Later life can be a great time to explore creative activities like writing because we possess a rich tapestry of experiences to inspire our projects.
Plus, creative writing has many benefits besides the satisfaction of expressing ourselves. Experts say it can boost our self-esteem, memory, attention spans, and sense of empathy. Who knows, learning creative writing may even lead to exciting new career possibilities.
While many of us dream of writing a novel or memoir, there are plenty of other types of creative writing to try – from poetry to journaling. We’ve pulled together some of our favourites below.
1. Journaling
For many of us, ‘journaling’ is often associated with ‘Dear Diary’ writing. But the great thing about this activity is that there are no rules.
As well as keeping a record of your daily life, you can use journaling to express and investigate your thoughts, feelings, goals, and/or reflections – making it a powerful tool for mindful self-exploration.
Some people find the simple act of writing down their worries cathartic – and research has shown journaling can improve our sleep, self-confidence, and even immune system. Others enjoy recording precious memories while they’re fresh, so they can look back on them in later years. Your journal can also help you manifest and keep track of goals.
If you’d like to try journaling for yourself, check out our beginners’ guide for some advice.
2. Poetry
For those interested in exploring the possibilities of language, poetry writing can be a great choice. And while words like ‘metre’ and ‘metonym’ can be daunting, getting started with poetry is simpler than you might think.
A great place to start is writing haikus. These Japanese poems are short and snappy and come with a simple set of rules that can focus your creative ideas as a beginner. Once you’ve written a few of these, try moving on to other forms – such as sonnets, villanelles, and free-verse. Our haiku-writing guide will help you get started.
As with many types of writing, the best way to learn how to write poetry is by reading it. The Poetry Foundation website has plenty of free classic and contemporary poems. You’ll also find essays and guides, which can provide deeper insight, as well as readings, which are great for developing our sense of poetic rhythm.
This article from Masterclass has more great poetry-writing tips for beginners.
3. Letters
In today’s digital age, taking the time to write a letter can feel pointless. But there are plenty of reasons to do so that go beyond sheer convenience.
As with journaling, letter writing can help us explore our thoughts and feelings. However, because it involves addressing someone other than ourselves, it can also offer us a chance to connect with others – whether they live far away or under the same roof as us.
Letter writing is a slower, more mindful and purposeful activity than most forms of modern communication – like instant messaging and video calls. This means letters can help us communicate more creatively and effectively while helping our loved ones feel valued.
However, your recipient doesn’t have to be real and, even if they are, you don’t have to send your letters. For example, you could write a message to your future self or update a lost relative on your life since they passed away. Not only can these letters be an opportunity for creativity – but also a forum for expressing and processing challenging emotions, such as grief.
Many people also say the nostalgia that comes with letter writing helps them feel a stronger connection with the past: a time before computers and smartphones, of licking stamps and envelopes, and of pen pals and love letters.
4. Short stories
Writing short stories is often recommended to budding novelists as a way to hone their craft. Due to their condensed nature (typically fewer than 10,000 words), short stories can give us the satisfying sense of completing something without committing months or years to a novel.
However, short stories are also a great art form in their own right. Writers like George Saunders and Alice Munro have committed their careers to crafting short fiction – and because of their brevity, many claim short stories are even more challenging than novels.
If you want to try your hand at short story writing but haven’t read many in the past, it’s important to get to know the form first. Anthologies like The Penguin Book of the British Short Story* are great for gaining some insight into the possibilities of short story writing – or check out these stories you can find for free online. We also run a short story club on our Rest Less events platform, where we read and discuss different tales each month.
And when you’re ready to put pen to paper, our beginner’s guide to writing short stories has plenty of advice.
5. Personal essays
Personal essays are pieces of non-fiction writing in which authors share real-life stories, usually to reflect on their meaning, impact, or lesson. Also called narrative essays, this type of writing is typically told from a first-person perspective, often with a conversational tone to forge a connection with the reader.
You can choose almost anything for the subject of a personal essay. For example, you could write about something funny that happened to you, a favourite memory with a lost loved one, or a time you ventured out of your comfort zone. Any story that changed your thinking or encouraged growth makes great material for a personal essay.
However, while a little poetic licence is OK in some instances – for example, changing names to protect people’s identities – the stories within personal essays must be true. That’s what separates them from fictional writing forms like short stories.
To learn more about how to write personal essays, check out this beginner’s guide from Masterclass. And to get inspired, The New Yorker website has plenty of great ones to read.
6. Plays and screenplays
If you’re a fan of the dramatic arts, you may be drawn to plays and/or screenplays. Because of their focus on dialogue and visual storytelling, these forms offer plenty of unique creative challenges. Plus, imagining your story playing out on a stage or screen can be exciting.
Whether you choose to write plays or screenplays will probably come down to personal interest. However, if you’ve already got a story idea and are trying to decide if it’s best suited for the theatre or cinema, there are a few key things to consider – such as scale and whether it’s visually driven or dialogue-driven.
Large-scale stories that contain lots of action and visual elements are typically better suited to screenplays – think anything from Dunkirk to Dune. On the other hand, if you want to tell an intimate, dialogue-heavy tale, it may work better as a play.
This article from Screen Craft will give you more information about the differences between plays and screenplays. Or, if you have dreams of writing for films professionally, check out our guide to becoming a screenwriter.
7. Freewriting
Whether you’re writing essays or stories, poetry or plays, there’s one hurdle that almost all scribes come up against at some point: writer’s block. It’s that feeling of not knowing what to write, no matter how long you hover your hands over the keyboard or doodle in the margins of your notepad.
Writer’s block often happens when our desire to write something perfect prevents us from writing at all – our inner critic can shut ideas down before we have a chance to explore them on the page. If this sounds familiar, then freewriting is worth a try.
More of a creative exercise than an art form in its own right, freewriting involves jotting down whatever comes to mind, without stopping or editing, for a set period (usually 10-20 minutes).
Freewriting encourages us to get spontaneous thoughts onto the page. These thoughts can trigger others in a process known as free association, which can lead to interesting ideas we otherwise wouldn’t have had.
While much of your freewriting will probably be unusable in your writing projects, you might come across an idea, phrase, or word that kickstarts your creative engine and helps you push through writer’s block.
For more advice about overcoming writer’s block, check out our article here.
8. Memoirs
Writing a memoir is a goal for many people in later life. But what actually is a memoir and what separates it from an autobiography?
For starters, autobiographies aim to give a comprehensive account of the writer’s life (from birth to death), while memoirs contain only a portion. This may be a specific period of the author’s life or a selection of memories based on a certain theme. For example, Elizabeth Gilbert’s famous memoir Eat, Pray, Love* focuses on a year the author went travelling.
And while autobiographies focus on events (i.e. what happened), memoirs tend to prioritise the author’s experience of those events. When you write a memoir, you accept that you’re telling your version of things, which may differ from someone else’s. For this reason, memoir writing isn’t considered strictly non-fiction, but creative nonfiction.
To learn more about what memoirs are and how to write one, check out this brilliant article from The Guardian.
9. Novels
Crafting a novel is one of the most ambitious and rewarding projects a writer can undertake. Whether writing literary fiction or tackling a genre (such as crime or romance), novels can give us scope to build a complex world and delve into characters and themes in great detail.
But it’s this level of possibility that makes novel writing challenging. Faced with two, three, or even four-hundred-plus blank pages, channelling our inner Stephen King or Jane Austen can feel like a momentous task. But there are plenty of things we can do to help get our story onto the page.
For example, you could try breaking your project down into small goals – such as writing a chapter or a certain amount of words each day. Plus, using story-structure templates like the one outlined in Save the Cat! Writes a Novel* can be a great way to plan your tale out in advance. Or, why not forgo plotting and discover the story as you write?
For more novel writing tips, why not check out this quick guide from Curtis Brown Creative? They also run various creative writing courses, including novel writing for beginners.
Final thoughts…
Creative writing offers endless possibilities to express ourselves, investigate our thoughts, and explore the world around us. So if you’re interested in getting creative in later life, why not try one of the ideas above?
For more writing ideas and tips, check out our books and literature section. Here, you’ll find writing guides like How to write a book and get it published and interviews with bestselling authors like Tessa Hadley and Kate Mosse. Hearing from established writers can give you inspiration for starting a new project as well as plenty of handy tips and tricks.
Are you keen to start creative writing? Or have you already been putting pen to paper? We’d love to hear from you in the comments below.