What is creativity?
In my mind, creative writing is a way of sharing your view of the world with someone else. A way to show people how you see life, and give them a glimpse into what you feel and think of it all. It can’t quite be recreated in any other art form, and it changes from writer to writer, like a fingerprint.
To illustrate my point, I’d like to compare two highly esteemed writers with two incredibly different worldviews. H.P. Lovecraft, a horror writer from the 1920’s and the creator of Cthulhu, the Necronomicon, and countless other staples of horror, and Douglas Adams, author of the comedic Hitchhiker’s guide books.
Douglas Adam’s view on life was very go with the flow. In his novel The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, his characters are thrust into massive galactic conflicts all centered around the question, what is the meaning of life? The whole universe is sprawled before them as they are constantly caught up in events beyond their control. Rather than mope about it, the writing seems to encourage a more go with the flow attitude. The universe is infinite, and in your lifetime you will see almost zero percent of it, so you might as well see all you can and enjoy yourself without getting too worried about whether or not there’s a meaning to any of it.
Lovecraft on the other hand, saw the insignificance of the average person in a much darker way. He viewed the universe not as a vast expanse of infinite possibility, but as a cold, unfeeling darkness upon which humanity was but a tiny prick of fragile light. Through his chilling prose, he showed his readers an infinite, unhinged cosmos of twisted gods and unfathomable horrors, grinding to and from dust in an endless cycle. He felt that the true horrors of the world didn’t come from the sins of man, but that the universe at large just doesn’t care about us.
While polar opposites, their viewpoints on life, the universe, and everything are both equally valid. Sometimes the world is dark and unfeeling, other times it seems like it contains boundless adventure and intrigue. Their writings allowed them not only to share with us what they felt, but to make us feel it ourselves. The way they viewed the world isn’t contained in quoted words or essays on the subject, but on the works of fiction that brought those views to life and gave them substance and personality, and the characters that represent all that they loved or hated about their fellow man. That ability to bring a reader into your mind, to let them see things the way you see them and feel things the way you feel them, is an amazing thing that can only really be accomplished through writing.
To illustrate my point, I’d like to compare two highly esteemed writers with two incredibly different worldviews. H.P. Lovecraft, a horror writer from the 1920’s and the creator of Cthulhu, the Necronomicon, and countless other staples of horror, and Douglas Adams, author of the comedic Hitchhiker’s guide books.
Douglas Adam’s view on life was very go with the flow. In his novel The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, his characters are thrust into massive galactic conflicts all centered around the question, what is the meaning of life? The whole universe is sprawled before them as they are constantly caught up in events beyond their control. Rather than mope about it, the writing seems to encourage a more go with the flow attitude. The universe is infinite, and in your lifetime you will see almost zero percent of it, so you might as well see all you can and enjoy yourself without getting too worried about whether or not there’s a meaning to any of it.
Lovecraft on the other hand, saw the insignificance of the average person in a much darker way. He viewed the universe not as a vast expanse of infinite possibility, but as a cold, unfeeling darkness upon which humanity was but a tiny prick of fragile light. Through his chilling prose, he showed his readers an infinite, unhinged cosmos of twisted gods and unfathomable horrors, grinding to and from dust in an endless cycle. He felt that the true horrors of the world didn’t come from the sins of man, but that the universe at large just doesn’t care about us.
While polar opposites, their viewpoints on life, the universe, and everything are both equally valid. Sometimes the world is dark and unfeeling, other times it seems like it contains boundless adventure and intrigue. Their writings allowed them not only to share with us what they felt, but to make us feel it ourselves. The way they viewed the world isn’t contained in quoted words or essays on the subject, but on the works of fiction that brought those views to life and gave them substance and personality, and the characters that represent all that they loved or hated about their fellow man. That ability to bring a reader into your mind, to let them see things the way you see them and feel things the way you feel them, is an amazing thing that can only really be accomplished through writing.
Image credit to gocomics.com