Venturing Outside Your Wheelhouse: In defense of doing something different
Building up your expertise can build you into a corner, and it's worth busting out of it
Welcome to Creative Constructs, a newsletter that shares systems, tools, and strategies for creative thinkers. (Here’s what Creative Constructs is all about.)
Everybody has a “creative sweet spot.”
Your creative sweet spot is the space full of things you’ve been doing for a long time, and things you’re just really good at, regardless of when you started doing them. You know you’re in your sweet spot when you’re confident you will ace the assignment, win the pitch, or deliver before the deadline.
If you’re mostly focused on delivering creative services, you might call it your “specialty” or “expertise” instead. If you’re a content creator, you might call it your “niche.”
Either because of the amount of time I spent in the corporate world or because my autistic brain prefers visual analogies, I tend to call it “my wheelhouse.”
But it turns out, some CEO stole “wheelhouse” from the SEA. It’s a nautical term, referring to the little enclosed room high up on a ship where the captain steers the boat with one of those big wooden steering wheels.
In case you haven’t seen any good pirate movies lately, the inside of the wheelhouse looks like this:
It’s got windows, of course. (Imagine steering a ship from inside a closed box? Yikes. All aboard the S. S. Shipwreck!)
But even still, there’s only so much a Captain can see from inside that little box.
The windows—however necessary they may be—can have glares and reflections that obscure your view. There are also those little bars between the windows that block off strips of the outside world, not to mention the other walls or doors that make it enclosed to begin with.
Sometimes, to do the best job you can inside your wheelhouse, you’ve got to step outside onto the deck to see beyond the walls you’ve grown accustomed to.
Sometimes, to see what you need to, you’ve got to climb allllll the way up the ship’s mast and into the Crow’s Nest to gain a new perspective.
(I’m going to be real, that is about the extent of my nautical knowledge, so let’s just let that ship sail and switch to specifics, okay?)
To get even better at what you already do well, I believe you sometimes need to try doing something else.
I’ve been publishing my writing in one form or another for nearly 20 years, but I’ve been pretty tightly focused on two major types of written content: objective news stories for journalistic publications early in my career, and marketing content for major brands in the 15 years since.
It makes sense that I’ve settled into content marketing as my creative sweet spot: I’m good at it. I’ve worked with 30+ Fortune 100 brands on sponsored content. I’ve won industry awards for sponsored content, and then gone on to judge those awards in the years after. I’ve published two content marketing books, created two college courses on content marketing, and shared my content marketing knowledge on stage at conferences around the world.
But in the last few months, I started to wonder if I was getting a little too comfy inside the walls of that wheelhouse. I wondered if I could even do other types of writing anymore.
So naturally, I decided to write a contemporary romance novel.
Yep. Seriously.
21,000 words and counting.
The “contemporary” part means the fictional narrative is set in the real world, in modern times, and focuses more on relationships and social issues than more traditional romance novels. (So it is definitely NOT a spicy romance novel sold in the grocery store checkout aisle with an impossibly ripped shirtless model on the cover and whole chapters that would make your Granny blush.)
But let me tell ya, it’s been one heck of a creative challenge.
Not only is it my first attempt at writing fiction, but it also requires writing for a different audience than I’m used to, writing from a different point of view, and sustaining a complex narrative for a word count roughly 35x what I’m used to.
But you know what? I’m having more fun writing than I have in a long time.
I’m finding inspiration in all kinds of unexpected places, and delighting in the new tropes and narrative devices I get to play with. I find myself daydreaming of working on it when I’m not able to, and stealing away spare minutes to jump into the doc and add just a few more words.
I don’t know if I’ll ever publish it. But that’s not the point.
I was brave enough to chart a course to an unknown destination. I’m picking up new skills as I navigate foreign territory. And I know that when I return to my wheelhouse, I’ll be a better Captain for having gone on the adventure.
Venturing Out Of Your Wheelhouse:
Switch Genres: Adjusting your creative purpose can help shift perspective.
Create something for a new audience, client type or industry
Create something that will appear in a different place, platform or context
Swap Medium: Find a new way to deliver your ideas, bringing them to life with a different medium.
If you usually write your ideas, try conveying them in an audio recording.
If you usually do videos of your ideas, try sharing them in infographic form.
Make It Material: So much of what we do is digital, abstract, and ephemeral, that it sometimes feels good to get your hands more involved.
If you usually type on a computer or dictate, try writing out ideas longhand on different surfaces: unlined printer paper, whiteboard, yellow legal pad, chalkboard, construction paper, or a deconstructed brown paper bag.
If you usually design slide decks and infographics digitally, break out the Crayolas (colored pencils, markers, or crayons: your choice!)
Creative Sparks
“Embarrass Yourself Weekly,” by
of . If you need another nudge to venture outside your comfort zone, this piece might do the trick! Maybe improv is the right idea for you too, like it was for Alison.“social media and the collapse of ritual,” by
, aka . An interesting reflection on how context impacts the way we experience and interpret creative works.“How to successfully repurpose your book into multiple formats,” by
of . Even if your big idea isn’t a book, this is a great inspirational list of ways to adjust, adapt, and expand an idea in new ways.
More From Me:
I’ve got some slots available on the calendar for a few more speaking gigs in the late summer and Fall, so if you run or know of an event for marketers, business pros, or creatives that could use any of these talks, reach out:
Unlocking Creativity: Learn how to build a workplace fit for innovation, explore the interplay between divergent and convergent thinking, and leave with a roadmap to nurture a team-wide or company-wide culture where creativity thrives.
Earning Trust with Content: Audiences are more skeptical than ever, so brands need content purpose-built to earn audience trust. This session shares how to corroborate business claims, demonstrate the value you provide, and educate your audience on all that you do.
Generating Content Ideas: Using a simple and repeatable framework, this interactive session will get creative juices flowing and help attendees generate endless unique content ideas, offering a repeatable framework to create more effective content brainstorms.
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