to be .. creative?

To be creative or not to be? I often have trouble writing inverted pyramids and press releases because they do not let me be creative with my own voice. I guess I could also say I’m pretty stubborn when it comes to writing, if I don’t particularly like the subject or idea I have to write about, I usually do a pretty poor job.

What I’ve noticed over the years is that although I do not like to write the boring essays and the pieces that don’t let me explore my voice, I still have been able to develop my skill quite a bit. What I’ve also noticed though, is that creatively, I’ve began to find my voice as a writer. I have not quite perfected it yet, but I think that I’m getting there.

One of the greatest things I’ve ever learned from an English teacher is that you don’t necessarily get better at writing from practicing writing (believe it or not), you get better by reading. This statement I believe to hold a lot of truth, because if you don’t read then how do you know what to write about, and how do you learn new techniques and new words? Perhaps this is why I get better as a writer creatively, because I’d rather read novels than scholarly journals or essays, or really even the newspaper.

The newspaper is something I’ll read to keep up on current events, but it’s also not really something I read from front to back. It’s contradicting myself, I know, but it’s because when I pick up the newspaper, I read the headlines, a first paragraph maybe two, but rarely the whole article. This could be why I have trouble writing Inverted Pyramid stories.