We’ve all heard certain people being described as having
“the personality of a goldfish.” I
personally never used that phrase, but I frequently find myself thinking that
of course person X is an IT-wiz! Or I knew
person Y was a musician! They just have
the personality to go with it! So, do writers
have the personality to go with their profession?
Psychologists have used the Five Factor Model of personality, which broadly classifies human
personality into five dimensions, or factors,
to investigate the relationship between personality and creativity. Each factor comprises a range of behaviours
that are plotted on a scale.
‘Openness to experience’ is one of the big five factors,
with curious/inventive individuals on one end of this spectrum and
consistent/cautious people on the other end.
Then we have ‘Conscientiousness’ (efficient/organised vs.
easy-going/careless), ‘Extraversion’ (outgoing/energetic vs.
solitary/reserved), ‘Agreeableness’ (friendly/compassionate vs. cold/unkind),
and finally, ‘Neuroticism’ (sensitive/nervous vs. secure/confident).
‘Openness to experience’ has a strong positive correlation
with creativity. With increasing
appreciation for art, adventure, variety of experiences, emotion, curiosity and
unusual ideas, levels of creativity also increases. This applies to authors. They draw on their own emotions, experiences
and fantasies when writing, and the more interesting activities they
participate in, the more content they have to include in their stories. Scenes they write are richer, for they have
first-hand knowledge of how it feels to sky-dive, how the fields below look during
a hot air balloon ride. Just being open
to fantasy, daydreaming about the most romantic first encounter with the love
of your life, can give your writing that magical feel, even if you actually met
your husband in the most mundane of settings.
If you’re lower down the ‘Extraversion’ continuum, you will
be high on the ‘Introversion’ scale.
Reserved and more interested in what’s going on inside your head, you
will generally prefer solitary activities such as reading, writing and playing
computer games. When I’m writing, I will
go to great lengths to close myself off from the world. I need that solitude, peace and quiet, to be
alone with my characters.
But writers cannot afford to be such introverts. Once the book is written, we have to busy
ourselves with the outside world in order to determine the best routes
forward. Find the right editor to edit
it, the most suitable beta readers for their feedback, the literary agent, the
publisher.
If you’re self-publishing, you cannot be shy and rely on
readers to come to you, stumble upon your book while you sit at your laptop,
staring at the page views chart on your dashboard. You need to get out there, do everything and
anything you can to spread the word about your writing. Treat it like a problem, find as many
solutions as possible and follow through.
Be creative.
