As I sit here day before deadline, wondering and brainstorming on what to cover for this week’s post, one could believe it would be easy for an emerging journalist to come up with something to say. I beg to differ. 20th century American writer, Dorothy Parker once said: “Creativity is a wild mind and a disciplined eye.” So, how, as writers, can we stay productive, creative and original as we pursue a career in this industry? How do we not contribute to journalistic redundancy? How do we keep our "minds wild?"
Also, transitioning from college newspaper writing to real-world production for a publication can be difficult. We are hired to provide fresh outlooks for publications. So, I have combined a list of tips from several publications to keep us new writers inspired and producing fresh, innovative work.
Lisa Lepki, who produced a similar guide in 2015 for Writer's Digest says: Revisit old stories or works in progress.
“Sometimes the pressure of trying to think creatively feels like too much when you have been up all night with a screamer. When I was too tired to come up with a single original thought, I dug out some of my writing from the past few years and revisited it,” Lepki said. “Everyone has those stories that just kind of petered out. Going back, I was amazed to find some gems among the (mostly) tedious pieces. Now that I had some distance, I could see the elements that needed to be cut. I could see inconsistencies where I hadn’t before. ProWritingAid would highlight my ridiculously long, overcomplicated sentences and I would easily be able to fix them when they had confounded me before. Weirdly, I was quite a good editor in my sleep-deprived state, even if I had trouble creating anything new.”
Stacia Pierce from the Huffington Post published an article on "21 Ways to Stay Creative", and this piece of advice particularly stuck out for me.
Write freely.
“Write uninhibited thoughts early in the morning when you first wake up to jump-start your creativity,” Pierce said. Brilliant ideas, solutions and reminders will come early in the morning.”
When I can catch up to my thoughts and decide writing an article o a particular subject is a good idea, I don’t write it down, more often than not. So, when it is time for me to revisit past thoughts and sit down and write them, they’ve escaped, so I end up writing articles like this. So Pierce, in a sense, welcomes you to start fresh in the morning instead of brushing those ideas off. Good idea.
Third, and the most common advice I have received as a writer comes from writer, Escrivator, on iReport for CNN: Keep a journal.
“Keep a diary or a journal with you always. Ideas can be triggered by anything you may hear, see, or smell. Your senses are your radar in finding great ideas," the writer said. Write all of them into a journal and keep it with you for future reference. You may also write down anything that you have read or heard, someone’s ideas could be used to develop your own ideas and this is not stealing. Remember that ideas and creativity can come from anywhere; it’s the development of the idea that makes it unique.”
Overall, becoming a new-age journalist has its obstacles, but the best way to stay afloat is to stay inspired. Find and write about things that keep you interested and from there, your piece will already be an original, creative extension of you.
