Or would you have to first make sure you were up to date with your emails, then get on with creating?

Oh, but only after you’ve checked you favourite creativity blogs, just in case someone had posted that article on being more productive and overcoming procrastination that will finally help you create? Then you’d begin creating…

But only when you made sure all your materials were perfectly organised, pens in line, paints in colour order, and so on. Then you could begin creating.

After you’d made a snack, because by now, with all this preparation you’ve worked up an appetite. So once you’ve made something to eat, and eaten it, then you can get on with creating.

Oh but maybe while you were eating you’ve received a new email, or someone has posted some great new tips on being more creative, or you feel that having your materials lined up in colour order is not so conducive to creating and you’d rather have them strewn randomly to make the process more exciting?

And suddenly three or four hours have disappeared.

The Rocketeer

You can see the idea. I know this kind of procrastination well, I’ve done it myself many a time.

In my own experience, given an almost unlimited time to create, it becomes overwhelming. There are so many things you could do, and you have all day to do it, so why rush? Surely if you take your time, ease yourself into it gently, something will come?

But before you realise, half the day has gone. And all you’ve added to your life is even more information about how to create, a beautifully organised and reorganised set of materials and a bit of food in your tummy.

This is why actually giving yourself a specific, shorter chunk of time to create is far more productive. And satisfying.

When you set yourself, say, two hours only, to create, it instantly encourages you to be more focused.

Here are some additional tips to help you create more than a day’s worth of creativity in two hours (or even less):

- Pick one thing. It doesn’t matter what it is, you don’t need to spend another two hours choosing the “perfect” creative project. That doesn’t exist. The best projects evolve into something wonderful and unexpected. For that to happen you need to actually get stuck in and create. Choose one idea, and start to explore.

- Have your creative space ready. You don’t have to have every possible tool and material available, or an elaborate studio set up. But make sure that you have somewhere you feel comfortable and free to create in, whether it’s the kitchen table, a study, or in the middle of a field somewhere!

- Eliminate all distractions. One of the biggest creativity killers is distraction. We’re so connected and wired up these days it’s SO easy to procrastinate. Unplug all distractions. Tell people who need to know where you are and politely ask them not to disturb you. Offer them the same opportunity and courtesy at another time.

Then, start a timer for two hours, and just create whatever comes, without analysis, without judgement. Just outpour, just create.

Getting focused in a short space of time like this a very powerful way of creating.

What tends to happen is one of two things. Either you become incredibly focused on one project, and create more in a couple of hours than you have in the last couple of months.

Alternatively these kind of focused sessions become like a huge creative brainstorm, and given this opportunity, your creative mind generates enough new ideas for months worth of future creative projects.

Either way, the key is getting focused, and just creating. When you do, you’ll find that you too can create more in two hours than you’ve done in a whole day.

So, when are you going to try this technique yourself? Make a date with your creativity, write it down in your diary, let people know if anyone needs to know, and stick to it. Enjoy your creating…

Creative Writing is something that everyone is capable of. And we can all improve our creative writing – and our enjoyment of it – in a great number of ways.

One of the key factors to writing creatively and freely is confidence.

It doesn’t matter how talented you are as a writer, if you lack the confidence to write and to explore your writing potential you simply won’t create as well or as often as you’re capable of creating.

So here are 5 powerful tips to help you increase YOUR self-confidence as a creative writer -

1. Believe you’re creative. If you didn’t believe you were capable of writing creatively at all, you wouldn’t even be trying, so you’re off to a great start. Now you can build on this core belief.

One way of doing this is to spend some time visualizing how your life would be if you were wildly successful as a creative writer, whatever “wildly successful” means to you.

Put yourself into this future visualization of yourself as strongly as possible. Ask yourself what beliefs you hold about yourself that have enabled you to be this creative, this successful. Then start bringing them into your life today.

2. Use your senses. So much of the time we walk round virtually oblivious to the highly sensory world around us. We may as well stick cotton wool in our ears, a sock in our mouth and bag over our heads!

It’s through our senses we connect with and experience the world. Take some time to go somewhere new and practice using your senses. Concentrate on each of your senses one at a time, what you’re really seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and feeling.

Do this regularly and you’ll have an abundance of rich experiences to draw upon in your writing, which in turn will increase your confidence to write.

3. Set small achievable goals. If you haven’t written for a while – months or even years maybe – then to set yourself the task of writing a new novel this weekend is ambitious at best. At worst it’s simply setting yourself up for major disappointment and blow to your confidence.

Instead, set smaller achievable steps. For example, “Today I’m going to write 250 words about the past life of my book’s new character Jake.”

Start small to build your confidence, then add more challenging tasks for yourself as you go.

4. Write aimlessly. By this I mean don’t set out to write a perfect wartime romance, or a wonderful poem about the cherry trees in your back yard.

It’s great to have writing ideas and aims like this but the problems come when we get too attached to them. Then, when our creative writing takes us elsewhere, instead of exploring what could be a wonderful new direction, we just feel we’ve failed in writing the piece we set out to write.

Pick an inspiring starting point, then just let your imagination – and creative writing – flow wherever it wants to.

5. Join a supportive group. Being able to share with other writers is a very rewarding experience. It can be very supportive and healthy for our confidence on two levels.

Firstly, with other creative writers we get to share our creative writing, the work we produce, and get their feedback, tips and ideas, as each of us look to develop ourselves.

Secondly, we’re able to share the experience of being a creative writer. The joys, the frustrations, the rewards and the disappointments. Knowing that others feel similarly to us can be very reassuring. The help and encouragement of others can help boost our confidence no end.

Increasing your confidence as a creative writer is sometimes the only route to helping you unlock your creative writing potential.

These are just 5 of the best ways you can do this.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Dan_Goodwin

When you actually have time to put the words into an article or story you can then sort through the informaion and put like thoughts together and present your perspective about that information using that point of view.  You might have a number of different groups of information so you can write numerous articles or stories showing various perspectives regarding the information.  Notice which point of view seems to feel more comfortable to you.  This is a valuable bit of information for you to gather.

If you will allow yourself to approach information from many different directions, your ability to write will improve quickly and often dramatically.  So will your satisfaction about your ability to write and communicate an idea.  The clarity in presentation of the informaion will be reflected in your number of readers who will connect with the different approaches too. 

That adds to your fun in writing which then encourages you to want to write more.  It’s a wonderful cycle so pick a topic and give it a try.  See how many different articles or stories you can put together from one topic.  Then put these articles or stories in like best to like least order. 

Put a word count on the top of the page.  Who knows when someone might approach you and say  “I need a story that is 250 words about ____”.  You can then quickly go through your stash of articles or stories and select the point of view that would be perfect for that event or application. 

Less thinking about what people will think and more writing showing different perspectives will take you to a totally different level in your writing, quickly improving your ability and giving you a confidence boost at the same time.