If you've checked the Upcoming Projects list, you'll see that there are more than a few outlines that I plan to work on in the coming months and years. I'm not going to lie or delude myself into thinking I'm a great writer. Only time can tell if that's going to be the case. My only concern, really, is telling the stories that seem interesting to me.
When it comes to being creative, some people swear up and down that it's not something you can learn. That you have to be born creative. I would argue that in the rare exception that everyone is born with that spark of creativity and that they instinctively know how to use it. Without it, we'd be mucking around in the mud. People are constantly processing information. They might not realize it, but they're taking in all sorts of sensory data and converting it into their minds. Turning that into useful things for our brains and our bodies to work with. And from there, they ask a question, what if the sky was orange? What if. 'What if' is the most basic form of creativity that any person can experience.
Take writers like Stephen King or Warren Ellis. They're taking in the world around them, processing this into raw creative feed, in my opinion, and then shaping that into their writing. King is well known for his work ethic, frequently putting in full eight-plus hour days even when he's on vacation. Ellis is rumored to head to his local pub, drink for a while, and then get an idea to write. King's method I like to call the little engine that could. He keeps plucking away at his keyboard until the dream he sees is more full-fledged. How much does he delete? Only he and his editor will know. Ellis is the more casual approach; if the rumors I've heard are accurate, I'm just some fangirl, so what do I know, where he seems to be struck with an idea, and then it just flows into him. But he's still taking in that information and asking why.
Most of us aspire to be recognized names in the field of Authors. To be King, Grisham, Clancy, and Sandersons. Some of us excel in analytical type of writing; others of us are fantastical. Tolkien is well known for his work and the amount he put into creating things. His would be a more analytical approach, in my opinion. Yes, it's a fantastical tale of wizards and a god who sang the world into place. Still, he also built mythologies for it and designed languages. He was every bit as thorough as a pilot in their preflight check.
I like to think I'm sort of a middle ground of this. I have built up a large universe for myself to work with. I take information in and apply my 'what if.' But then I have to look at my work and say, "Well, how does that work?" I can't have something unexplained in my works. Whether the reader knows that or not isn't of any concern to me. My most outstanding example of this is Magic. I have an actual failure to understand Magic in many fantasy books, which is why I so rarely read this genre. Magic has to make sense; the cause and effect of it must be logical. The Sanderson approach. If I write that xyz happens, even if the reader accepts that this is the gospel, I need to know what caused xyz to happen. This is why I've been spending a lot of time on the back end doing things. Altered Realities was a book that focused heavily on Magic and its consequences. It took me about ten years to write that. When the villains changed something, I needed to know the cause and effect of reality. In A Goddess's Gifts, the Magic was much more straightforward because, by that time, I had spent so much time developing the magic system that I didn't need to worry about what or how it worked. I knew it. And that came about from an understanding of the world I live in and the information I took in from other writers.
So, you're born with creativity. But do you work on improving it? How do you work on improving that? By applying it by asking questions. When you stop asking questions and wondering, that's when your creativity has died. Some develop it via panting, sculpting, writing, poems. There are many ways of acquiring your skills. I hope that I will continue to develop my creativity and ability to articulate it over my career. As you can probably tell by these blog posts, I tend to be a bit more of an off-the-cuff thinker when I haven't had time to polish the turd enough.
Incorrigibly yours,
J.E. Flint