IWSG Day: Creativity Evolved
Today’s question is:
How has your creativity in life evolved since you began writing?
I’ve been labeled “creative” and “imaginative” my whole life, but what that means to me has changed over time.
Most of the time, I took it as a compliment. However, there have been a few times I wondered if people called me imaginative because my ideas were just so weird.
However, writing and publishing fiction has showed me that a lot of my ideas aren’t as unique as I used to think. I’ve gotten plenty of rejection from editors saying my short stories were too familiar, too cliche, or two similar to overdone tropes.
On the other hand, I’ve gotten rejections along the lines of “it was a very imaginative piece, but it wasn’t right for us.”
It’s not just my definition of creative that has changed over time. The ways I express my creativity have evolved as well.
Making up stories has been a part of my life as along as I can remember, but writing them down used to be an inconsistent practice. In the times I wasn’t writing, my creativity showed in other ways.
The last two years I was in college, I was photographer at a mall portrait studio.
When I was in graduate school, I made just as much money making and selling beach glass jewelry as I made working part-time as a photographer.
Now that writing fiction is my main creative outlet, how I view creativity in terms of writing has changed. I used to think that drafting was the creative part, but I’ve since learned that revising, and even editing, is a rather creative process.
Want to see the results of my creative writing and editing? Buy a copy of Power Surge and read it.
