Being creative is good for you. 
I know you know that, because you’ve read it before and seen it on plenty of social inspo posts and maybe you had a cool high school art teacher… but when was the last time you actually remembered it?
A voice actor’s life is kind of all over the place when it comes to creativity. Some jobs – animated characters, for example, require obvious creative input: coming up with an interesting and suitable voice for a specifically designed character, conceptualising that person interacting with other characters and the environment, etc. Other jobs – such as corporate explainer videos – don’t need the same kind of creativity. A clear, relatable, normal-person voice is needed, although there’s still plenty of creative work to be done when you’re speaking to an audience you don’t know and can’t see.
Either way, you know what’s going to help build those skills and keep your voiceover reads fresh and fun?
Random moments of creativity in your everyday life.
Yep, that absolutely means singing loudly in the kitchen and redesigning the faces in the Aldi catalogue with a biro.
Today, I’m wearing a pyjama top instead of a normal t-shirt, because it’s got a fun slogan on it.
Last week, I joined (with extremely short notice – random!) the local amateur drama group for an upcoming play.
Yesterday, I stared for a while at my half-finished cross-stitch project and then went and watched some backyard birds instead. I’m not sure this example is helpful.
Sometimes we can go through phases of life where creativity doesn’t seem like it’s important. Busy with work, busy raising children, busy planning dinner and shopping for dinner and making dinner every bloody day… you know how it is. Who’s got time to draw a picture or create a random character?
The key, I think, and I say this as no kind of expert at all but with a lot of love, is to not let those annoying drudgery phases kill you fucking dead. I nearly have, several times in my life, and it’s really really not fun to be a creative person trapped inside the body of a domestic or corporate drone-robot. I recently started emerging from said robot body – hence the cross stitch and drama group and wearing whatever the heck I want – and have been thinking to myself “oh my GOODNESS, where have I been?”
Even working in a creative field, running a business can zap the life outta you, creatively. So I asked some actual experts (I searched the internet) for ways to stay alive as a creative human being…
Spend less time on social media. You knew this one was coming, right. Breathe with me darling, it’ll be okay. Truly, I promise, you can find dopamine elsewhere.
But also: follow fun, creative people on social media. It can be good, really! Life is all about contradictions don’t you think?
Block out time for creativity. Ew. The whole concept of “blocking out time” makes me cringe, but it doesn’t have to mean dividing every moment of your life into colour-coded half-hour blocks. It can just mean “today, I am going to spend 15 minutes on that project I was thinking of”.
Blur the lines between creativity and business. I absolutely love this concept the way The Fabled Thread explains it here. It’s okay ( better, even!) to let your business reflect your personal style, personality, and preferences, creatively. Add some creative zhuzh to your biz emails, I dare you.
Don’t tidy up so much. Okay, I made this one up myself, but only because it works. Stop packing away half-done projects – they’ll stay half-done forever. Stop closing the tabs with a half-finished story or drawing or blog post. Leave the messy works-in-progress visible, and you’ll remember to do more of them.
Final thing? Two things:
Be brave.
Be open-minded.
Those two things will overcome a vast number of silly excuses.
For me, coming out of my years-long zone of domestic blah and closed-minded keep-to-myself-ness means I feel more “me” than I have in a long time. I can’t wait to see how much this freedom improves my acting and VO work.