You don’t have to live in a whimsical house by the ocean, or endure years of famine while leading an underground revolution to be worthy of creative writing. In fact, most writers put pen to paper for simpler reasons, undergoing this endeavor to better understand themselves. Here’s three reasons why everyone should pick up creative writing as a hobby.
Reason one: writing can make you wittier. Creative writing pushes you to meticulously craft the best way to present your ideas. That sharpens the way you think, and the smarter you are, the wittier you’ll be. It’s like the term “flow state:” during some writing sessions, you’ll find yourself typing faster than you ever have before, your ideas flowing from the tips of your fingers so quickly that the page can barely catch up. Surprisingly, the quick thinking from creative writing exercises has translated into writing speeches in Mock Trial. I’ve definitely felt the muscle memory of my short stories as I wrote opening and closing statements. They were far from perfect (I’m sure my coaches would agree), but they were so much easier to draft because of my creative writing experience. To summarize: want to hit flow state with your words? Take up creative writing.
Reason two: you don’t need much to write. All you need is a computer. If you want to be more old-fashioned, maybe a notebook. And if you’re truly whimsical, maybe a napkin. Creative writing is the most accessible form of the arts, and there is so much opportunity in it. Writing can be entirely developed through self-study, if any studying is needed at all. I won’t deny that the summer writing residencies I’ve attended have pushed me to write better. But I had no creative writing coach prior to my admission to a few competitive residencies. It only took me about a year and a half to truly feel confident in my skills as a writer, and I’m even more confident that it won’t take you long either.
Reason three: creative writing encourages a slow pace, which creates an environment primed for reflection. A good story is rarely produced from the first draft. All the beauty lies in the editing. Poetry, especially, is dependent on this slow, repeated revision. The initial drafting process can be incredibly fast, which makes poetry an approachable form of writing to indulge in. Here’s the evidence: I am the most impatient person I know, which definitely makes sense considering that I switched to poetry since short stories took just slightly longer to write. In fact, most first drafts of the poems that I’m the most proud of were written in less than ten minutes.
It’s the act of editing and trimming that defines poetry, and it’s this part of the creative writing process that I’m most excited to sell to you. While editing poetry, the difficulty lies in cutting words while still retaining their meaning. This process of trim and refurbish forces the writer to — let’s get figurative — run their tongue over the same sore in their mouth over and over, until they’ve crafted a version of the story in its most concise form. In doing so, whether consciously or not, the writer is reflecting over and over. It’s one application of the age-old therapy advice: sit with what you went through. Or, as said in that infamous Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande interview, hold space for your feelings. By the time the writer is done running their tongue over that sore, it’s healed, and something beautiful is left in its wake.
Now, I ask you to start your first draft. Hit command T and type “doc.new” into your Chrome search bar. Start your first poem or story. Maybe you’ll write hot garbage for months and hate everything you write (which I’ve done, too). But I can promise this: if you consistently hack at a story that you’ve been fantasizing about before falling asleep every night, you’ll find yourself thinking more sharply and understanding your desires better. If you spend some time thinking about the piece of floss you jam between your teeth repeatedly as a metaphor for the physics test that brutalized you, your jokes might get wittier. And this change won’t take very long — six or seven weeks, tops.
