I encountered a young writer who claimed that he always thought “outside the box.” Although many might consider inside the box as a small confining area, much of what we learn to do follows standards, laws, and rules. For example, this young man had been driving a car for a while without having his license revoked. So, I assumed that he conformed to what others expected of him while on the road.
His writing was another matter. It was beyond ordinary and sometimes it took a few re-readings to grasp. However, after I had perused enough of it I realized that he repeated the same types of “out of the box” techniques in each written work. Perhaps, his style differed from the vast majority of people. However, there was not a huge variation within his style. The area “outside of the box” tends to be small for some people. When creativity becomes a habit to churn our writing more rapidly, it becomes the same kind of thought processes that one has inside the box.
While listening to this young man describe his imagination, I recalled lessons learned when coaching grade school teams for creative competitions such as Odyssey of the Mind and Destination Imagination. Some children wanted to be conformists and preferred to suggest ideas that were familiar. They wanted to ensure these ideas would actually work. Other children imagined “crazy” concepts and had to sort through all the bizarre ones to find ideas they could actually produce.
The children created more differing ideas initially when they worked in groups that allowed them to bounce ideas off each other. As a writer you also need to find other writers, amateurs and professionals who will help you critique your work. After that, you can start entering into competitions to see what literary people at large think of your work as a creative writer. Don’t expect much praise at first. People do not become creative simply by convincing themselves that they are so. They allow themselves to work at being creative and still fail without giving up. Only then can they push themselves to be original while producing work of a high quality.
I have read a lot of books that have been “uninspired”—not ordinary in the content matching our everyday life, but ordinary in the story content replicating what is found in many other books. So, some stories are being cranked out without any inspiration and I imagine that this has been done for ages.
Creativity comes from the willingness to be different from other people. One of its identifying markers is preferring to do something other than what people think should be done. It may not be useful to tell people to think outside of the box because they may not naturally conform to other people. If we allow people to consider ideas and produce in their own preferred method, then there may be no need to rage about being creative and thinking outside of the box.