Quantum Storytelling

Creative consistency is an oxymoron. Creativity, by it’s definition, is not very often consistent. If it were consistent, it wouldn’t be valued so highly. If anyone could be creative, at any time, then what would be the value of creativity? Would it be valued?

Yet anyone who has ever ‘gone pro’ in a creative field has found that creativity becomes a daily demand; It becomes a demand which adheres to a schedule, and worse a schedule usually set by others.

A big part of being a major player in any field is simply showing up where others do not. If you are a sci-fi writer, and you consistently write sci-fi for many years, you increase your ‘rank’ exponentially against all the writers who give up and disappear into the mists of time. Being consistent creates a name for yourself. People will say, “I know that writer. They’ve been around a long time, and written many books.” And so you see, consistency is in itself, a part of the marketing process.

But there is one major caveat. Consistency is not always realistic. Anyone who has ever had a creative slump will arrive at the obvious question; “But I can’t produce my best work all day, every day, can I?”

No, you can’t. It is not realistic to expect your output will be great, every single day, 365 days a year. But here’s the thing…

You can still try.

How do we, as creative people, go about doing this? Using the sister of consistency; Routine.

Let us pretend that we have set aside one month for a little experiment. We avoid any unnecessary routine, and just allow creativity to bubble up whenever it feels like it. We mark on the calendar each of the days where we have a high creative output.

The next month, we set aside thirty minutes… no wait, scratch that. We set aside fifteen minutes every single day to get some creative work done, and then we stick to it. We use an app like Cool Timer and we do nothing but write or work on our stories for fifteen minutes every day.

Between the ‘random creativity’ and the ‘routine creativity’ method, which do you think will yield a higher output?

You’ll have to try it for yourself. I will say in my experiences that even the smallest of routine commitments increases my creative output beyond the frenetic spurts of unplanned creativity.

Routine creativity often snowballs into an avalanche of creativity. Thus the more you shake things up across the mountainside on a regular basis, the more avalanches you will have.

As creatives, don’t we at least owe it to ourselves to try?