We all start life as creative people—you may have been discouraged during childhood or another time along the way to now, but creativity is within, waiting for you to rediscover it.
How can we cultivate our creativity to finally call ourselves ‘creative’?
Creativity is built into the system. It is part of being human.
Think of a time when you’ve:
Done something without being asked to.
Solved a problem.
Successfully communicated a point to someone.
All the above takes creative thinking.
Get to Know Yourself
Know yourself to find and use your creative voice—the special spin you put on everything you do. It makes your work yours.
Getting to know yourself will help you discover or recover that creative voice and put a little bit of you into all you create.
Questions to help you get to know yourself
What do you care about?
What is your passion? Which tasks on your to-do list are things that you actually want to do? What could you talk about forever?
The answers don’t matter. The point of these questions is to find things you love in order to know yourself better.
What are your fears?
Fears can be controlling. Think about the fears you have that might be holding you hostage. Common fears are:
Disappointing others
Failure
Inadequacy
Imperfection
Rejection
Success
Knowing your fears can help you better deal with those feelings when they rear their ugly heads and try to strangle your creative voice.
You can also use the emotions from fears and put them to good use in your writing.
What inspires you?
Search for what you like.
If you want to write a novel in a specific genre, be inspired by reading books written by authors you enjoy.
To create music, listen to the music from bands you love.
If you wish to paint, gather a collection of the artists whose works make your heart sing.
Copy the old masters, in any of the arts, for practice. It’s a good way to learn.
Inspiration cannot be forced and will often strike like a lightning bolt at the oddest times.
In the shower.
Folding laundry.
Daydreaming.
While meditating.
The muses seem to work best when our minds aren’t cluttered with thought. We can’t hear them if we are too tense or scattered. Since I am a “Look! There’s a squirrel!” type, I only hear the muse when I’m completely relaxed and have done my best to not think.
What motivates you?
What gets you into gear on any given day?
Achieving a personal goal or career milestone?
Do you need a deadline? Some people thrive under pressure.
Earning a living?
Setting an example for a team, being a leader?
Use your motivation to keep life’s plotline moving forward.
What are your work habits?
When do you prefer to do your creative work, early in the day, or late at night? Local customs can work into the mix. When we lived in Mazatlán, near the beach, the decibel level rose dramatically in the afternoon—like one big party—so I wrote in the morning.
Do you work best when you do use “chunks” of time? A writing group I meet with now and then has write-ins. We write for 45 minutes, socialize for 15, and repeat. I found them on MeetUp.com.
What writing environment brings out your creative side? Local coffee house? Beer garden? Library? Home office?
How about sound? Do you prefer quiet? Music playing in the background? Ambient noise?
Identifying your work habits will give you a clearer sense of how to build your days around your creative high points, and help you notice when your creative voice, your muse, is speaking.
Meditation Supercharges Creativity
Years ago, I took a Transcendental Meditation course at the urging of some friends. I found it useful, relaxing, but let it drift away after a few years.
During the pandemic I started meditating daily to help reduce stress. I found during that “down-time” it became easier to connect with the muse.
“As shown by a 2012 UCLA School of Medicine study, meditation cranks up the corpus callosum, making it bigger, stronger, thicker, and in-turn, more well-connected. Yes, very much like Einstein.
(Note: We aren't saying that meditation will make us the "next Einstein," it's more about being the best version of "us." Meditation helps you reach your potential better than any other medium.)”
Have you ever felt as though your creativity dried up? What do you do to get your creative juices flowing? When are you inspired?
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About Ellen
Author, speaker, and former teacher, Ellen L. Buikema has written non-fiction for parents, and The Adventures of Charlie Chameleon chapter book series with stories encouraging the development of empathy—sprinkling humor wherever possible. Her Works in Progress are The Hobo Code, YA historical fiction and The Crystal Key, MG Magical Realism/ Sci-Fi, a glaze of time travel.
Captain Jack Sparrow, love him or hate him, most people FEEL something for the irascible pirate. What is it about Captain Jack that makes him so memorable? Anti-hero. Failed pirate. I mean, I find Jack hilarious, but would I necessarily want him in my life…. Not really. In every movie, his goal is entirely self-centred. Some have labelled him as having antisocial personality disorder, which basically means he’s reliable in only one way: he’ll only do what’s good for him regardless of the rules/legality, of what’s best for others, or the harm he causes.
So why do we love him? I mean, for a number of years, Captain Jack would make appearances at children’s hospitals and such. This character isn’t just for kids, isn’t just for adults.
Quite a few might say that it’s less about the writing and more about the acting – the physicality of the character that doesn’t translate for written fiction, and fair enough – Johnny Depp has breathed incredible 3-dimensional life into this character, but what is it about this character that might be replicable for fiction writers -- what can we borrow? What can we glean from that character and the portrayal of that character, to help us create emotional connections with readers and our own work?
Jack Sparrow Is Relatable
In some way, many of us are able to put ourselves in Jack’s boots situationally. Giving your characters traits that your reader might share is an easy win. It’s hard to put yourself into a story, into someone’s shoes, if you can’t see yourself in any of their character traits or decisions. And often, Jack does what many of us would like to do, says things we’re thinking but would never let ourselves say out loud. And then Jack uses humour and charm to avoid the consequences.
“Did everyone see that? Because I will not be doing that again.” Jack Sparrow
A Lot in Common
We love Jack because we have a lot of things in common with him. No, really – we do. He prefers to talk his way out of trouble instead of using brute force, even though he has the sword skills to do great injury. He’s witty and creative, and uses those strengths to his advantage, and though at times his intelligence seems questionable (a bit addled from the rum), he thinks outside the box. He’s impulsive, but that means he isn’t afraid to jump at an opportunity and many of us wish we had that kind of courage.
“He’s able to get away with things we’d love to be able to get away with.” Johnny Depp
Jack is OK with ambiguity. Today’s enemy could be tomorrow’s ally. He’ll steal your rum one day and shake your hand the next. Jack’s morality tends to be situational, but isn’t that also true of our own society where little white lies, no harm no foul, and other such sayings are held as truth. A person might never steal a chocolate bar or clothing from a retail store, but they’ll pirate movies or music or ebooks without thought. We might say we value honesty, but we’ll lie when the truth might hurt feelings or jeopardize relationships that are important. The character who always chooses the moral right, who’s never dishonest or corruptible in any way, is hard to relate to.
Jack’s A Somewhat-Ethical Pirate
Your character needs to stand for something. They have to draw a line in the sand — this far and no farther. That line will look different for every character and that line doesn’t have to be one that readers necessarily would choose for themselves, but it’s one they can cheer for. Readers connect emotionally with characters who have a code of ethics they won’t violate–an ethic the reader can cheer for.
Jack always chooses himself, and yet… he attempted to rescue Gibbs.
He does nothing but fight with Elizabeth, and yet when the opportunity arose, he chooses to kiss her and show a glimpse of his true emotions regardless of the consequences.
Complicated Character
Jack is a complicated character and whether he’s good or bad is often up for interpretation. Jack isn’t a pacifist, but he often steps in and tries to de-escalate an impending conflict (often for self-interested reasons) by suggesting a negotiation. When he does draw his sword, it’s in self-defence.
“Why fight when you can negotiate?” Jack Sparrow
Let’s not forget that the reason Jack was branded a pirate was because instead of delivering a shipment of slaves, he set them free. Jack, in the end, often chooses the morally right thing to do at his own personal sacrifice, even if he’s doing it for selfish reasons. He rescued his friends from the Kraaken (and the Pearl), he walked away from the fountain of youth, and he helped break the curse of the The Flying Dutchman to free Will Turner.
“Not all treasure is silver and gold, mate.” Jack Sparrow
Jack Is Always The Underdog
Readers love to cheer on the come-from-behind-kid, the one who succeeds against all odds, the David in a David-and-Goliath story, the nerd fighting against the schoolyard bully. When a character faces overwhelming odds, when they choose to step into a hard thing when they could walk away, readers get behind that. They want the character to win, but the odds need to be overwhelming and preferably the stakes are life and death. I don’t mean only literal life and death stakes, but identity-ending, career-suicide, life-is-no-longer-worth-living kind of stakes.
In every movie, Jack has a goal–there’s something he wants. His motivations aren’t always obvious or clear, sometimes even to himself, but he presses on even though the odds of him succeeding are fairly remote (hello – finding the fountain of youth??).
Jack Teaches Us Things
Readers want entertainment AND they want an emotional journey. They want to immerse themselves in a fictive dream and become a character, live vicariously through them, for a short period of time. Fiction helps challenge people’s thinking and offers new perspectives and paths for readers in a non-threatening way. It’s OK if you only want to entertain with your writing, but it’s OK if you want to use if for more than entertainment too.
“If you choose to lock your heart away, you’ll lose it for certain.” Jack Sparrow
Jack is a character a lot of people wish they could be more like (in certain ways). Jack is comfortable in his own skin, in the expression of his personality, and doesn’t care too much what other people think of him. He doesn’t take offense easily and doesn’t hold a grudge.
Jack very much lives in the moment.
He doesn’t concern himself with a five year plan or even where he’ll sleep that night. Jack embodies freedom.
“Wherever we want to go, we’ll go. That’s what a ship is, you know. It’s not just a keel and hull and deck and sails–that’s what a ship needs. But what a ship is–what the Black Pearl really is–is freedom.” Jack Sparrow
Most of us, in some way, long for that kind of free-spirited freedom, ability to laugh at ourselves, own our eccentricities and quirks, and care less what people think of us.
Jack Surprises Us
Writing that has readers leaning in, afraid to put the book down because they have to know what happens next — that’s the goal, right? That’s my goal. The surprises have to be true to the character and the storyworld, and when the surprise causes the main character even more trouble, we cheer them on even harder.
Jack constantly surprises us.
He’s funny. His wit and charm are disarming and the way he plays with the truth makes you feel like you’re inner circle sharing an inside joke. His antics, his flailings, his reliance on rum, it all adds up to entertainment and surprise. A joke isn’t funny if you already know the punchline, right. Sometimes his wit is full of great truth. Sometimes you have to repeat what he’s said to yourself a few times and then it hits you — ooooh, that’s deep.
“You’ve stolen me and I’m here to take myself back.” Jack Sparrow
“The problem is not the problem. The problem is your attitude about the problem. Understand me?” Jack Sparrow
In what ways did you connect with Jack Sparrow? Do you use any of these tips in your writing?
About Lisa
Lisa Hall-Wilson is a writing teacher and award-winning writer and author. She’s the author of Method Acting For Writers: Learn Deep Point Of View Using Emotional Layers. Her blog, Beyond Basics For Writers, explores all facets of the popular writing style deep point of view and offers practical tips for writers.
She runs the free Facebook group Going Deeper With Emotions where she shares tips and videos on writing in deep point of view.
In Part 1, we covered why you want a newsletter and some of the key basics of the technology that you need to have in place to collect email addresses and send emails that will reach your readers’ inboxes.
For this part, I want to dive deeper into finding your audience and connecting with them so that they will open those emails.
Much of the available advice on this topic is generic because the actual steps need to be unique for each author or person selling a product. Here’s the problem: this advice isn’t wrong, but it often lacks direction on how to apply it to your business. Because it’s generic.
And your connection to your fans is unique.
There is a lot of advice out there for corporate marketing that does loosely apply to authors, but only in the process, not in the actionable steps. So let me start by outlining the steps, then I’m going to take a stab at showing you how to apply it.
The generic steps:
Identify your audience.
Identify your audience’s pain points. (If you don’t know what these are, keep reading!)
Clarify how you can meet those pain points.
Build a relationship with your clients.
Who are your fish?
When I teach social media marketing, I refer to your ideal fans, your superfans, as your “fish.” Your fish are the fans who are going to love your work so much they’ll share it with anyone they know. I chose fish because I wanted to set off what I was describing from other examples in the market, and because so many authors had described trying to find followers as fishing. (Spoiler: fish are friends, not food. We want to swim with them, not catch and fry them. If you cook them, they don’t school and bring their friends.)
The past few weeks, we’ve had a hilarious disaster in my household, and as I was preparing to deliver a talk on marketing for authors, I realized this story was the perfect metaphor for how to grow your following.
My fish story—a true story!
One of my sons loves all things ocean related, and as a young boy he had a fish tank. Platys are a type of live-bearing fish that he decided he wanted to try raising and breeding. Platys are also fairly aggressive, and they eat their young. We bought special tanks, separated the babies, did everything we could think of. I think we may have raised one baby fish while he had that tank. My point: it seemed like we’d never get babies, and for years, we were experimenting and failing.
He’s now grown and lives as much of his life underwater as possible.
But back to that tank. I’ve now taken it over and I decided I would try platys again. I bought three of them and put them in the re-established tank. We had these three for a few months. No babies. They seemed unhappy and aggressive. We had two males and one female, so we should have had babies but didn’t. One of the males died. Now I had two fish.
Researching platys, I discovered they liked to be in larger groups of about six fish. My small tank will only support about five full-grown platys, so I bought three more platys. Now I had two males and three females. Platys’ pregnancies last about four weeks. I watched several pregnancies come and go with no babies anywhere visible. Five fish.
Frustrated, I went and talked to a fish expert who agreed that the babies were being eaten immediately upon birth. He suggested things I’d tried before (baby isolation tanks, etc.) but I knew these didn’t work. Then he suggested making the tank more baby friendly. How about adding grass? He sold me some aquarium grass and I planted it in the tank.
Counting Fish
Finally, two juvenile fish appeared! They were already about four weeks old before I saw them for the first time. How had I missed them? Platy babies are really tiny. I’d been staring at that tank every day and hadn’t seen them at all! Now I had seven fish.
I added a log that had lots of hiding spaces underneath it. Another juvenile appeared. Eight fish.
This was exactly what I’d set out to achieve. These small fish were big enough not to be eaten. At this rate, they’d mature about the time the older ones died, I hoped, and I’d have something resembling a stable population.
My delight was shorter-lived than the average platy.
A few weeks later, I had about 10 more babies. The adults didn’t seem at all interested in eating them. Eighteen fish.
Note: platys can have between 20 and 90 babies every six weeks. A couple of weeks later and I can no longer count the fish in my tank.
I’d succeeded in making my tank too baby friendly! Three of my adults and as many babies as I could catch have been rehomed. Yes, this is the point at which the analogy starts to break down, although I will say that having a rapidly growing fan base can create a few technological challenges you’ll need to deal with.
My tank is full of fish, and I’m going to have to deal with the overpopulation issues.
Let’s get practical.
Who are you?
If I gave the same writing prompt to all of you, you’d each come up with a different story. Each of you would have a unique take and a unique style. The first thing you need to do is to identify what that style is. What makes you special?
Here’s where imposter syndrome can pop in. I need you to fight that impulse. You are unique and you have stories to tell. Don’t waste energy on whether or not this uniqueness is real. It exists; believe in it. Find it and try to define it. You may not get it right at first, but try.
Who are your fish?
Based on your understanding of your uniqueness, I want you to think about who your ideal audience will be. Who will love your stories?
Don’t try to please everyone. Don’t say your book is the next Harry Potter. Focus and try to define your ideal fan. The way this experiment works is that your fan should be a specific person with as many unique characteristics as you can come up with. They should be as unique and real to you as any character in your books. You’re looking for one fish. One very special fish.
The thing about fish is that they aren’t monogamous.
Your fans may also be fans of other writers, TV shows, movies, etc. Figure out where they are and what they love.
You want your potential fans to feel right at home when they connect with you. When they read your articles, blogs, social media posts, etc., you want them to nod. You want them to feel a connection with you.
Readers’ Pain Points
The term pain point is hard to apply to our fans, and yet they do have them. They’re bored. They’re seeking adventure, or romance. Readers are looking for a sense of being seen, or they want to feel validated. They want to feel hope. Some just want to feel anything. What is it that your readers are seeking? What do you offer them?
Some Examples of how this works:
Example 1
Let’s use an adventure-seeking fish as an example. This fan may live a fairly boring day-to-day life, but they long to see exotic places.
Now let’s suppose that you are a writer who uses exotic locations in your stories. This is a connection between you and your fish.
What sort of articles would this author want to write to attract their fish? How about information on the research they’re doing for their next book? How about sharing interesting details that you found that brought the setting of your last book to life?
Example 2
This fish is a geeky office worker who feels lonely and ignored.
We have an author who writes thrillers where the office desk jockey is faced with a challenge, rises to the adventure, and saves the day.
What sort of articles would this author write? Possibly funny office anecdotes? Stories that would make this reader feel seen? Anecdotes that they could laugh about while dealing with coworkers? Stories about the boss who misses out on the brilliance of their employees? Can you see how different authors might connect with this same fish in different ways?
Moving from connection to fandom
When it seems like no one is listening, keep going. Keep writing, keep reaching out. But if your list isn’t growing, experiment with other topics and approaches. Watch your statistics, but also give your fish time to discover and share your content. Remember that our goal is to write sharable articles, so we want to see our existing fans bringing in their friends. This won’t happen overnight.
One of my favorite examples is a client whose email list grew from 8 to 16 in a month. He was disappointed, but our marketing guru was excited. 100% growth! Keep doing that! The next month he had around 40. It would have been easy to say this growth was too slow and to try something else, but we advised him to continue, because he’d found his niche. 3 years later, he had a traditional book deal and bought a house. He’d found the secret to growing his audience, and it continues to grow.
Make your tank fish-friendly
As you begin to connect with your fish, reply to comments. Answer their emails. Make them feel special: because they are! In these comments and messages, they’ll give you more information about what they like and want to see. Pay attention to every hint they give you. Remember: baby fish are hard to see!
Pay attention to the topics that bring in fish, the special food they like, and the things they share with their friends. Once you have found something they like, give them more of it!
This extends to more than just your email list
It is easier to learn what attracts your fish through a mailing list than it is through writing books. Some authors write to market. They have a defined market or trope (for example: werewolf shifter romance) and they start out knowing what their readers want. This makes marketing much easier. If you’re in this pond and not attracting fish, consider if you have fully understood the genre or if you might have violated some key aspect of a trope that readers want.
Others write the stories they want to tell and are then required to define and find their audience. This is where marketing can be difficult, but also rewarding. Remember that even a small growth in your list is promising. First, find what your fish want through experimentation. Then, give them more of it and watch the list grow!
Do you have a newsletter? What has your experience been with it? Share your wins AND your horror stories!
AboutLisa
Lisa Norman's passion has been writing since she could hold a pencil. While that is a cliché, she is unique in that her first novel was written on gum wrappers. As a young woman, she learned to program and discovered she has a talent for helping people and computers learn to work together and play nice. When she's not playing with her daughter, writing, or designing for the web, she can be found wandering the local beaches.
