The Secret to Generating Infinite Amounts of Creativity (+3,394,192 XP!!!)
Creativity is an abundant resource.
“Opportunities” are abundant.
But you don’t recognize them.
If you want to cultivate creativity for the rest of your life and develop a ritual to spark your brain up, you need to read this post.
Granted, not all creativities are the same. If you’re a business owner and looking to generate ideas for the stock market, it would be a great idea to instead start writing down 10 ideas a day (new post coming out soon about that) instead of doing The Secret.
However, if you’re looking for an opportunity to add some joy in your life and become more creative just generally, it would be a FANTASTIC idea to try this!
With all that out of the way, let’s stop wasting time and look at how you can become a more creative person:
Write Fiction- Creativity, Purpose, and Happiness
On this blog I often talk about the benefits of nonfiction and how amazing it is, but there’s just as much specialness in the exact opposite genre.
Not too long ago I wrote 2 short stories and explained the mistakes I learned from them, but it was still a VERY beneficial experience.
After I wrote my stories, I felt like there were these new ideas going off in my head; I thought of what I should write this week on the blog and I IMMEDIATELY got 5 post ideas when it normally takes me 20 minutes to get 1.
The crazy thing is that I also felt a lot more purposeful. Knowing that I had written 2 short stories that might not have been perfect but WERE good to a degree, I felt proud and accomplished.
You can also become a lot happier- after I wrote my fiction I was walking with a stride in my step, bouncing when my foot hit the ground and I had my chin held HIGH with a slight smile on my face.
Writing fiction made me more creative, purposeful, and happy.
Let’s break down why:
Creativity
First, writing fiction makes you more creative for obvious reasons. When you’re writing fiction you’ve got to be generating new ideas constantly to fit in this world that isn’t yours.
Even just writing anything- any genre, any subject- can make you more creative!
When you start exploring stuff that isn’t seen as normal, you’re going to see special stuff in your life- ideas!
When you write fiction you need to engage the brain in making patterns and generating ideas for the future- creativity!
Practice obviously makes perfect, so if you’re practicing writing fiction, which is a skill that REQUIRES you to use creativity, you’re going to be pretty good at using creativity!
Purpose
Second, writing fiction makes you more purposeful. When you’ve created a story that’s decent length, when you’ve created a story that took time and effort, you look back on your work with a sense of elation and pride.
This does apply to pretty much all work… but the skill of writing offers more purpose than most works because you’re most often writing for someone else.
If you’re writing nonfiction, you’re improving someone else’s life and/or teaching them something.
If you’re writing fiction, you’re giving them happiness and pleasure in your literature.
After you’ve sat down and written a good story you’re proud of, how can you not feel accomplished?
Furthermore, as time goes on and you write fiction pieces more, you’re going to get better and better. You’re going to see that you’re getting better and better and know that you’re growing and improving yourself.
This then starts the positive feedback loop; you’re getting better, which causes you to feel good about getting better, which causes you to get even better, etc.
Happiness
Writing fiction makes you happier.
The first reason is tied to the purpose and pride you feel when you write and accomplish- in the process improving someone else’s life or day.
There’s also the blatant fact that when you write fiction, sometimes you’re going to be emotional and want to express yourself through your work. At this point it’s pretty much journaling your feelings!
If you decide to also write about yourself, your past, and your future in a journaling kind of way, you’re going to experience major mental health and happiness boosts.
So much work has been done to discover that creativity is also related to happiness; being more creative can make you happier, so it should be no surprise to discover that as you become more creative through writing fiction you also become a lot happier.
Keeping the positive streak going, you also become a lot happier because most fiction works are quite positive, meaning when you write fiction you’re setting a good intention and getting yourself into the mind of positivity and happiness.
Writing fiction makes you more creative, purposeful, and happy.
Because of the creativity bonus, it should be no surprise that you also get to see new opportunities for pretty much everything!
Opportunities
You have so many opportunities around you in daily life.
You might complain about how you don’t get any opportunities in your friendships or in your work, but guess what?
You do get opportunities.
You just can’t see them.
EVERY time someone is upset with something or someone has an emotion or an opinion about something, that’s an opportunity.
As MJ Demarco says in The Millionaire Fastlane, all of these sentences are opportunities:
“I hate…”
Remove the hate for something and that’s an opportunity.
If your boss is complaining about how much they hate how hard it is to find recordings of meetings in the company, there’s an opportunity to create a folder of all recorded meetings.
If your best friend crush is complaining about how they’re still single, that’s an opportunity.
“I don’t like…”
If you can make it easier to do what somebody doesn’t like to do, that’s an opportunity.
If your coworker says, “I don’t like how we don’t have communication between ourselves”, that’s an opportunity.
“This frustrates me…”
“Why is this like this?”
“Do I have to…?”
“I wish there was…”
“I’m tired of…”
“This sucks”
These are all opportunities. There’s so many phrases and thoughts YOU think every single day that is an opportunity in disguise.
Writing fiction helps recognize opportunities in disguise by giving you the chance to think creatively.
When you’re thinking about a way your story can go, you’re practicing opportunity-recognizing. Practice makes perfect, so you’re automatically going to get better at recognizing opportunities.
Writing in general is also an amazing skill to have.
Check my first post on havenofthereaders.com/blog/ (it’ll be on the last page)- it’s really short and not that good quality.
I have paragraphs of information which nobody would ever read.
I have aggression and no pictures.
From personal experience I can say that as I have written more I have gotten better and better at writing. If I took a writing test I’d score significantly higher than I would have before.
Even though my posts are written specifically for you, I am now better at writing in general.
Yeah, I do have a “specialization” in blog-writing, but I could copywrite, write an article, or take an English test and my score WOULD be improved.
Writing is a skill you need to use all your life. If you’re marketing something, you need to copywrite!
If you’re writing a resume, you need to know how to describe yourself and how to make yourself sound most appealing.
If you’re writing a college application essay, you need to know how to structure it.
You can specialize, but just by the mere act of writing something, even fiction, trains your brain to search for vocabulary, to think of ways to make your writing more interesting, and overall makes a life skill a lot better.
Writing fiction could also be a pastime activity. For you, writing could be a VERY enjoyable activity.
Even just brainstorming your plot generates excitement:
Ooh, I know: I’ll pretend like this is happening and generate a plot twist here! Oh, this is going to surprise the reader (hypothetical person that might read this) so much! Yeah, AND if I give these signs the character’s going to be good but they backstab the main character’s friend I KNOW the reader will be shocked. Let’s get down to work!
Writing is a very viable flow activity too. As Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi says in his book Flow, the most enjoyable periods of life are ones in a flow state, a state that occurs “if a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.
“The best moments in our lives are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times . . . The best moments usually occur if a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile”
Writing fiction can achieve a perfect slow state. Writing fiction is already something worthwhile: you’re creating something people can enjoy and crave and something that makes you more purposeful, happier, and creative.
If you make it so, writing fiction can also be difficult. Depending on how much you write in a day and how much quality and thought you put into your work, writing fiction can become a flow activity where you’re immersed.
Furthermore, writing can help you gain a deeper appreciation for reading. If you’re reading a book, you get tricked, and you realize that, you’re going to be filled with so much wonder and admiration of the author.
You’ll study what they did to make you hooked and you’ll become an even better writer.
If you become a good enough writer, you might even end up becoming an author! Authoring and not just on platforms like Medium- authoring an actual published book- can generate even more purpose into your life and achieve an even greater flow state.
Now writing is something that you’re doing to make other people happy and it’s something that you need to put your entire attention on in order to succeed and write well.
How to Implement the Habit of Writing Fiction (or just writing in general)
I’ve said all this stuff about how “Writing fiction is amazing!” and how “You should write!”
But how do you actually implement that in your daily or weekly life?
Method 1: The Daily Habit
If you have enough free time on your hands and you find yourself constantly bored, you could take up a habit of writing a certain amount of words, pages, or time every day.
Set aside a time each day where you’re going to write and write until your word goal/ time goal is done. If you still want to write after you complete your target, by all means, keep writing!
Pros:
- You’ll get really good at writing very quickly.
- You’ll gain discipline to force yourself to write even when you don’t want to.
- You’ll take the rest of the day in stride because every day you’re writing and doing purposeful work that likely puts you into work.
- You’ll write a lot.
Cons:
- Takes some time.
If you’re thinking about writing every day, here’s what you need to do RIGHT. NOW:
- Open up a folder for all your daily pieces.
- Create a document (Docs, Word, or a Notion page)
- In your head, think of the time you’re going to write tomorrow and envision yourself writing the entire time.
- Create a timer to remind yourself when it’s time to write.
When tomorrow comes, you might not feel ready and you might not feel ready even just planning to write.
You’re not always going to feel ready to write, but, for fiction, just create a random setting in whatever fantasy land you want to think of, think of some characters, and write about them. Create a problem after you write a bit and then solve it with a plot twist.
You’re not going to feel ready to write, but you need to. Just try writing 100 words. That’s all you have to do. If that sounds daunting, write 10.
You can either choose to write short stories and write a completely new story every day or you can continue stories over multiple days/ weeks.
The Daily Habit method of writing is beneficial if you have quite a bit of time. If you do and you want to try it out, go for it!
Method 2: The Weekly Quota
This is the method I use and it’s one where you just set an amount to write each week.
For example, I write a blog post on the weekends with 2,000+ words every week.
It doesn’t take as much time as writing daily, but it still means you get a good amount of writing in. Yes, sometimes I’ll work towards the post during the week, but 95% of the post is made on the weekend. This habit led to this post for you!
If you have some time and especially quite a bit of time on the weekend, why not try a weekly quota where you have to write a certain amount each week?
Method 3: Write a Book
If you want to go extreme, try writing a book. Set a page and a word goal for yourself and set mini-deadlines too so you don’t get off track.
Don’t try to write a book in a week or a timeframe that is not possible to accomplish.
AMAZING TIP: Mini-deadlines are the savior of books and finishing your overall target.
If you publish one book, amazing work to you! You’re now an official author and hey, who knows, you might enjoy it and decide to write more.
Conclusion
This post was on why writing fiction makes you:
- More creative
- More purposeful
- Happier
And how writing helps you recognize opportunities in life.
This post also covered why writing is an amazing skill to have and we ended off with some talk on Flow and how to implement the practice of writing.
Thank you so much for reading this post. I hope you have an absolutely SPECTACULAR day and goodbye!
If you’re seeing this on Blogger or Medium, check out havenofthereaders.com (as of right now there’s 20 other posts on there for you to read) to see the original website.
P.S. Do you want to miss out on ALL of these benefits and NOT get full, exclusive access to all of Haven of the Readers? Probably “NO!” right? If you don’t want to miss out, subscribe with the link at the end of this post.
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