My mum showed me some of my school books the other day, from when I was about eight years old, and I could tell I struggled with what to write.

There were just words. Just sentences. Just paragraphs.

There was no passion. No verve. No explosion.

I suppose I was only eight. But I didn’t want to use that as excuse. Not when the one exam I was worried about was my writing exam, because of that exact reason: I never knew what to write about.

Knowing that everyone else expected me to do well in all of my other exams seemed to make it worse. If I did well in everything else, but not in this, I’d have failed. I wouldn’t have been who I wanted to be. I would’ve let people down.

And then my parents told me something that changed everything.

“Just write about football.”

At the time, I loved football. I would’ve chosen to play football over doing anything.

So they weren’t really telling me to write about football. They were telling me to write about what I loved.

“Oh yeah,” I thought. It was so obvious. SO obvious. How had I not thought of that? How could I have missed that?

Or had I thought about it, but rejected it? Had I thought I wasn’t “allowed” to write about football?

Whatever the reason, I was beyond it now. It was time to write about something I actually wanted to write about, and not something I didn’t know how to write about.

I remember being in the exam and enjoying myself. I know. What the f*ck. But I remember loving telling the story, loving being sucked into the moment, loving the fact that I was loving this thing I hadn’t loved before.

When the exam was over, I knew I’d done well… but that didn’t seem to matter. What mattered was how much I’d enjoyed myself. I was surprised. And happy.

I won an award for it. I won the “creative writing” award because I’d got the best mark in the school on that exam. I actually didn’t even stand up when they called my name because there was no possible way, ever, no matter what, that they could be calling MY name for THAT award.

I guess I wasn’t who I thought I was.

I guess I was more than who I thought I was.

I often remember this story when I’m writing because it helps me to remember what creativity is.

Creativity is doing something you love, and doing it with all of you. @Matt_Hearnden (Click to Tweet!)

It’s when you don’t hold back. It’s when you write about what you love to write about. It’s when you write about what really f*cking matters to you.

Creativity is when you are you.

Matt Hearnden is a writer from the UK. He mostly tells stories only he can tell. He blogs twice a week at www.matthearnden.com just self-published his first book:42. Matt writes every day because he loves it and because it stops him watching Netflix. And, probably more importantly, he plays basketball and has lots of tattoos. You can find him on Twitter, IG & Quora.

Image courtesy of Kazuend.