Push your creativity further.

Boredom is a beach without the ocean.

Sir Bovine having felled a loose cannon. Art by me

It would do every writer well to inject aspects of their spoken personality into their written word. A lifetime of learning writing under rigid rules causes us to forget the natural poetry of our everyday language. But writing like you talk is a great defense against ugly writing, and every essayist ought to learn as much. Beyond that lesson, however, is writing better than we talk. It’s rude to get up and walk away from someone talking to you. But if a writer does not put in extra care, a reader can always put a piece of paper down in favor of more modern entertainment like a game of snake or bocce ball. As Susan Sontag says, our writing can be smarter than we are, given the time we get to rewrite it. When we sit down with our drafts, it is important to look for places where we can push our creativity further, particularly in our descriptions.

Our writing can be smarter than we are, given the time we get to rewrite it.

As writers, we often default to worn-out expressions, metaphors, and clichés that have little evocative power. In Politics and the English Language, George Orwell calls these lackluster figures of speech dying metaphors, worn-out expressions that shield writers from inventing new phrases for themselves. Examples are: moving the needle forward, talking to a brick wall, low-hanging fruit, thinking outside the box, beating a dead horse, watching paint dry, cutting the tension with a knife, painting the picture, loose cannon, a perfect storm, and running out of steam. They all pretend at creating a sensory experience, but since they’ve been in use for so long, they often result in the reader passing over them with little regard.

Take a phrase like loose cannon, which has its utility to describe an unruly person or thing. But when we hear the phrase, we don’t necessarily picture a poorly secured cannon on a ship sloshing around and splintering wood. No. It has become ubiquitous, and we often skip the imagery in a manner that wouldn’t take place with an original image. When we encounter a cliché in our writing then, we have to think about the ways we can instead invent a new turn of phrase. 

One method is to break down the basic idea a cliché is trying to express and seeing if there is an image from our lives or imagination that would better communicate the same idea. What’s boredom? Is it watching paint dry? No. It’s as Joe Andros said, “Boredom is a beach without the ocean.” What is it to make something out of place? Is it bringing a fish out of water? No. It’s as Chloe Bertrand said, “It’s taking an armadillo to the Louvre.” 

It is challenging to invent new phrases without having a grasp on writer’s voice, which is all the techniques we use to make our writing feel like us, and in this case, if we regularly use clichés, better than us. To invent new phrases and push our creativity further then, we must learn to love our sensibilities. As writer Susan Orlean says, “self-analysis is crucial to developing a strong voice.” What makes us laugh? What makes us cry? What physical sensations do we react to? If we want to describe something in an interesting way, we have to recognize our quirks and the things we find genuinely interesting, amusing, or otherwise evocative. 

As an exercise, set a timer for a minute, take the concept you want to encapsulate, and describe it three to five times. Push yourself to be more inventive with each, and call upon different aspects of your experience or imagination.

Concept: Boredom.

Boredom is watching paint dry.

Boredom is waiting in line for hours.

Boredom is sitting in a room without a Sega Genesis.

Boredom is a beach without the ocean. 

Having a few clichés here and there won’t ruin a piece. And after this exercise, you may decide to pick something in the middle or even opt to speak plainly and just say that something was boring. But the point is that we are challenging ourselves to go beyond the default description that comes to mind and imbuing our unique creative lens as often as possible.

Like good comedians, good writers see a connection between the abstract and the mundane and find meaning along the line."

To me, creativity is how we pull seemingly disparate concepts and ideas together to create something new. Like good comedians, good writers see a connection between the abstract and the mundane and find meaning along the line. In pushing our creativity further, we discover the point of writing as a medium. It offers time to anguish and invent and see ideas through to greater ends. It lets us access parts of ourselves that we do not always show in person. Parts of ourselves, that are still fundamental to who we are as people, but may just need time to emerge.

Keep up with my work: Jadefabello.com

Insta: @Jade__Fab

Twitter: @Jade_FW