Going Outside Your Creative Comfort Zone

There are many quotes about leaving your comfort zone and how all the best ideas and bounty of life can be found outside of it. It is so easy to hear this, agree and move on without digesting or making any concrete changes. I’m reminded every time I really dive outside my comfort zone how magical this place really is.

I’ve always liked to write. Even when I had nothing original to write; just regurgitating stories recently read. The act of writing, pen to paper, before typing was the norm, gave me joy even if the product wasn’t life changing. I was the kid in English class who craved the essay; the one project I really poured out all my creative impulses and shined.

Last year on a whim I started writing poetry or fumbling around with the idea simply because I could and no one would stop me. Also I saw a poetry contest with some prize money and thought as a writer of words why shouldn’t I enter that contest? So I did.

I didn’t win but didn’t feel bad about it. As a poetry novice the enticing part was entering on a lark and not expecting anything. I started to like the writing process with poetry; it felt less labored, more relaxed and easy flowing. I could snatch a sentence, phrase or a couple words out of the air and take it places unexpected and unusual. Poetry became my new writing method of choice especially for my morning pages writing practice.

Next I took an online screenwriting class because it was free and I love movies. It was a fun exercise but the workload at work, it is our busy season, stopped me from pursuing it as thoughtfully as I would like. I’ll probably pick it up again in the winter.

Another type of writing I never considered for myself was songwriting. I am a great lover of the significance and sometimes inconsequential sentiments in songs. I never thought I could capture that myself. But after watching a documentary called Shirkers last weekend, highly recommend, the poetry and backbone of a song called to me. I scribbled for two pages and when I came up for air saw a song. It could possibly be a poem, I think it is easy to interchange the two, but seemed simpler.

The easiest way to go outside your creative comfort zone is to release the expectations of good, great or profound. Creating something terrible is not a waste of time if you enjoyed the process of creating. Nothing ever made spewed out perfectly the first time. Revisions and edits are necessary and not a gauge of how good the final product will be.

There is no great life lesson here. A simple fact that trying the new, scary creative endeavor is usually more rewarding than terrifying. Look out for my new song dropping sometime in 2020 or never. ;)