A Year of Creative Thinking, by Jessica Swale, aims to offer something unique, to take advantage of any gap in a saturated market of self-help texts for writers and creatives.
The book’s blurb tells us that this is “a treasure trove of prompts, provocations and practical exercises to help you spark new ideas and unleash your creativity”.
Where it perhaps differs from similar texts is in its refusal to settle on one type of writing, instead looking at the creative process as a whole and offering ways to approach the craft of writing from a variety of perspectives and outside of your comfort zone. With one entry for each day, the basic idea is to work through the year and build a portfolio of skills.
This book is a chunky hardback, but light enough to be portable in a bag. There is a ribbon bookmark to keep track of progress, as well as indices for the exercises and other artists and thinkers mentioned throughout the text.
Some of the exercises are around crafting from a particular prompt, sentence, or idea; others offer an opportunity to observe, reflect, or just put pen to paper.
Swale is very keen on the idea of not typing your thoughts down, but actually writing with a pen. This may seem old-fashioned, but this book feels aimed at those who are not completely in thrall or overwhelmed by technology. A good thing, as it does not involve the use of search engines, voice notes, or social media.
If you are new to writing, or would like to try your hand at accessing the creative part of your brain, this may well find its place on your bookshelf.
I also found it interesting that Swale assembles a variety of calendar events, such as ‘National Telephone Day’, ‘National Tell a Fairytale Day’, and ‘National Colouring Book Day’, alongside the birthdays of key writers or the anniversaries of events like the publication of Animal Farm.
A Year of Creative Thinking by Jessica Swale is published by Nick Hern Books and is available now.