How to Increase Your Creativity

Bringing More Creative Energy into Your Life

Let’s talk about creativity. I’ve been writing a lot about publishing and the practical business side of writing, and so today, I want to take a step back to the pre-writing stage.

Before you get to have the fun of publishing and promotion, you will have to spend hours creating your story. This means taping into your creative energy and pulling that story out of yourself and delivering it creatively to the reader.

Everyday life can suck all the creativity out of us though, right?

I heard someone on a podcast today say that being a writer is like living in perpetual quarantine. It made me laugh and shake my heard. Sure, we have to spend a lot of time alone with ourselves and our computer, so we are isolated, but to me it’s like living in perpetual creative energy which is awesome and extremely fulfilling!

And the truth is, we don’t get to just sit in this heavenly space of aloneness all the time. We have families and jobs and interruptions continuously. And it can be difficult to get back to that creative energy.

So, let’s look at ways to increase creativity in our life so that we can pull from it when we need to.

Value Your Ideas and Play with Those Creative Thoughts

Early in my writing career when becoming an author was just a crazy dream, I used to play with stories and words. Maybe you’ve done that too. You write the craziest story that you know no one will ever read or want to read, but it’s just fun.

You don’t do it to sell your story. And you don’t do it for anyone to read. You just do it because it’s fun and you get to be creative.

The best ideas come from these moments. When I wrote Becoming Latina in 10 Easy Steps under a different pseudonym, I was doing just that. I was writing something silly that I didn’t expect to sell. I just got tired of publishers and agents rejecting my work because it wasn’t Latino enough, so I created a character who tries to become more Latina by embracing silly stereotypes. It was ridiculous and I got my frustrations out on paper, and it was funny. And when I told my agent about it, she loved the…