Nothing but the Words, Episode #138: Seven Ways to be More Creative this Year.

Hey there, and welcome to Nothing but the Words. I'm your book coach, Candice L. Davis.

I hope your week and your writing are both going incredibly well.

I'm recording this episode near the top of 2025, and I want to give you seven ways you can be more creative this year.

Writing a book of any kind, whether it's your memoir or prescriptive nonfiction, a self-help book, whatever kind of book you're writing, requires creativity.

The good news is that we are all inherently creative as human beings, we are created with our own natural creativity, and I'm going to give you seven ways to tap into your creativity this year.

Usually, at the top of each year or at the end of the previous year, I will pick a theme for the year or three words-a habit I got from Chris Brogan is the the three words to sort of be my guideposts for the year, to be my compass for the year.

This year, I decided to go with just one word, and that word is create, and it has a couple of meanings for me.

And then we'll dive into why we want to talk about how to be more creative, but the first meaning that it has for me is creating your own results.

So, if your desire is to be a successful author, you have the ability to create those results this year.

By the same token, I have the ability to create the results I want in my life, in my business, in my relationships this year, and so create is my guiding light for the year.

The other way that create is applicable to us, of course, is that if you are writing, you are creating a book, you're creating an asset for your business, you're creating a product people will buy, you're creating a piece of art.

You're creating something tangible that will capture your ideas and go into the world.

And part of creating anything is to tap into and nurture your own creativity.

So let's get into seven ways you can do that.

So keep in mind you don't have to do all of these things.

You don't have to do them all the time.

You can do the ones that work for you when you need them, and I'd be willing to bet you're already doing quite a few of them.

Humans are creative, but we live in a very busy, very noisy world filled with distractions.

If I have to hear about the coming and going of TikTok one more time, a world filled with distractions, and so sometimes we have to make the effort to tap into and nurture our creativity with intention.

So let's look at way number one to tap into your creativity.

Start by deciding.

Start by deciding that you are going to be more creative this year.

Decide that you're going to nurture that part of your life.

When you make the decision, you start to ask better questions about what you want to create in your life, and you start to look for ways to be more creative.

You become open to more ways to be more creative, so start by deciding this is the year for you that you tap into your creativity, and hopefully that also means for you writing your book.

The second way to be more creative this year is to consume less.

I know, I go on and on about this, but we are so surrounded by quote unquote content, right?

When did we start using this term "content" for anything that's created?

But that's what we're surrounded by.

It's constant noise.

So whether it is the news that you're consuming or podcasts like this one, don't stop consuming this one though.

It's great, or it's other people's videos or social media posts, whatever it is, it's quite possible for us to spend every waking moment consuming, listening to audio in the car, watching videos in line.

It's possible to have earbuds in your ears while you're working and consuming at all times.

And what that does is it dulls your ability to come up with your own fresh new ideas, to make your own connections between an idea that might seem to have absolutely nothing to do with what you're working on and the solution you're actually looking for.

So, try to make it a habit.

Don't try.

Make it a habit if you want to be more creative, to consume less, and that does not mean you have to cut out all consumption.

If you're writing books, I hope you're reading books, right?

That's a way that we learn how to have more facility with language is to read language that has been well used, but it does mean reduce.

The amount of time you spend, whether that's engaging in-I don't play games, but I have a lot of friends who play games, who play online games, online games.

That's just another way of consuming.

So if you can reduce the amount that you consume, you can give your brain room to come up with fresh ideas, give your imagination space to wander, give your your brain room to solve problems, and it will allow you space to be more creative.

The third way is to indulge in quiet.

I find quiet to be something of an indulgence for many of these days, and it doesn't necessarily mean silence, although silence, such as it as it is right right now.

If I stop talking, I can still hear the fan on my laptop, and if I'm quiet for a little bit longer, I'll hear a car drive by in our neighborhood, or someone's music playing, or a dog barking.

Right.

So we rarely have true silence, and you don't necessarily even need silence.

Just quiet.

So, if you're out in nature and have the opportunity to just experience the sounds that naturally occur, that's less noise than you're used to.

So, if you can start to indulge in that, a lot of people find it a little scary not to have constant noise and constant input, because then you're left with your own thoughts.

So sometimes the easiest way to do that is to do it in places where you already are somewhat occupied or busy, or where you are in an environment that feels particularly safe.

So that's why you might come up with some of your best ideas when you are going for a walk and not listening to anybody's podcast or music, or when you're doing the dishes, this rote activity that does not require you to be very engaged in it, but allows you to think and your thoughts to drift, and for you to create, or even in the shower, a nice warm cozy place.

I don't know about you, but I'm constantly getting great ideas in the shower, which just makes me stay in there longer.

Not good for water or for the environment.

But yeah, a bad habit that I have.

So see how you can look for ways to indulge in quiet.

So maybe that's just while I do the dishes, I don't play a podcast, or for the first 10 minutes that I'm in the car, I don't listen to NPR or anything else.

Indulge in quiet and allow your brain that space to really just wander and allow yourself to imagine.

And you'll be surprised at the ideas you can come up with.

And if you're thinking about your book without distractions, a lot of times you can make more progress even than you make sitting down to write.

Number four is to consume better.

So while I do encourage you to consume less, we all like to be entertained.

We all like to be engaged.

I don't expect you to consume nothing.

So look for ways you can consume better, more inspiring, more interesting, more innovative, quote unquote, content in your life, and that may be a trip to your local art museum or history museum, some kind of museum in your town.

I still have not made it to the Museum of Design in Atlanta, and that is on my list to do.

Hopefully, in the first quarter this year.

I'm not a designer, I'm not a visual artist, but you will find that exploring other arts, exploring other art forms or ways of creation can open up your mind to new ways to explore things in your writing.

So, we're big fans of the theater. I haven't been to the theater in a while, but I definitely plan to sing some plays this year.

Plan to visit the Museum of Design. I did go to oh my goodness, what was the name of?

We went to a museum here, and I cannot remember the name of it.

But they had an exhibit on fonts, which was amazing.

It might not sound interesting.

It might not sound amazing, but if you were there, you would get it.

And it definitely did inspire me.

I can't say that I came up with specific ideas for my book, but it did let me look at things in a fresh way.

And you never know when those connections are going to be made.

We also like to.

I read a lot of fiction, even though I'm not am currently writing fiction, but it's not my main focus.

My main focus is writing nonfiction, but I find that inspiring.

Looking at even just art books, if you don't have an art museum in your town, you don't even have to buy the book.

Go to the library, or go to the bookstore and flip through a beautiful book of art, or a beautiful book of architecture, or a beautiful book of furniture design.

There's so many ways that you can allow yourself to consume even better music.

Listen, we all like music that's just popular, but isn't particularly creative.

So maybe push yourself to expand.

To consume different kinds of music that you might also enjoy, that might tap into a different part of your thought process.

So consume less, but consume better when you do consume.

Look for the beauty.

Look for the interest.

Look for the innovation.

Number five, cultivate curiosity.

Be curious, ask questions, and look for the answers.

My husband likes to say that in another life, my job would be a researcher.

It's not that I'm such a great researcher, but I I do have a lot of curiosity, and I do like to find the answers to my questions.

If I'm interested in a subject, I'm 100% all in on that subject.

I'm going to study it for my own for my own.

What's the word I'm looking for?

Edification for my own edification.

I am going to study that subject, and so and we all have things like that, right?

Where we fall deeply in love or an interest with the topic.

Cultivate that, even though you're busy, even though you have a lot going on, even just in conversations with people that you meet, with friends, with clients, with colleagues.

Be curious.

Look for answers.

Try to understand cultures and people and professions that are different from your own, but which have some interest to you.

You know, you don't have to get to know everybody's business, but things that are of interest to you, cultivate an interest in those things, and then go out and look for answers.

Listen, we've all got our phones with us all the time, so if you're going to be scrolling, why not be scrolling in a way that inspires you?

Writing is often about tapping into your curiosity.

Writing is often about looking for answers that maybe you thought you had, but you're testing them in your book.

You're pushing yourself to explain them to someone else, so that you can really solidify your ideas and your philosophies.

And part of that process is being curious, curious enough to test those ideas.

So cultivate curiosity, and that will nurture your creativity.

Number six, play, play, and adopt a playful attitude.

I'm laughing because we are a working household.

My husband works a lot.

I work more than I would prefer right now.

I am not a workaholic.

I've had many people call me a workaholic at different times in my life, I work hard.

I have a very strong work ethic, and sometimes I work long hours because that's what's required at the time.

But I'm not a workaholic.

I like to play.

And just prior to Christmas, my husband purchased a game.

We were in maybe I don't know.

We were in a store.

He saw a game.

He said, "This looks interesting."

And I said, "We'll get it," and it was a game of generations versus generations.

Now, I will say this: technically, my husband is a boomer.

He's going to kill me for saying that because he's in the very last year for boomer.

I'm dead center Gen X.

I'm like a classic Gen X.

There's no confusion about that, and then our younger daughter, who happened to be with us the first time we played that game, is end of millennial, beginning of Gen Z.

I think she's solidly Gen Z, but she just doesn't want to be, and so the game was just each generation competing against the other to answer trivia questions about different generations.

Now, listen.

The boomer questions were like questions from the 1940s.

Our parents were kids in the 1940s.

They would not have been able to answer those questions, but it was just fun.

It was just fun to play.

It was fun to play with our grandchildren when we visited them for Christmas.

I walked in the door on Christmas Day, and my granddaughter almost immediately started painting my face with the play makeup she got for Christmas, and so I wore red sparkles all over my face for the rest of the day.

Just adopting a playful attitude will allow you to tap into the kind of creativity that you can see kids tapping into Naturally, that creativity was in you when you were a kid, and if you find yourself struggling to find it, that's not your fault.

Most of the schools, most of the school systems, most of our systems of education in this country don't really encourage creativity.

They encourage you to learn by rote, to be able to memorize and repeat answers, not saying those things don't have value, but they don't focus on you actually being able to create, to come up with new ideas, to participate in a process of creation.

So, and many of the jobs that most of us come out of school and get are the same way.

Limit our creativity.

So, if you feel like you're not the most creative person and you're struggling to write because you're you don't feel like your ideas are creative, it's not that you're not creative.

You just need to tap into that and playing and adopting a playful attitude can tap into that childlike creativity that you once had and which is still in you, and finally, gotta say, number seven really, really, really, is one of my favorite tips for how this happens to your creativity, and that, my friend, is to rest.

Rest doesn't necessarily mean sleep, but sleep is good when you are sleep deprived.

It is incredibly difficult for your brain to be creative.

I mean, the reality is, when I start to, if I'm reading a document for a coaching client and I'm trying to edit her document and I've read the same sentence three times and not made sense of it, I just go take a nap.

I can't be creative in my responses to her, which I need to be if I'm exhausted, your cognition is so slowed down under exhaustion and sleep deprivation.

Think about it this way: you think you're creative, not you, but but people often think they're creative and funny and charming when they are under the influence of alcohol.

Mostly, they sound slow and dumb, and but they think they're creative.

Well, sleep deprivation can slow your cognition even more than alcohol.

So, if you're tired, if you're constantly exhausted, especially if it's just a chronic thing with you, it can be really, really, really hard to tap into your creativity.

It's really asking a lot of your poor little brain that is probably running on too little glucose, not to mention just really tired and not had a chance to do all of its clean up and reorganizing and connection making that it would do when you were sleeping.

You're asking it now to turn around and be creative.

So yes, you want to get enough sleep.

You also want to get active rest.

So by that I mean rest away from your project.

So sometimes that just means taking a day off or not writing on weekends.

And sometimes, if you're reaching stages that are approaching burnout, it can mean taking a week off or two weeks off.

If you've ever started a project that required you to be creative, and for some reason, either within your control or outside of your control, you had to step away from that project for a few weeks or even a few months, you might have noticed there came a time where the ideas just started floating.

It was like someone flipped a switch, and your creative your creativity was just turned right back on.

That is the value of rest.

It wasn't because you were all of a sudden not creative.

You were exhausted.

You were exhausted.

You needed to rest and rebuild before you could come back to the project.

A great way to avoid that burnout, a great way to keep writing and actually finish your book this year, is to schedule that rest when you can.

If life is preventing you from doing that, I get it, but you know maybe say no to a few people about the things that they're asking you for, and take time to rest for yourself, and for your project, for your book, and for your future readers.

I hope this is help for you, helpful to you.

You have seven ways to be more creative this year, including decide.

That's number one.

Decide and commit that you're going to do the things you need to do to be more creative.

Number two, consume less.

Number three, indulge in quiet-not necessarily silence, but quiet.

Number four, consume better when you are consuming.

Number five, cultivate curiosity.

Number six, play-just play-and adopt a playful attitude.

And number seven, the much needed by many of us rest.

That's all for this week's episode, my friends.

Thanks for listening to Nothing but the Words.

I'm your book coach, Candice L. Davis, and I'll see you next time.