A serious practitioner of any discipline, creative or otherwise, works towards maturing their craft to a level of excellence. For writers, maturity of craft means having the instinct and judgment to consistently make the right conceptual and technical choices in their writing. Creative maturity is something one arrives at through commitment, learning from failure, challenging oneself, experimenting, building confidence in ones’ abilities.
It’s a process of constant evolution.
In my own writing, when making comparisons of work from even five years ago with more recent work, I can see the difference: my earlier pieces can lack depth, be uncertain in voice, flow, complexity. I know we can assign creative maturity to aging – the older a writer, the more living and command over craft gets reflected in their writing, but that’s not necessarily true. Younger writers can have remarkable creative maturity. Basically, it is nothing more than the ability to make good decisions in writing.
Having given this much thought for my own writing, I have realized that cultivating creative maturity happens in two areas: thinking and technique. Maturity of thought means being able to write with intellectual depth and conceptual clarity. Maturity of technique is reflected in the effectiveness of literary devices employed. Here’s how to develop these two areas:
THINKING
1 – Experience: Open yourself up to new experiences. Expand your comfort zone. Try new things.
2 – Exposure: Live with curiosity, seek out different kinds of people, cultures, fresh ways of being. Actively broaden your worldview.
3 – Expression: Try different ways of saying things, learn the jargon of a different discipline, learn the names of things, learn to name things, etymology.
4 – Emotion: Hit emotional highs and lows, open yourself to deep feeling. Examine emotions as you experience them. Explore different shades within feelings: What type of anger is it? White-hot? Simmering? What kind of love is it? Adoring? Obsessive?
5 – Self-awareness: Know yourself: what inspires you? What about your writing makes you insecure or gives you confidence? Get intimate with your strengths and shortcomings.
TECHNIQUE
1 – Practice: Develop a daily, regular practice to ground your creative process.
2 – Workshops and conferences: Attend gatherings with other writers and learn from their techniques and experiences while sharing your own.
3 – Mentorship: Seek out mentors who can bring a seasoned eye to your work. Also, be a mentor to other writers. Sharing your knowledge and teaching others can also help mature your craft.
4 – Feedback: Have a group or even one or two people you can send your work to for honest feedback.
5 – Experiment: Take risks with different forms, perspectives, literary devices.
Keep writing. Until next time!
Fatima Tariq
Hey, thanks for sharing! Love how you’ve broken it down in simple terms. I think some more elaborate examples from published works or your own crafted examples would have really emphasized each point.
I really like the commitment, respect, and space you seem to give to writing and are committed to sharing it with others.
Zakia R. Khwaja
Thanks for your comment, Fatima! Appreciate your insight.