Creativity is hard to simply switch on. I was initially hired as an intern for Windsong, a company well-known for its mark in the creative community, due to my writing abilities. If I’m honest, it’s still quite intimidating! But with that intimidation comes an adrenaline rush every time I jump on a writing project, finish up and send it in. Yet there’s still a method to the madness that I’m sure plenty of other writers experience.
Coming from a journalistic background it can be easy to want to condense everything into bite-sized pieces. Writing is, and never was, this glamorous vision out of movies where you sit down in a smokey room with a typewriter putting together some great article or story. In fact, I usually end up scrolling through Tumblr for an hour and taking photo booth pics on my Macbook before I wipe off the flaky Cheez-It residue from my fingers and get to work. There are days where I’ve sat in lecture or meeting zoned out and mindlessly sketching into my notebooks.
Don’t get me wrong, there are days where I wake up and feel as though I’ve got a novel’s worth of ideas and observations to get out. I want to get into the Windsong office and start blazing through projects and blogs and assignments! Sometimes the ideas start to build and grow and next thing I know I can’t get them down fast enough. One word is typed out. One word turns into four, turns into a thousand. I feel satisfied and exhausted all in the same. Then I delete it all. Because sometimes those words weren’t good enough.
With writing, it’s a feeling. That motivation and desire to write is a physical feeling that starts in my gut and shoots into my mind and then down to my fingertips, resulting in something even more tangible.
Right now I’m tossing out words and stringing them together in different formations until something makes sense.
Sometimes it’s easy.
Sometimes I just pace around.
Sometimes, I honestly just give up and start all over.
Usually though, I listen to that gut feeling and once I’m done with my article, essay, poem, whatever string of words, I can sit back and relax knowing I’ve accomplished something pretty great. Having to prove myself daily in the office as well is becoming less intimidating and more of a challenge I’m excited for every week. I haven’t had my writing or creative thinking abilities tested like this in years, and I’m becoming more eager to dive in further.
Really, the increasingly best part of being at Windsong is that I’m practicing my craft more and more with each passing week. Typical intern tasks can be fun, but this is what makes me grin walking in and out of the office each day.
That and the stash of Starburst in the kitchen, obviously.
