MJT23: Clichés, creativity, and Malika Favre

I highly recommend you click below and watch A Little Film About… Malika Favre. You’ve likely seen her illustrations before, and the short is beautiful to look at in and of itself.

But I want you to pay attention to some of the things she says about her approach and her process, and how it can apply to freelance writing:

One of her starting points is exploring clichés. I love this.

Have you ever noticed a bunch of articles by different people that are all very similar? Sometimes you start writing a pitch based on your own idea, and then you see somebody else has basically written the same article you were about to propose to your editor.

You genuinely came up with your idea, and the other person had their idea too. But you’re both thinking about it in simple, similar ways.

Maybe you pretend you didn’t notice that it was kind of an unoriginal idea, or you hope your editor or reader won’t notice.

Instead of brushing over this, what would happen if you embrace it? Be conscious of the common assumptions and consensus, and then push through to something new and original. An unexpected connection between fields or multiple intelligences, an unusual rhythm to your words. This works both at the pitching stage and as you are researching and writing your final article.

Favre says creativity is the “ability to imagine things that no one else can, to look at things differently than the person next to you, and more importantly, to make people see. To propose a new perspective on the things people don’t always notice.”

Want to learn how to find, develop, and evaluate quality ideas? Click below to learn about my new course, “How did you come up with that? Idea Generation for Freelance Writers.”