[CONTENTID1]Writing Help 101[/CONTENTID1]

[CONTENTID2]Step Two: Harnessing Your Natural Creativity[/CONTENTID2]

[CONTENTID3]

You've heard of writer's block, of course – that horrible feeling of staring at a blank sheet of paper (or a blank screen) and not being able to write a single word.

Needless to say, you're going to have a tough time if you ever come down with a bad case of block.

The best thing to do, right here and right now, is to spend some time understanding exactly how your brain works, and how you can then use this knowledge to make writing fanfiction both more productive and a lot more fun.

Knowing which part of your brain to use for which writing task is the key to making the most of your in-built creativity. So let’s start with this:

How to Discover Your Writer's Muse

Brace yourself: this ultimate guide to finding your inner muse and writing more creatively isn't short! It may be one of the most important things you ever read, though.

Learning how to write with more creativity will not only improve the quality of your writing (i.e. make it more publishable). It will also make the journey a lot more fun.

The good news is that us humans are a naturally creative bunch. The bad news is that this creativity tends to get hammered out of us from middle-childhood onwards.

Watch young children at play and you will see pure creativity at work...

They will while away entire afternoons playing imaginary games. They will set up shops using discarded cereal packets and strips of newspaper for money. A small copse of trees becomes an enchanted forest; dusty old rugs turn into magic carpets.

And then adolescence and adulthood come along and spoil everything. We put away our childish things and get on with the "serious" business of life (which for most people does not involve anything like writing fanfiction).

And we are all the poorer for it.

"The genius keeps all his days the vividness and intensity of interest that a sensitive child feels in his expanding world. Many of us keep this responsiveness well into adolescence; very few mature men and women are fortunate enough to preserve it in their routine lives."
~ Dorothea Brande

This chapter is about reawakening the creativity we all possessed as young children. Many of the readers and writers on this website are between the ages of 13 and 20, with many younger and many older (Like me – I’m 23 going on 24). Just as importantly, this section is about using the skills we acquire as we move into adulthood to channel that creativity effectively – or knowing when to use it and when not to use it.

You see, the creative spirit is only one aspect of the successful writer's makeup. The other is a deep, almost scientific knowledge of the craft of writing.

You use your creative side (or your writer's muse) to supply you with great raw material. Then you use your logical side (or your inner-critic) to make sense of it all and knock it into shape.

Many beginners (and some seasoned professionals) struggle to write because their logical, critical side does all the work. For these writers, producing raw material that is true and alive is slow and painful at best... and sometimes impossible.

A less common problem is writers who excel at being creative but can't get in touch with their logical side – which they need to hammer their free-flowing musings into some sort of shape.

What kind of writer are you?

There's no need to answer that because it really doesn't matter. The fact is that you will need to make full use of both sides of your personality.

Meet Your Writer's Muse

"There is a muse, but he's not going to come fluttering down into your writing room and scatter creative fairy-dust all over your typewriter...Your job is to make sure the muse knows where you're going to be every day from nine 'til noon or seven 'til three. If he does know, I assure you that sooner or later he'll start showing up, chomping his cigar and making his magic."
~ Stephen King

Who is this muse, exactly? And who is their counterpart – the critic? What characterizes them? What strengths and weaknesses do they possess that might help (or hinder) your writing? Allow me to explain...

Your writing muse lives in the right side of your brain – the side where all the creative work takes place. The critic lives in the logical left side. The muse has access to your unconscious mind – the place where you dream and imagine and store your hidden memories. The critic has no time for such nonsense. The muse wants to wear whatever clothes he damn well chooses, or no clothes at all if he feels like having a day. The critic, not wanting to stand out, is more conservative in his tastes – and frequently wins when you get dressed in the morning. (The critic chooses that sober gray suit, the artist has to make do with vivid red socks.)

Incidentally, I'm referring to both the muse and the critic as "he" because even though I am female, my muse is male... and because writing "he or she or they" all the time is kind of a pain!

If you would prefer to think of your muse and critic as female (whatever gender you happen to be) then go ahead and do so.

Your muse is laid-back by nature and only wants to write when the mood strikes him (which isn't very often). The critic is the one who stops the muse staring out of the window and forces him to get on with the writing. The muse sulks when he doesn't get his own way and sometimes throws things across the room in a temper. The critic sighs, shakes his head, and fetches the dustpan. The muse is the life and soul of every party and drinks himself into oblivion given half the chance. The critic reminds him they have to be up early the next morning. The muse delights in thinking beautiful thoughts and getting them down on paper in the form of a story. The critic checks the work for poor structure and weak characterization. The muse prefers to go to bed late and sleep until noon. The critic knows the fic is never going to get written with such poor discipline.

I could go on, but that's hopefully enough for you to recognize the influence of both of these characters on your personality. We all contain them, in varying degrees. And, like I say, we need to draw on both these influences if we want to write fanfiction (or do anything creative) to the best of our ability.

The trick is to not prefer one over the other, like a favorite child, but to love them equally. Not only will this help you to live a better life (it will make you responsible when you need to act responsibly, but willing to seek out fun and adventure and spontaneity in between times). But it will also help you to write better fiction...

Too much time spent in the company of your writing muse will lead to a fanfic which shows flashes of brilliance but is ultimately too rough and shapeless to satisfy readers. Too much of the critic's influence and the fanfic will be technically well-constructed but somehow lifeless.

The muse and the critic, then, must learn to work together as partners, not be forever trying to outfox the other. And it is your job as the writer in whom these two characters exist to ensure that they do form a perfect partnership. How?...

Simply by understanding what each of them is good at (and not so good at)... and then ensuring that you perform each stage of the writing process using the best man, or woman, for the job.

With that in mind, let's run through the broad stages of the writing process (finding ideas, planning, writing, editing) and talk about which aspects of your personality are best suited to each of the tasks.

The Muse, the Critic and the Writing Process 1. Finding Ideas

This is where your writing muse comes into his own. You know all that staring into space you do when you are brainstorming for inspiring ideas? That's your muse at work.

The muse, as I have said, can be prone to laziness, so the critic has to give him a nudge from time to time to keep him focused on the task (and not start daydreaming about next year's vacation instead). But, still, you need to give the muse as much time and space as is reasonable to do what he does best.

Does the critic get a look in? You bet, but not during the brainstorming...

The muse dives down into the darkest depths of your memory and surfaces with fistfuls of treasure. He hunts for pearls in your imagination. Later, the critic selects and combines all the random ideas – a character trait here, a possible plot line there – into a cohesive whole, with the muse standing by to give the thumbs up or thumbs down to the patterns the critic finds.

The final fanfic idea must satisfy both of them. It must be bursting with creative possibility (this satisfies the muse). And it must adhere to the rules of good storytelling (this pleases the critic).

It's interesting to note here that, whenever you sit down to search for a fanfic idea, the muse will provide you with similar material every time. We all have subjects and themes and people and places that interest us far more than others, and the muse will always suggest them.

This is good, up to a point. After all, most writers' work tends to be variations on a theme...

Stephen King writes about horrific happenings in small town America. Hemingway about war and bullfighting. Anne Tyler about the everyday lives of everyday folks in Baltimore.

And so on. Fans of a writer become fans because they like what they read and expect more or less the same thing in the n