Unbox Your Words #2b

Using boxes to unbox (yes, I know, the irony...) & psychological writing tricks

For this month’s second post/email, I’m bringing you not a piece of creative writing (I included links to two of those in this month’s first post, Unbox Your Words 2a), but a favourite piece of inspiration & some thoughts about this thing called “creativity”, which I would also love to hear your thoughts on.

I know it’s going to seem a little weird that a venture called Unbox Your Words is recommending boxes. But really, this isn’t about boxes (ok, yes, it is a bit about boxes), it’s about rituals. I’ve found myself saying quite a lot recently in several in-person writing workshops that, for me, so much of writing is psychological tricks I use to get myself to do it - even though it’s what I love to do and really always want to do! Humans, we’re a funny lot.

So, when I first started out in this writing game, I read a load of how-to-write books that didn’t speak to me at all, being mostly full of “rules” and “shoulds” and “shouldn’ts” (see last month’s Highly Irregular newsletter for a discussion/rant about this). Turns out that one of the books that spoke to me most wasn’t about writing at all…