Thursday Thoughts: Old Hat

Happy Thursday from the Walden University Writing Center.  This week, our Thursday Thoughts post will focus on your writing habits and how your writing process is impacted by your creativity.

We have all heard that creativity is a muscle. You can stretch it and flex it to improve your creativity, just like bulking up at the gym. Since you use your creativity to brainstorm for, outline, and begin writing your papers, consider flexing your creativity before, during, and after the writing process. This will be your creativity workout. A writing assignment presents a problem that you can answer with creative problem solving. You do this every week with your discussion posts, and you can do it, too, with your longer assignments.

Flex your creativity for your next writing assignment. 

When I am given a writing assignment, I tend to think about my writing process as a mathematical equation. My main topic is A. My subtopics are B., C., D., and my conclusion is E. If I correctly add up A through D, my paper will be successful, and E., my concluding paragraph, will wrap everything up neatly.

To flex my creativity as I approach a new assignment, I might ask myself new questions inspired by thinking critically about my topic. These questions might include:

• What information can I present to my readers that they will not have known before reading my paper? How can I captivate my readers while still maintaining academic tone?
• What ideas do I want to end my paper with? Is a standard "A. B. C. outline" the best way for me to get there? Is there a way I might outline my text differently to lead to this conclusion?
• What ideas do I want to discuss in depth in my paper? How will these areas of depth impact other areas of my text, and how can I balance this depth?

As I ask myself some questions to spark my creative muscles, I will likely find new outlets and ideas that do not follow my usual writing process, and this is good. It is good because it will allow me to enliven my writing and approach topics from different perspectives. And what's even better is that the more I stretch my creative muscles, the more accustomed I'll become to adjusting my writing process versus sticking to the same old hat. 

What other ideas do you have to stretch your creative muscles and improve your writing process?

  

The Walden University Writing Center provides information and assistance to students with services like live chat, webinars, course visits, paper reviews, podcasts, modules, and the Writing Center's webpages. The Writing Center supports students through all stages of their writing process and develops the writer as well as the writing.

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