I’ve been meaning to write a post like this for a while, but never have because I’ve always felt a bit self-conscious about my “creative process”.

Mostly, this has been because . . . well it hasn’t really felt like I have a “process” so much as I just do things to keep my mind occupied, and sometimes they result in something I can call “finished” while many many many other attempts just never cross that hallowed threshold.

However, in recent years (at least since I wrote My Obsidian Journey Part 1 back in March of 2023), I would say it’s become important to me to try to document some kind of process, so that I can try to repeat it, and therefore give myself the greatest chances of success with each new project.

I’d say results have been mixed, as have my efforts in defining and sticking with a consistent practice. Perhaps this post will help clarify some things (for me). Perhaps you may even get something useful out of it too!

But before getting into the weeds of things, it feels right to give some context regarding my ‘creative’ habits.

Generally, I have three of them. Blogging, Fiction writing, and Music.

Sometimes I’ll get distracted and think “This is the year I learn how to draw!” or “What if I modeled something in TinkerCAD every day for a month?”, but these endeavors never last long and often leave me feeling a bit discouraged when they inevitably fizzle out. I tell myself that I’m getting better at recognizing these types of diversions and discarding them before I get too invested (emotionally or often financially lol), but I’m simultaneously just becoming more comfortable with the fact that sometimes I just need to work these things out of my system. Try them, and decide they were the mistake I knew they were when I started.

In any case, I (usually) keep coming back to my three mainstays, and they occupy (for me) different levels of creativity. As such, I use them in different ways.

Music

Lately, as I’ve been dipping my toes back into this world, I’ve found myself often explaining to others my experience with music saying something like “I was a musician in my past life, now I just play guitar”. After some inevitably confused looks I go on to explain that I minored in drums and percussion in college (a past life indeed) but burned out and am only recently (after 10ish years) getting back into music by picking up a new instrument.

Having pursued this medium pretty extensively in my past, I’m very aware of all the opportunities for creativity and nuance just a single performance can have, let alone a career of practice and study. This holds true whether it be your own music you’re working on or someone else’s.

At this moment however, I would consider my music to be pretty uncreative. It’s really something I do because I enjoy learning, and I’m still very early days in my journey. I liken my current skill to someone who is still learning what all the pieces do in chess. I could probably execute a few moves but they would be pretty basic and probably wouldn’t get me through an entire game. There would be a chance I could do something brilliant, and perhaps still win a game, but that chance is pretty low.

Guitar is at this point something I do to relax, and in some cases get away from my other creative pursuits. If I get stuck, I can usually go play guitar for an hour and though things are not generally any clearer afterward, I at least feel better (and productive).

I’ve been playing a lot of guitar lately . . .

Blogging

I feel this is probably the outlet I’ve seen the most success in, and likewise, the practice I’m the most dedicated to (at the moment). It is also perhaps the outlet in which my process is most clearly defined. I’ve tried to keep the rules simple here: one post a week, for as many weeks in a row as I can possibly string together . . . Rinse and repeat.

Within that framework, I’ve tried to allow myself the most room possible for things to write about (check out my first Blaugust post for an idea of how varied I can get) and generally I don’t have to get very creative to satisfy the basic tenets I’ve set for myself to follow. Read a book (or watch a movie / play a game), and then write down why I thought it was good or bad.

I’ll acknowledge that on a line-by-line, word-sentence-paragraph type level, manipulating language in order to express feelings and create meaning, there is indeed creativity at play. To make a compelling argument takes ingenuity and skill, but is mostly something I grapple with in the moment of doing, and not really something I consider otherwise.

Sometimes I’ve experimented a bit with the ‘form’ of my reviews which can be fun, but these moments are sort of lightning-strike in their frequency and intention. I never set out to write these kinds of posts, but if I have a jolt of inspiration, I just try to allow myself space to ride that lightning for as long as it energizes me (I really don’t think this is how this metaphor is supposed to be used lol). Perhaps my favorite example of such a post would be a review of Andy Weir’s The Marian I wrote by using Buzzfeed style headlines.

In any case, just writing a review of every random book I read is a good deal of work, and can feel pretty pointless pretty quickly, so over time I’ve found a couple ways to keep myself inspired. I’m not quite sure I would consider this ‘creative’ but to a certain extent it keeps me doing the work:

1. Challenges like Blaugust

I’ve sought out and participated in a few challenges like this over the years. Interacting with other bloggers and book reviewers always keeps things moving for me. Usually they come with prompt lists and while most of the fun is in reading how others have answered the prompts, there is a lot of enjoyment to be had figuring out how to contend with certain topics yourself.

Likely anyone who’s reading this post and participating in Blaugust already gets it.

The challenge I’ve participated in most frequently comes every May and is called #WyrdAndWonder. It’s a celebration of the Fantasy genre and always a great time. Similarly, #SciFiMonth is run by the same organizers and also a blast. I think that one takes place in November.

#JurassicJune and #Dinovember seem to kinda just be hashtags, without any challenges or prompts associated with them. I’m not even really sure they’re for blogging per se, but now that I know about them, I just adjust my normal weekly posts to try to be more dinosaur related. Which is fun lol.

#Smaugust is a challenge for artists in which you try to draw a dragon every day themed with different prompts. I can’t draw at all, so I’ve kind of co-opted it into my own thing (which is why I haven’t participated in Blaugust until now). Some years I’ve tried to write fiction for it, others more book reviews. I’m still finding my footing on this one.

2. Anniversaries and Holidays

These have generally come in two forms. If a big book or movie has an anniversary coming up, I’ll see if I have the bandwidth to finish a review in time. My posts on The Mummy (1999), and The Hobbit fall into these categories. To a certain extent, so did my post about Jurassic Park (Movie)’s 30th anniversary although it was also kind of a product of #JurassicJune.

I’ll also try to write posts about holidays which are important to me, or tie into whatever fiction I’m writing at the moment. This post explaining Orthodox Easter (ahem Pascha) and “Russian Christmas” are good examples. I’ve tried to write something related to “Russian New Years” a few times now which has resulted in reviews of popular — at least around New Years in Russia — film The Irony of Fate and it’s very western romcom remake: About Fate.

There are more or less an infinite number of these so really just pick the ones you enjoy. Perhaps the most superfluous one I try to hold every year is #NationalVelociraptorDay. It’s kinda dumb, but also really fun. Without it, I never would have watched the complete mess which is Velocipastor (jury is still out of whether or not that’s a good thing).

3. Responses to Other Posts

Sometimes something will catch my eye which I feel I just need to write about. 9 Things About Ancient Egypt I Hope We See In Marvel’s #MoonKnight is a great example of this. So is What Gods And Goddesses I’d Want to See in a God of War Game Set in Ancient Egypt!.

Essentially, it’s the old airport adage: See something, say something (wow I really need to stop using expressions in completely the wrong context).

4. Research Rabbit Holes and Trend Tracking

Sometimes I’ll be researching something for a piece of fiction and post about it in an effort to ‘Show Your Work‘. My post about Ancient Egyptian food is a good example of this. I would love to do more of these types of posts, but they’re a little harder to write.

Also, if I start noticing a trend or trope, I may also write about it. Death Is People Too: Personifying the Loss of Existence in History and Fiction is a good example of this kind of thing.

Fiction

Well that’s probably enough about blogging (for now). The last creative outlet I exercise now and again is writing fiction. Of the three outlets I’ve mentioned in this post, this is the one I consider the most “creative”.

It also is the outlet that — despite reading many books on craft and writing — is the least systematic, and the most prone to long stretches of inactivity.

Remaining ‘creative’ in this medium is hard.

In my early days, I would say a lot of the methods I used were unconscious and probably quite accidental. Now, as I try to codify the methods a bit more and use them more purposefully . . . well it’s become even more difficult.

However, I have picked up a few things here and there which are helpful:

Steal Like an Artist

This is the title of a book by Austin Kleon (which I of course reviewed) and is essentially the idea that you borrow ideas from artists (or in this case writers) you admire and over time find ways to make them your own. The best example I have of this actually comes from my past life in music in which I was always seeking to emulate Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham. I never could, but I learned a ton of things in the attempt which assuredly made my own playing more unique. The pursuit gave me a voice of my own on the kit (even if all that voice was saying was “God wouldn’t it be cool if I could play like John Bonham!”)

A Harsh Critique

Let the hate flow through you . . . Just kidding, don’t. Or maybe . . . do?

Where I’m trying to get to here is sometimes a good way to generate ideas for a story, is to find a couple stories which you absolutely loathe, and then rewrite them in a way which you absolutely love!

N.K. Jemisin is famous for doing this. Her Hugo nominated novel The City We Became is in many ways hate mail for H.P Lovecraft. Her short story Walking Awake is a clap-back at Heinlein’s The Puppet Masters. I’m sure there are many others I don’t know about.

You can also do this with tropes, or characters or . . . really anything.

I can’t say I’ve really used this technique to any great effect (I generally like most things I read), but I’ve sometimes found it useful when attempting to parody certain genres.

However, BE CAREFUL when using this method. While it is relatively easy, and will likely generate a LOT of ideas, you have to be careful how you implement them and most importantly consider YOUR REASON for doing so.

It’s probably pretty safe to take shots at a confirmed racist who has been dead for almost a century, but you probably want to at least tap the breaks a bit before doing this with anything else.

Read Non-Fiction (and space out during it)

Without a doubt, this is probably my most tried and true way of generating story ideas. Just pick up a non-fiction book and read it, and try not to start inventing stories about whatever it is you’re reading. For me it’s impossible.

Any subject will do. A book I was reading for work about User Experience inspired a whole magic system in one of my stories. Obviously any books on paleontology or archeology will help when it comes time to write more Egypt and Dino stories. Just pick whatever you’re into.

Generally, it seems like full length books are the most useful here, and I hate to say it, print media seems better (at least for me). Articles and internet posts just don’t seem get things flowing in the same way (though they are still quite useful).

The trick here is then recording all these day dreams. I’ve been using Obsidian to do so, but as I’ve written in My Obsidian Journey Part 1 and My Obsidian Journey Part 2 posts, it is not always easy.

But alas, the work continues . . .

Conclusion

So how do I stay creative? Short answer: lots of ways. Longer answer: everything you just read above.

Much like this blog is kinda all over the place, so are my creative outlets and methods. And it’s taken a pretty long time to cohere the meager approach I’ve written about here. Unfortunately, it would seem the two best creative tools are simply time and patience. Perhaps you might add a willingness to try new things (and perhaps more importantly, a willingness to fail at them).

But mostly, I stay creative by just continuing to try . . .

That’s all I have today. This has been a pretty long and rambling post so thank you for sticking with it. As you know, I love feedback in my comments section so please let me know what you think! What methods have you tried to stay creative. What inspires you to create? What outlets do you use?

Until next time!