into one category or another.

Otherwise you will end up writing chopped -up prose for poetry.

This also goes for all other genres; the creative writer must identify the archetypical landmarks and standards in the field and play by the rules.

• Functionalism: the creative principle of functionalism does not imply similar meaning as the sociological philosophy that everything plays a specific role in society. Creative functionalism means that there are functions or roles that literature as a mother field for creative works, is expected to perform. For your work to be seen as creative, it must fulfil at least one of these functions of literary scholarship:

a) Preservation and refreshment of language and culture – it is the duty of literature as a way of life to preserve the language we speak, cultural values and practices. Language here does not mean dialect, not that literature does not preserve or refresh dialect, but the emphasis should be on its ability to retain expressions that were used thousands of decades back for generations yet unborn.

It is also the most articulated means by which to know the history and culture of every group, whether written or passed by word of mouth. Also the manner and style of literary presentations makes otherwise ordinary language interesting, lovely and tasty in the mouth and ear both to the speaker and the one who hears. Therefore, as a creator of worlds, when you put your world together, it is necessary that you provide refreshment to expressions.

For example, you could say in your writing that “it is now obvious that Dennis and Juliet have a relationship beyond casual”. Another way of offering same rendition is this; “it stares you in the face that Dennis’ hand shake with Juliet is well beyond the elbow”. The two statements share the same meaning but one of them, the latter, is more pleasurable to hear and to say. Also, it says more volumes than the former.

b) Entertainment – more than anything, people patronise creative works for their entertainment value. This is not to scare, but to hint that the fastest way to buy audience’s/fans’/consumers’ hearts as well as their pockets is giving them entertaining pieces that are interesting enough to relax the nerves.

In the past, research has shown, people read more in the past than they now do. Why? Because the shift of emphasis to material accumulation has left majority of people with no time to read, as books require full attention to decipher.

Audio music on the other hand, receives more patronage because it in itself creates room for one to combine with financial and other activities. For this reason, the streets like the offices are alive with men and women whose ears are plugged with one audio device or another -simply because the audio media allows you to receive entertainment while working, driving or sleeping, which the book does not permit. This singular point poses a greater challenge to the creators of music, without undermining other branches of creative writing. As the world designates lesser time for entertainment by the day, the challenge is to continue to meet the entertainment needs of targeted audience.

Simply put, your work must entertain if it is creative enough so if you are wondering how to write creatively, one way is to dwell on subjects, ideas and characters that have entertainment values. More so because the world of today is too serious pursuing money that without creative writer to cushion the effect of hard labour, many will go nuts, as “all work and no play…”

c) Standpoint – majority, if not all creative works are a response to a particular social situation. Script writers for audio, video theatrical productions as well as poets, novelists and playwrights build up illusionary worlds with their characters and scenarios, simulating real life situations and suggesting ways of either solving or worsening identified problems.

This ties us in to the function of literature to teach, inform and educate. And this role is not done through the usual school type of pedagogues’ teaching but done using creative ways.

Your creative work will only be truly creative when it makes a statement about a given human situation. This is the secret behind the world’s greatest literary works.

The film “Helen of Troy” like “Romeo and Juliet” seems to make a statement that love is greater than every sentiment and so deserve any sacrifice made for it. So also does the science fiction film “Matrix” makes a statement that the creator of the universe has destined everything to be as it will be, and there is nothing to change it, not even the combined effort of all enemies, human and spiritual.

Read any book, watch any movies or listen to any music. Any work that has no stand point, something that it is advocating, teaching, encouraging, discouraging or informing about cannot pass for a creatively master piece. So when you write, isolate a situation and address it.

It is not expected that creative work must be prescriptive, the point is in having a viewpoint to pass across about a chosen theme, which must not necessarily be consistent with expectations of real life but is a product of imagination curdled by creativity.

• Style: self explained as this may seem, it is one of the trickiest aspects of creative writing especially for those whose duty it is to review creative works. This is so as there are no formatted creative styles from which one would choose. Rather one’s style of presentation depends on his/her creative abilities. Good news is everyone has a style, deliberately manipulated or accidentally discharged.

The advice however, is that one should always take into cognisance the audience in choosing a style to adopt.

You can choose to tell your story from the middle, the end or from its chronological beginning. You may even choose to mix poetry with prose at some point, use hanging sentences, slangs or any other device. If yours is poetry or song, you can decide to rend lines evenly or otherwise, inject rhythm or meter. All these must be dictated by three primal factors, namely: your understanding of your audience, the subject/style suitability and your creative ability to maximise use.

• Diction: once again, be reminded that this is a generation of busy people. Even unemployed youth are busy staying idle so your aim as a creative writer should be to communicate sufficient volume within limited time given to you piece and for every audient’s time spent on your work should be well rewarded in enjoyment derivable from the work.

Furthermore, creative writers for novels, newspapers and magazines need be mindful that many people read while in transit and at such times, dictionaries are not handy. Also video and stage productions get offensive if those watching have to break every minute to either write down a word or punch the “pause” key to go get a dictionary.

However as earlier said, literature has a duty to teach and refresh language so while it is recommended for creative writers to use easy flowing language as much as possible, it is equally recommended that to avoid leaving a piece flat and over watered, the diction should be mature and well balanced.

This again should depend on the audience, the subject matter and author’s ingenuity in language construction. Whatever you do, mechanical accuracy should not be taken with levity.

Only suitable figurative language and relevant idioms should be used and the language should be allowed to flow, except when intended to create special effect by a particular pattern of presentation.

• Representing Universal Reality: creativity is beneficial in relation to the expression of human situation. The best masterpieces are those that arouse empathy, and with which people can identify. This is why you often see people cry while watching a movie or reading a book.

If the subject matter is crime, it should be an edge from which human experience can testify to its reality (or the similitude of reality). If it’s about war, famine, death, love or rite of passage, your inevitable assignment is to see to it that the piece should be able to attract a personal empathy or identification from a higher number of targeted audiences who must be of right thinking people.

• Conflict: it was stated in previous pages that entertainment must be achieved in creating a world through writing. Closely related to this entertainment value of creative pieces is its degree of conflict which raises suspense, tension and sustains interest.

A good manipulation this translates into enslaving your audient, who takes up your work and cannot keep it down to go ease up or to eat until “the end” shows up. Thereafter, he/she spends a good chunk of time wondering about, and digesting details and possibilities of the work.

Luckily, human societies as well as individual relationships are connected by conflicts of varying degrees. Thus, whatever subject matter takes your fancy, creating a conflicting situation the escalation or resolution of which characters play out would hugely be rewarding.

When using this technique, your ingenuity must be the sole dictator of the position of your conflict and with it, suspense. It is the proper management of this element that places James Hardly Chase’s works above all peers. Whether you choose to dispatch your message using the climactic plotting or it’s opposite, the line is that there must be enough conflict to make your creative work a masterpiece.

• Domesticating Inspiration: the hub of everything said and yet to be said in this essay is inspiration. Everyone creatively minded or not, receives inspirations from different sources and by differing means. For the creative writer, the great icons of the era have called this source the Muse. To many, this is God; to some it is nature and yet to others, an atmosphere.

The challenge here is that because what puts one person in connectivity mode with the source of his/her inspiration may ironically put another off. So really the onus is squarely on you to identify, woo and domesticate/personalise/configure yours.

The implication is that if you discover that unusual ideas come to your head each time you are in a noisy environment, you should place yourself in such environment more often. If on the other hand you discover that you think clearer creatively speaking, when on your bed, it means you need to create more time to lay on it more often.

The point therefore, lies in the creative writer’s ability to identify what kind of environment and mood causes inspiration to flow and to make deliberate efforts to court such conducive atmosphere and haven done so, protect each flow from unnecessary interruptions that would result in the Pablo Picasso’s “Man from Pollock” experience.

• Unblocking the block: one of the most daunting challenges to creativity is how to “unblock” the initial blockade of one’s creative faculties. Quite often, many a creative talent die with pent-up uncreated worlds simply because they did not know how to start writing. To beginning writers, initial apprehension, explained as “terror of blank page”, may result from inability to tune one’s system to a suitable frequency from which to download inspiring thoughts.

When this is the case, you have wonderful ideas in the head but are not able to put pen to paper to preserve them so they go away and find someone else more receptive.

The practical tested way of overcoming initial apprehension is to start writing. Your first few lines or perhaps may not be worth being kept, but just write and leave that to the pruning process. Once you have started, you’d see that the process flows more spontaneously than you had expected. Thus you may set out to write a few lines, a scene, a couple of lines or a page but end up writing volumes.

As many ideas as knock at the door of your creative mind, not necessarily in any particular order or in their “perfect” state. Just collect the fish together with the prawns and snails so you can sieve and synthesise later.

The word Perfect is placed in quote here because no work of art is perfect. Why? Because there are no formulae in the humanities; creativity with flexibility is the watch word.

To elaborate on this, i tell you the story of three blind men who went to a games reserve to “see” animals. After visiting elephant’s pen, one of them who had touched the ear said “Ah! So this is what elephants are; flabby, soft and flat.” Another said, “Elephant is so long and hose like”. He had touched the trunk. Yet the third exclaimed, “goodness me! Is that how an elephant’s body is? As strong as steel rod.” He had touched the elephant’s tusk.

Now each of them was right in his description of the elephant. Yet this was from each man’s point of view, and according only to each man’s understanding and perception.

Similarly, the field of creative writing is bigger than anybody and so it is impossible to paint a perfect picture, as what you see as perfect may be to another man, terrible. So if one may ask, whose definition should we take as most suitable and thus, perfect? However, there are archetypes and ingredients that make your work a masterpiece by popular opinion and these, this essay has offered.

Stages in the creative process

While the following stages may not necessarily occur in a particular order, they are stages every creative thinker goes through in passing across his ideas. These include, but are not limited to:

• Ideation
• Mapping/outlining
• Elaborate detailing
• Pruning/editing and
• Dissemination.

Creative Ideation

This refers to the process of receiving inspiration to write. That time when you begin to put your strands and bits of thinking together towards making a whole story that would be meaningful and appealing. This largely happens within the creative sphere of the mind but may often be triggered by external factors.

External factors that may motivate the ideation of a creative thought or stimulate the flow of inspiration include personal experiences, witnessed experiences of things which did not happen to you but which you witnessed happen to another. What you see with your eyes equally play a huge role in stimulating your inspiration. Others are things, people and places you love or hate.

Simple and effortless as creative flow of ideas may seem, it is what stops majority of people from thinking and writing creatively, as it requires attention and servitude. Hard as they try, some have complained that they are never able to make any meaningful coordination of their thoughts, left alone putting them in black and white.

Ideation to most creative writers happens slowly and intermittently at the initial stage but grow frequent, spontaneous and often aggressive with passage of time aided by constancy of practice. (See more of this discussion under domesticating inspiration in subsequent pages).

Mapping/outlining

This entails registering the ideas as they drop into your creative thoughts as they come. This may just be sketches or main ideas, leaving the nitty gritty for much later. Outlining is like laying the skeletal foundation of the world you have received in your imagination to build.

Because inspirations come in flashes, they get very elusive if not penned down and experience has shown that the best of inspirations come uninvited and if lost, are not easily reincarnated.

Creative mapping and the previous point (ideation) go concurrently mostly, but some experienced creators who find that the process of mapping interferes with inspiration flow may choose to keep the head down and store up the flow to write them later. But without experience, this may not come easily. Frankly, it may be a sure way to lose precious ingots of ideas.

Elaborate detailing

The outlining stage of creative process helps to preserve ideas for this stage. An initial mapping of a creative piece, be it a song, poem, prose or play may look very unattractive and meaningless. This stage therefore, entails providing connected sentences, lines, paragraphs and detailed description/elaborate intriguing of the world as it exists in your head.

The creative writer must always be conscious that his writing is his creation and the life of its people as well as their resources, natural and human, depends on him. Where you create for instance a wonderland, real people would leave this busy world of ours on vacation to serve tourist term in your world. Otherwise, it falls flat among worlds that are never candidates for permanence.

Elaborate detailing is the stage where the nitty gritty is put together to make the work beautiful.

Pruning

Albeit this begins with ideation and runs concurrently through the process, it is presented last on the list here because as it is important, so is it inevitable. This is simply editing of all sorts and may be done at every point in time, as the aim is to present you virgin world a master piece.

Editing only ends with the publishing of your creation to its intended audience once this is done, except for subsequent editions/revisions, whatever errors there may be, whether failure in aesthetics or mere grammatical failures would stay on forever like a child born of unwanted pregnancy.

The key to continuing to grow and develop as a creative writer is to keep experimenting, trying new techniques, ideas and exercises to challenge yourself.

Using a variety of different approaches and starting points in your creative writing will help you to explore your potential as a writer and keep pushing the boundaries.

But although creative writing exercises and prompts are a great tool to use, they assume one thing.

They assume that you are willing and able to write.

Give a writer a creative writing exercise or prompt and they won’t necessarily come up with some interesting creative writing.

In fact many times, however ingenious, stimulating and brilliant the exercise is, the writer won’t produce a single word, let alone a wonderful piece of writing.

So why is this? What’s missing?

There are a number of different factors that stop us from writing, however gifted and talented we are.

Perversely, often the more naturally capable we are of writing creatively, the more we struggle to write.

Here are some of the crucial elements a creative writing exercise or prompt on its own WON’T give you, and how to get it:

1. The confidence to write creatively. Talent and ability amount to very little if you simply lack confidence in your writing.

Build your confidence by starting small and writing little and often. A few paragraphs of a story, a short poem, or a blog entry every day will help you get into the habit of writing consistently. Then you can just increase the amount and frequency as your confidence builds.

2. The “set up” to write creatively. If you don’t have somewhere you can go and start writing within a couple of minutes, you’ll lose motivation and inspiration.

Have a designated place for you to write. If you don’t have your own room or study, at least have a desk or chair where you can have your creative writing equipment to hand and ready for you to start writing at a moment’s notice.

3. The permission to write creatively. Even if you think on the surface you’re willing to write, often on a deeper level, you’re not allowing yourself to. Not giving yourself permission to create is an often overlooked creative block.
Write out for yourself some positive affirmations, such as “I deserve to be able to create”, “I have as much right to create as anyone”, “The world needs me to be creative” and simply “I give myself permission to be creative”. Practice reading them out loud regularly.

4. The time to write creatively. Many of us claim we don’t have time to spend on our creative writing. The truth is, we don’t make it enough of a priority.

Start by giving yourself just 10 minutes at the same time each day to spend writing. Get up a little earlier, go to bed a little later, fit it in wherever you can. By practicing this routine, you’ll find it soon becomes easier to extend it to a larger chunk of time each day, without impacting the time demands of the rest of your life.

5. The motivation to write creatively. Even if you have everything else in place, if you’re not motivated to write, you just won’t write.

Keep your motivation high by reminding yourself why you write creatively. What are the top 5 benefits? What are the 10 things you love about being able to write creatively? What are your ambitions as a creative writer? Write these out and pin them up somewhere prominent to keep you motivated.

Spend a little time and effort on each of these 5 key areas and you’ll soon find there’s no limit to how much you can write.

Then, using those creative exercises and prompts will add the extra dimension you need to explore your creative writing even more.

Or are we simply stuck with a fixed amount of creative writing talent we’re born with?

Why do some people seem to find it easy to write pages and pages of wonderful flowing creative writing?

While others gaze on eternally frustrated that they will never be able to reach such heights of creativity and productivity?

For many of us, even if we DO manage to overcome our creative blocks in terms of the AMOUNT we write, we feel constantly disappointed with the quality of our creative writing output.

We feel we could write forever at this average-anyone-off-the-street-coulda-written-this kind of standard.

But really we long for that next elusive level.

We’re desperate for that creative writing breakthrough – that poem, that story, that single sentence – that blows us away and makes us feel we’re a powerful creative force to be reckoned with after all.

So how do we get there? How do we experience this creative epiphany?

Well, we can’t summon it up magically just like that. But there’s plenty we CAN do to make it easier for our creative writing talent to evolve to new levels.

Here are two simple ways:

1. Work on your beliefs about your creative writing ability.

If you don’t believe deep down you’re capable of writing creatively then you simply never will achieve the wonderful levels of creative writing you’re actually capable of.

Have a check in with your beliefs about your creativity.

Ask yourself honestly: How creative do I really believe I am?

If the answer is less than an emphatic – “there are no limits to my creativity, I’m as creative as I want to be!” – then it’s time to take a look at some of the ways you can increase your creative self-belief.

Start by simply listing all the things you think someone with strong self-belief thinks about themselves. The same things you’d need to think if you were to be highly creative.

Then read them out loud to yourself, as if you believe them yourself.

2. Gather evidence of your creative ability.

The second simple way to make it easier for your creativity to flourish is to gather together all the evidence of how very creative you are.

Get together all the creative writing you’ve done in the past. Everything: letters, notes, diaries, journals, as well as what you might consider your “proper” creative writing. There’s bound to be more than you think.

Another little exercise to do is take a random object from around where you’re sitting. Maybe it’s a pen or a book or a cushion.

Now pick an emotion. It could be sad, excited, overjoyed, frustrated, or any other emotion.

Imagine you’re someone for whom this object summons up that emotion very strongly. Write a couple of sentences why this is so, the history behind it.

Now you have further evidence of your creative writing ability. From just one object and one emotion you were able to create a story, and the background to a character.

Our creative writing ability is something we can ALL develop.

Start building up yours today by using these two simple techniques.

But despite this, most of us simply aren’t writing creatively anywhere near as well, as much, or as often as we could be.

Why is this? Surely if we truly want to write creatively it’ll just naturally flow?

There are many reasons why we don’t reach our potential. Here are 3 of the most common, and some top tips on how to overcome them:

1. You haven’t found your best writing format. Everyone has their favourite methods of writing, the ones in which we’re comfortable and competent in. Maybe yours is short stories, or poems, or novels.

But often we continue to write in this format because we feel it’s all we know how to do, it just comes automatically. Though we feel we’ve got much more potential to be discovered, we can’t seem to unlock it through this form of writing we’re used to.

Top Tips to try: Try different types of writing, those you’d never even consider, those you’ve never tried before, those you haven’t even discovered yet. You might find a new form that lets you unleash that creative potential like never before.

At the very least, you’ll return to your main writing medium a richer, more experienced creative writer.

2. You don’t write often enough. What not-so-secret method helps a creative writer improve more than anything else? Writing!

If you’re only writing once in a while and have serious ambitions to develop your creative writing potential, you’ll simply have to write more widely, more deeply and more often. There’s no avoiding it!

Top Tips to try: Regularity is the key. Commit to writing for a small period of time every day for 14 days. You could start with just 10 minutes, but make sure you stick to it every day.

Write a few paragraphs on a new piece of work each day or just whatever’s in your thoughts at the time. The crucial part is to write consistently every day, then you can build up the amount gradually.

3. You don’t believe in your creative ability. On the surface you appear to be writing at a good standard and at a healthy steady rate of output.

But inside you long to burst out of the familiar straightjacket and let your creative writing talent run wild. What stops you? On a deep level you simply don’t believe you’ve got it in you.

Top Tips to try: Think about what you truly believe about your creative writing ability. Write down all your beliefs around your creative writing ability. If you find you actually don’t believe you’re capable of taking your writing to a new level, you’ll never progress.

Start to adopt the beliefs that are consistent with someone who reaches a little closer to their creative potential every day. Think about what someone who’s confident and creative believes about themselves and take on those beliefs yourself.

These are just 3 of the most common reasons why we don’t reach our potential for writing creatively.

Pick one that you identify with and try the tips suggested to help you become a better creative writer TODAY.

There are three major benefits to journaling with letters. First, the experience helps organize the event more clearly in our mind. Second, letter writing makes it easier to see cause and affect sequences of our actions. Third, because of its intimacy, it loosens up our writing style.

Whether you have or haven’t experienced letter writing previously, here are a few ways you can expand the experience.

Step 1: Compile a list of people who you want to write a letter to. You can do this as a journal entry and mark the page with a post-it note.

Step 2: Select a letter style, purpose, before you begin writing. Since there are various types of letter writing styles, let me present four types that I have found most helpful and have received the most positive feedback in my workshops.

Style 1: Milestone letters. Writing about milestones is about picking an event that changed your life. Whether the milestone was minor one or one that turned you around 360 degrees does not matter. Even the smallest ones have truth to be released. The milestone will have either altered your way of thinking, change your relationship with yourself or others, or even shaken your physical or spiritual being-ness.

By writing about a milestone, you weed through and determine what is important in your life. Additionally, the exercise helps you understand what formed the person you are today and explains what shifted that path.

Style 2: Release letters. Release letters allow you to vent and express your deepest emotions. This style frees buried energy, in turn, allowing you to think and feel through things, rather than keeping it corked. Please note that your experience may not always lead to a resolution, however, it does lead to change. You can’t help but clean house of those leftovers.

Here are a few examples on how you can use release letters.

Example: Have you ever finished a conversation with someone that ruffled your feathers or left you still hearing their words like sounds of chalk going backwards across a blackboard? The conversation tumbles repeatedly in your mind for hours, even days. This is a perfect time to write a release letter. Set a timer for 10 minutes and let it rip across the page.

What you do with the release letter afterwards isn’t important. If you feel comfortable leaving it in your journal, do so. If you prefer to use separate paper and burn it, do so. If you prefer to tear it out of your journal later, do so.

Example: You can use this same exercise to curb over spending. This process came to me years ago when I was an accountant giving advice on how to curb over spending.

Have you ever been in the position of feeling you just “got to buy” something. Let’s say you are watching television and you see something you “got to have.” Alternatively, maybe a friend recommends a book and you still have 10 others to read but the recommendation is haunting you. How about seeing something, someone else has that you just “got to have.” The urge, just doesn’t want to relinquish its grip even with conscious “fighting it” thoughts. By writing a release letter, you can release this urge at least the majority of the time.

You can also use release letters to move you past the urge to eat something that isn’t on your food plan.

After several release letters you can even see what need is expressing itself and triggering these reactions. Once you identify the trigger, the process need usually subsides. There is no guarantee that this will work all the time; however, you will probably find it provides the release the majority of the time.

Style 3: Wisdom letters. A wisdom letter is writing to your wisdom self. A wisdom letter works well after a release letter because it enables the process of moving on. The experience allows the wisdom transition into learning and usually into a more positive light.

Adding dialogue, either in part or as the whole letter, is an excellent way to enhance the experience. Initials will help you transition between wisdom self to other self.

Style 4: Thank you letters. Since my parents passed, I’m always coming across things I want to thank them for. Even the small things seemed important to share. Now, in hindsight and wisdom, I can see how even the small things rippled through my life. These letters are also a special way for keeping their memory alive.

We both know that an attitude of gratitude is a peaceful place to be and thank you letters is one avenue you can use to be on that path. Our gratitude feelings fuel our spiritual connections with the universe and with all living things. Peacefulness is attractive to others and what we want to manifest in life.

You can also use one of these letter styles to let go of the “wish I had said that instead” thoughts and feelings or to share unfulfilled wishes and dreams that no longer fit but can’t seem to move on.

Letter writing is an excellent way to find closure or complete unfinished business in order to heal or learn. Whether you have or haven’t already been using letter writing in your journal, dedicate a whole week or two to the exercise. You might think that when you finish one letter, there isn’t another reason to write another. Be patient, another will probably appear because you have uncovered what was on top. When you get tired of the exercise, stop, and switch to another technique.

Over 55% of the visitors to my site are seeking some sort of
letter writing information or assistance. The following
lists the Top Ten letters that people request information
on, in order of popularity:

* recommendation letter

* resignation letter

* thank you letter

* reference letter

* business letter

* complaint letter

* cover letter

* sales letter

* introduction letter

* apology letter

The 7 Strategies

Here are a few practical letter-writing tips and strategies
to help you when writing that next letter:

1. Keep It Short And To The Point

Letters involving business (personal or corporate) should be
concise, factual, and focused. Try to never exceed one page
or you will be at risk of losing your reader. A typical
letter page will hold 350 to 450 words. If you can’t get
your point across with that many words you probably haven’t
done enough preparatory work. If necessary, call the
recipient on the phone to clarify any fuzzy points and then
use the letter just to summarize the overall situation.

2. Make It Clear, Concise, And Logical

Before sitting down to write, make a brief point-form
outline of the matters you need to cover in the letter.
Organize those points into a logical progression that you
can use as your guide as you write the letter. The logical
blocks of the letter should be: 1. introduction/purpose,
background/explanation, summary/conclusion, action required
statement. Use this outline process to organize your
approach and your thoughts, and to eliminate any unnecessary
repetition or redundancy.

3. Focus On The Recipient’s Needs

While writing the letter, focus on the information
requirements of your audience, the intended addressee. If
you can, in your “mind’s eye”, imagine the intended
recipient seated across a desk or boardroom table from you
while you are explaining the subject of the letter. What
essential information does that person need to know through
this communication? What will be their expectations when
they open the letter? Have you addressed all these issues?

4. Use Simple And Appropriate Language

Your letter should use simple straightforward language, for
clarity and precision. Use short sentences and don’t let
paragraphs exceed three or four sentences. As much as
possible, use language and terminology familiar to the
intended recipient. Do not use technical terms and acronyms
without explaining them, unless you are certain that the
addressee is familiar with them.

5. Use Short Sentences And Paragraphs

Keep your sentences as short as possible, and break the text
up into brief paragraphs. Ideally, a paragraph should not
exceed two to three sentences. This will make the letter
more easily readable, which will entice the recipient to
read it sooner, rather than later.

6. Review And Revise It

Do a first draft, and then carefully review and revise it.
Put yourself in the place of the addressee. Imagine yourself
receiving the letter. How would you react to it? Would it
answer all of your questions? Does it deal with all of the
key issues? Are the language and tone appropriate? Sometimes
reading it out loud to one’s self can help. When you
actually “hear” the words it is easy to tell if it “sounds”
right or not.

7. Double Check Spelling And Grammar

A letter is a direct reflection of the person sending it,
and by extension, the organization that person works for.
When the final content of the letter is settled, make sure
that you run it through a spelling and grammar checker. To
send a letter with obvious spelling and grammatical errors
is sloppy and unprofessional. In such cases, the recipient
can’t really be blamed for seeing this as an indication as
to how you (and/or your organization) probably do most other
things.

The foregoing basic letter writing strategies and tips are
mostly common sense. Nevertheless, you would be amazed how
often these very basic “rules of thumb” are not employed
when people write letters.