Part 2 of 2
Language: Communication & Connection
Writing is a natural extension of the human voice, one of the first and primary ways we express ourselves as people. Language enables us to articulate our ideas, dreams, and fears with lyricism and depth as well as connect with others through the immediacy of narrative, or storytelling.
Creative people are often drawn to writing because language is most people’s first line of connection with themselves and others, and expressing our thoughts through language is a natural response.
When we strive to make meaning from our experiences, doing it through language is satisfying because we’re able to use the creative functions of the brain to draw links and make connections between ideas and then channel them into words.
The Linearity of Thought
Because we look for connections between ideas, the linear aspect of writing enables us to more easily arrive at clarity.
Our continual access of the neural networks enables us to puzzle through complicated situations. Doing this in writing is well served by many different forms. Personal essay, blog, story, poetry, screenplay, novel or memoir, entrepreneurial writing or post-graduate articles provide infrastructures perfect for plotting out a narrative or muddling our way through our own unconscious minds as we strive to arrive at resolution.
After the creative brain makes its connections, our thoughts are able to effectively travel and move forward when given physical shape in words and ideas. Even the act of writing physically takes us through a linear, progressive motion. (Note that not one language in the world is written in a circle).
Writing into that linearity and through it allows for ideas and concepts to move forward and evolve.
This is one of the key reasons people often gravitate to writing to explore their lives, their world, and their relationship to the things in it. It allows them to extract order from chaos.
Also, practically speaking, writing is extremely user-friendly: it’s cheap, portable, and transferable to other types of situations such as your job!
Consider the times you needed to think through a troubling or complicated situation – did you aim for a journal or open a fresh document on your computer? People are drawn to writing because you can privately work out a situation by allowing your thoughts to freely flow from A to B to C without another’s judgement or critique.
The Braid of Networks Support Other Areas of Writing
Innumerable creative traits lend themselves beautifully to writing: empathy, for one, is a true gift to the writer, who uses that ability to compassionately enter into others’ experiences, hearts, and desires in order to bring them to life with authenticity and intimacy on the page.
Imagination and playfulness give a writer free rein to go “off-roading” with early drafts, letting the unconscious mind run rampant in order to forge through new, and sometimes risky, mental and emotional territory.
Our willingness to be flexible with how we bring forth our ideas makes it so we can allow the writing itself to determine whether it would be best served by one form or another (poem or screenplay? Short story or memoir?)
We also often blend in imagination with experience to nudge into other genres which may give us the most creative bang for our buck. Going with the flow ultimately allows for the work to find its ultimate home.
Celebrating Our Writer’s Biology
All in all, creative people are interesting, deep-feeling, and curious. When we channel our creativity into writing to consider the world and hazard the self in order to find meaning, we bring insight and a feeling of connection to others. There’s tremendous power in that.
It’s exciting to know you belong to a long tradition of remarkable creative people who have gone on to change the world for the better.
Creative people make others feel and think, make them laugh and hope. The world needs its creative people. What benefits us all is when creative people not just acknowledge and accept who you are, but celebrate and honor it- so you can go forth and create with confidence.
Recognizing your biological imperative as a creative person and why you are drawn to write is a marvellous way to begin or continue to with confidence, clarity, and the awareness that you are making the world a beautiful place.
THE NEXT STEP
One of the very best things you can do is to take your newfound awareness of your creative self and channel it into a writing practice.
Our 31-day self-guided online course: Cultivating Creativity: How to Start and Sustain a Writing Habit in 31 Days is designed to give writers a confidence mindset, teach you how to make room in your life for writing, and give you tools and prompts so you can get to know yourself as a writer while generating a ton of new material.
Whether you write for business, academia or creatively, if you want to see your skills grow, your confidence deepen, and your ideas bloom into all manner of exciting possibilities, then this course is the experience that will make that happen.
JOIN US TODAY
Because creative people are neurologically unique from non-creative people, it’s a comfort to spend time with other creative people. We get each other. It’s a relief to be able to share in certain biological givens across a diverse body of peers. This commonality makes the world much more intimate and inviting when we know we’re amongst those who accept us for exactly who we are.
At One Lit Place, you are always amongst your people. Our courses and workshops, writing, coaching and editing support, and Writers Lounge are designed for writers to get the education, support and connection necessary for all writers.
Writing Exercises:
- When you were young, what did you want to be when you “grew up”? Do you remember why you chose that particular thing(s)? Now, as an adult, if you could shift gears and suddenly be anything you wanted, what would you choose to do?
- In what ways could you incorporate that work into your life?
- Have you ever taken pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) in order to figure out something in your life or meditate on a particular subject? If you were to do that now, what would you write about?
- Goal #1: Write without stopping for 20 minutes on something you would like to get clarity on. Don’t think while writing or pause to look at what you’ve done- the key is to give yourself the opportunity to enter the flow state.
- Goal #2: Professor Csíkszentmihályi also talks about community and the sharing of creative works. His theory is your creative work is only creative if others are present to take part in and appreciate that work.
By joining the One Lit Place Writers Lounge on Facebook, you will know you are supported by other like-minded creative people who will in turn support you in your writing.
Creativity isn’t a choice; it’s who you are, and it’s an incredible way to be alive in the world. Even if you experience your creativity in other ways: painting, drawing, baking, exercise, reading, or engaging with others, you’re fuelling yourself as a writer- for your whole life.
Additional Resources:
- Kaufman, Scott B., and Carolyn Gregoire. Wired to Create: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind. Perigee, 2015.
- “8 Ways To Create Flow According to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi [+TED Talk].” PositivePsychology.com. Last modified February 14, 2019. https://positivepsychology.com/mihaly-csikszentmihalyi-father-of-flow/.
- “Know Your Brain: Default Mode Network — Neuroscientifically Challenged.” Neuroscientifically Challenged. Last modified June 16, 2015. https://www.neuroscientificallychallenged.com/blog/know-your-brain-default-mode-network.
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