If you’re like me, some days you wake up with more creativity than others. (If you wake up with any at all!) Creativity is the ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules patterns, relationships, or the like, and to create meaningful new ideas, forms, methods, and interpretations. The fact that I like breaking up the monotony of daily life with quirky activities does help me, but I will admit that some routine also has a way of inspiring creativity in me.
We all have kitchen utensils, and we use them every day. Most of us cook with them. Some of us choose to discipline our children with a wooden spoon. We might even use utensils to decorate our kitchen… And we never use them at all, because they look so great sitting on the counter. *side note* I will also bring up the fact that several authors use utensil names in smexy scenes to describe ‘special’ parts. (You think you’re being creative, but unless the character is a dirty chef there is no reason anything outside the kitchen should be referred to as a pestle, pitter, reamer, or corkscrew.) *steps off soap box*
A lot of books I read blow my mind! They are filled with obscure, yet lovable, characters, enjoyably outrageous plot lines, and wonderfully innovative settings. My question is, can’t we think up anything new? It seems that everything I read is ‘like’ something I just read. I know that there are staples in our literary world that will never go away. And, I don’t want them to! I do, on the other hand, wish I could pick up a story and it be fresh and completely original.
We can use our kitchen utensils many ways. I believe our challenge, as creative writers, is to get in the kitchen and cook a new recipe. Use new ingredients. Maybe even change up the way we serve our stories. I don’t presume to have the answer to this question, but it is my personal goal to be creative and dish out stories that transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns, relationships, or the like, and to create meaningful new ideas, forms, methods, and interpretations.
