How To Use Vagueness To Become A Better Creative

Writing ideas down before they are ready can work, but we need to be clever about it.

Image by Piyapong Saydaung

Rude Vagueness

Vagueness can be irritating. Few things are more frustrating than receiving a vague answer to a specific question. There are occasions in which I would argue that vagueness verges on rudeness or even insult. If someone asks us a relevant question, it is respectful to give a relevant answer or, if honestly unable, no answer at all is always preferable to a vague answer.

Effective Vagueness

Yet, while vagueness as evasion is inappropriate at best, vagueness can be a formidable technique to facilitate the creative process. I stumbled upon it early on when writing my first stories and songs, but somehow I was acutely aware of it. I was prone to introspection from an unusually early age, and this must be the reason I paid attention to something other than what I produced. Perhaps my brain is particularly bad at discarding ideas, hoarding them instead, spinning them around away from the spotlight of consciousness. In any case, I soon realised there were plenty of half-formed ideas I would push back only for them to return to me with more flesh in their bones, ready to be written down.