Is all writing creative?

If you had asked me five years ago if I thought of myself as a creative person I would have said no. At the time, I was a Sociology lecturer and I was working on the manuscript of my book, based on my PhD research. I struggled a lot with writing the book, much more than I had expected, given that I’d already written the PhD thesis a few years earlier. I wanted the book to be more accessible than the thesis, more engaging and ‘creative’, but I felt like I had no idea how to achieve this. The ‘publish or perish’ pressures of academia and a fear of getting things wrong had stifled my ability to think creatively and enjoy the process. Neither did the heavy workload leave me with energy to read for pleasure across genres or disciplines, which narrowed my imagination in relation to my own writing.

A year later, I left academia (another story!). Looking back at my writing journey since then, I can see how it has been about recovering a sense of and belief in my creativity. I have experimented with different types of writing, styles and topics (mostly privately, without worrying about publication). My thinking about creativity has shifted during this time – from seeing it as something that only certain people have towards seeing that we are all inherently creative.

But what is creativity, and, if we all have it, does that mean we all use it?

What is creativity?

To stay on the topic of writing, if everyone is inherently creative, does this mean that all writing is creative? In Remembered Rapture: The Writer at Work, the late, great bell hooks (whose work I will come back to in future blog posts) shares the following quote by Nancy Mairs:

I do not distinguish between creative and critical writing because all writing is creative... Whatever the product – poem, story, essay, letter to lover, technical report – the problem is the same: the page is empty and will have to be filled. Out of nothing, something. And all writing is critical, requiring the same sifting, selection, scrutiny, and judgment of the material at hand. The distinctions are not useful... (Mairs, Voice Lessons: On Becoming a (Woman) Writer: 66)

Mairs’ approach to creativity intrigues me, as someone who has primarily written (critical, academic) non-fiction so far, but who is interested in creative writing (usually associated with fiction and poetry) and wondering how the two relate. But is Mairs right – is all writing creative? More generally, is creativity simply any activity that results in something appearing out of nothing? And should all and every instance of creativity be celebrated?

In today’s late capitalist society, we are encouraged to be creative, but only in private or profit-oriented ways.

The critical thinker in me is not fully satisfied with this ‘everything goes’ version of creativity. In Against Creativity, Oli Mould outlines how European colonisation and capitalist expansionism transformed creativity from being ‘a socialized and collective behaviour’ to ‘an individual characteristic that could be traded’ (think the lone ‘creative genius’ and the privatisation of the arts). In today’s late capitalist society, we are encouraged to be creative, but only in private or profit-oriented ways, whether as workers or consumers (design apps! write content! decorate your house!). Self-help books and podcasts encourage us to reawaken our creative selves, but generally in ways that focus on our own personal healing, with little attention to the wider world.

In order to be creative, we need space to slow down, daydream and imagine the unknown.

Mould defines creativity as ‘the power to create something from nothing’, but suggests we need to pay more attention to the power and the something parts: who has the power to create and what is the something that’s being created? Mould argues that creativity has been co-opted in the service of economic growth, with any countercultural/protest movement, art or ideology ‘viewed as a potential market to exploit’. But while he presents a rather bleak picture, he urges us to seek out, support and practise radical forms of creativity, which involves ‘believing in impossible things’ and resisting capitalism’s co-option of our creative powers.

Some key ingredients of the creative writing process

From a more critically informed perspective on creative writing, then, the kind of creativity I want to nurture in both my own and others’ writing is less about using particular styles or writing in particular genres, and more about a process of:

• expanding your thinking and ways of expressing it, through a wide-ranging and inquisitive engagement with the topic at hand, underpinned by curiosity, passion and an open mind.

• experimenting and trying new things, knowing that not everything will work, and that we might get things wrong, but that we’ll learn something new along the way.

• developing confidence in your own thinking and ideas. This is not about arrogance or about working in isolation – our thinking is always developed in collaboration and through building on other people’s ideas. But, from my own experience, I have come to see the importance of developing confidence in your own ideas. Without this, it’s easy to fall into the trap of trying to write what you think someone else wants you to say rather than what you want to say. This foundation is also important when working collaboratively with others, so that we can contribute our best thinking rather than feeling we don’t have anything important to bring to the conversation.

• asking the deeper questions about the topic at hand and how you are expressing your thinking about it. Some of these might include: (How) does what I’m writing engage with dominant societal structures? What are the gaps or silences in what I am writing? Are there other people it is important to connect with in thinking about this topic? Such questions resonate with Mairs’ point about the need to break down the distinction between critical and creative work. Critical writing is creative and the best creative writing (in my view!) engages with critical questions.

• slowing down. In order to be creative, we need space to slow down, daydream and imagine the unknown. We need time to look out the window, listen to the birds and ‘do nothing’. This in itself goes against capitalist productivity culture. It also leads to questions of resources and access: sadly, time and space to do nothing is hard to come by and ill afforded by many. Questions about creativity can therefore not be disconnected from questions of inequality. One of the many ‘impossible things’ we need to imagine is how to create a society where everyone’s needs are met and everyone has the space to exercise their innate creativity in ways that are meaningful to them.

This list is not meant to be definitive. It is a work in progress, as I am not done thinking about this topic, but hopefully it provides some useful food for thought. Maybe you have other ingredients to add? I’d love to hear from you.

Image: I took this photo some years ago somewhere along the River Lee in Hackney Marshes, London. The graffiti reads 'what is this life if full of care, / we have no time to stand and stare?'. The lines come from the poem 'Leisure' by W.H. Davies.