✍️ Two Words that Will Boost Your Creativity Immediately
or, Tomorrow Never Knows
Spoiler Alert and Fair Warning: You’ve heard these two words from me a million times!
Last year, Oasis enjoyed a revival of sorts, which made me revisit their music.
I was never a huge-huge fan, though I liked (like) a couple of their songs. My son and daughter-in-law managed to see them in Toronto, which they were over the moon about. I come from an age when Oasis was considered a derivative band. People said that they ripped off the Beatles – there’s even an oblique joke referencing that sentiment in the movie Yesterday. I hopped on that bandwagon for sure.
Are they really that much of a hack band? The short answer is no. It’s clear the band’s songwriter Noel Gallagher was inspired by the Beatles. He references Beatles songs in his own lyrics.
But you have to remember that at one point, Oasis was the biggest rock band in the world. That doesn’t happen for hack bands. Thirty-odd years later, I think it’s safe to say their songs have stood the test of time.
Any-the-who, during this revisit to Oasis of mine, I watched a couple documentaries about the meteoric rise and implosive fall of the band. I gained a new appreciation for Noel Gallagher’s song writing approach. He said something in one of these documentaries that really struck a chord with me (pun unintended…)
“If I’d have known then what that song was going to become, I never would have finished writing it. It would have been too important to get right”.
Noel Gallagher, Oasis, about the song “Don’t Look Back in Anger”
I re-read the title of this post, and I know some will think it’s too click-baity. I’m wondering myself. But I did want to obfuscate the answer because these are very much two words I have said in almost all of the 124 posts I’ve written so far:
Have fun!
Why will these two words immediately help you boost your creativity? It’s like Gallagher said: if you feel your work is too “important” or “serious” or “earth-shattering”, you’ll never get the words down.
Having fun frees you to explore and experiment without reprisal.
Having fun allows you to look at your writing from different angles.
Having fun taps into pockets of your creativity that just can’t be reached otherwise.
There aren’t any straight lines to creativity. But with serious writing, all you have are straight lines. Try some loop-de-loops and find out where they take you!
Over to You
Have you tried to have fun and let go with your writing? What happened? Any other tips for not getting too serious with your writing? Let us know in the comments below!
Until next time, keep writing with wild abandon!
~Graham
email me if you get lost.
The reverse is true also: if I'm struggling with a piece of writing - not struggling in a good way: like trying to find the best way to say something, but slogging through a plot, guess what... the result will be sucky. Better to put it down and spend some time with a story that makes you smile.