hiMany people are embarrassed to create in public. It feels unseemly to them. Like kissing in plain view. Deal with that self-consciousness! Learn to make a spectacle of yourself. If you don’t, you’ll feel uncreative everywhere except in your private space.

This particular tip seemed like a challenge to me because I was struggling to understand how writing in public would be considered embarrassing. Then I realized it was because I had never actually tried creating in public spaces. The first thing I had to do was consider what it meant to write in public.

I started by writing during the “free moments” I had at work (shh! Don’t tell my boss). I took a notepad with me and would write in-between customers when I had completed all my other work. Originally, I was more worried about getting in trouble for “slacking off,” but it didn’t seem to be a problem as long as my work was done.

I actually started to get a little excited about the prospect of creating in public, at capturing waves of inspiration whenever they passed, until one of my very well-meaning co-workers asked me what I was working on. I gave a shy little smile and told her that I was writing for fun. Then she did the unthinkable!

She asked me what I was writing.

Remember when I said in an earlier post that I still have a fear of people reading my writing? Even though I am trying to overcome that fear, I wasn’t exactly volunteering my freshly written words for her to read.

The only time I had previously created in public was when I was required to; it was in school in a group scenario, so was mildly less terrifying. My fiction techniques teacher had this brilliant idea to place us in groups of four and to give each group an opening prompt. Everyone in the group had one minute to begin writing a story—as much as they could in those sixty seconds. After one minute, we passed our notebooks to the left. That person had to continue the story. There were only two rules: 1) transitions had to be clear and 2) be as crazy as possible.

Not only did we have to throw our baby-writing into the big judgmental world only seconds after having conceived it, but other people had to make enough sense of it to continue the story. By the time we had gone around the circle, we had no choice but to find backbones and deal with it. We had to do this four times.

When you have not had time to revise or rethink your work, it can be overwhelming to let someone read it. But this stage of writing is where you can get the most feedback. Authors are often more likely to be open to creative criticism after that fresh, unpolished first draft than after they have put time into revising and committing to a piece. If you can overcome that anxious feeling, then you will find yourself able to expand your work for the better.

As in my class situation, we sometimes do not have the liberty of hiding away every time an idea happens to us. Being capable of creating only when we are in a private space can be severely limiting. If we cannot take the time to capture the thoughts we have in public because of this fear, we will likely find ourselves losing many wonderful ideas.  (We will discuss ways to capture creative thought in a later post.)

When we push aside inspiration simply because we are in a public place when we receive it, we may entirely miss or lose a magical piece of creativity.

If we are paralyzed in the fear of having someone see us create, not only do we allow great ideas to slip away, but we also conceal our creative nature in a place where no one can acknowledge or appreciate it.

Holding back the creative impulse merely because we are in a public place when it strikes is a denial of a huge part of ourselves and does not honor our talents and our muse.

When we routinely sit to write in our private space, we purposefully invite the muse to be present and we create a habit. With that routine, we are saying to her, “I’m ready for this. Bring it on.” It opens us, but can also limit us if that time and that place are the only ones in which we invite her. Allowing yourself also to create in public insists that inspiration not pass you by simply because you are not in your usual writing place. It expands your creative possibilities and says, “Yes, I’m ready. I’m ready anytime, anywhere! Yes, bring it on.”

With permission from Dr. Eric Maisel, his ebook The 97 Best Creativity Tips Ever! (2011) was the inspiration for this post.

Bonnie Snow was an intern with Around the Writer’s Table, working toward a graduate certificate in publishing and editing while in her senior year at Florida State University. She is inspired by the editing field’s penchant for helping others see their dreams realized. It is important to her that the art of editing come not only from refining writers’ works, but also in understanding the vision that authors wish to impress upon others and fully supporting them in their fulfillment of their purpose and passion.