Planning Your Creativity

Editors note: This is a guest post from Thursday Bram of Constructively Productive.

I don’t really consider myself that creative. Sure, I’m a writer by trade, but I work hard. I don’t have the flashes of inspiration that you see in the movies.

I don’t think I’m the only one, either. I’ve talked to other writers, artists, coaches, inventors — anyone who should theoretically be having flashes of brilliant insight on a regular basis if we go by the traditional view of these careers — and it all comes down to hard work. If you want to create anything, you have to put in the hours to make it great.

Personally, I think that’s a good thing: I know how to work hard, even if I’m still not sure how to have an epiphany.

Creativity is Just Hard Work with a Pretty Name

I once wrote a 10,000 word ebook in a single day. It was a pretty decent ebook, at least according to the reviews I received. It was non-fiction — not the most creative project I’ve ever worked on — but it did take a little more creativity than lining letters up on the Scrabble board.

I’d planned for the project: I knew what I needed to do, what I needed to cover. I knew my deadline wasn’t exactly forgiving and I had a few other projects on my plate. I had an outline and I needed to get it done.

So I sat down at my desk and typed for a day. I hit key after key after key and the ebook took shape. It was hard work. I was sweaty and exhausted by the time I finished, as tired as if I’d built a house. I’d done a good day’s work.

Creativity is hard work. It’s just as hard to hold a coaching session or design a building as it is to dig a ditch or paint a house. It’s hard enough work that I go out of my way to avoid needing to ever write 10,000 words in a single day again. But when you don’t have to wait for a flash of inspiration, you can plan. You can make creativity a little easier to come by.

Make Creativity Natural

Seeing creativity as something hard to come by is dangerous. It means that you can afford to let yourself wait for inspiration, that you can put off what you need to do to move forward until your creativity kicks in.

You have to make sure that you can always put the work necessary into a creative project. You may not get a flash of brilliance for every project that comes along, but you can make sure that you’ve put yourself in the position to be able to think about projects and complete them even without a ‘Eureka!’ moment.

How you do that depends on your working process. I stockpile ideas for my writing, dive into research and generally fill page after page with my work before I come anywhere near my final version.

Building your skills is one way to make sure that you are able to work on anything that comes your way. By knowing what you need to do with a given project, you’re able to handle the hard work. You may even be able to leave yourself open for a moment of true creativity.

Make Room for Brilliance

I may not consider myself particularly creative, but I’ve had my moments. I made it through most of that ebook project on sheer adrenaline. But there was a moment of clarity when I came to the end of it. The ebook wasn’t the best thing I’ve ever written, but it was solid. But I knew, at the end of the day, of a truly perfect blog post I could write that would make sure that the people who could really use this ebook would find it. My creativity kicked in at the moment and gave me a little extra oomph.

I’m a firm believer in the power of hard work, but that doesn’t mean that I’m not open to creativity when it comes along. I make sure that I feed my creativity whenever possible, with new ideas, books, blogs and generally great things that help me think in new ways.

If you want to be successful in a creative field, you do have to leave yourself open to those flashes that do come — even if they don’t come with the sheer frequency that Hollywood suggests. Hard work provides the opportunity to make sure that when that inspiration comes, you’re ready for it. You can build a solid base while you’re waiting, putting you in the position to use your creativity to propel something that’s already good to a level of greatness.

Thursday Bram is a writer who covers entrepreneurship and productivity. With Ali Luke, she launched Constructively Productive and created the Creativity Toolbox.