Writing can be a very solitary activity. 

The majority of a writer’s work is done at a computer alone with an empty screen. And if you write short stories, novels, or anything else creative, you eventually get to share your writing with others, but their experience of reading is totally separate from you. 

Lots of writers see this as a benefit, not a hindrance. They find being alone with their own process, developing an intimacy with their own thoughts, to be one of the main attractions of writing as a creative practice. And because that makes writing such a personal art form, it can be much more comfortable, for everyone involved, for the reader to have their own privacy with the work. Ask any writer if they spend a lot of time reading reviews of their work online—you’ll either get a “yes, constantly” from deeply unhappy writers or a “no, never!” from people who are much happier with their work.

But not all writers feel this way. For some those boundaries feel more like restrictions on the art form. 

Theater and Screenwriting

Of course, a first thought for creative writing that isn’t restricted to paper is live theater and screenwriting. 

Writing for performers gives you the best of both worlds; you have the independence and authority of a novelist, where you and you alone are sitting at the page, but you also get to work with other artists, such as actors and directors, and have your art be produced as a collective, live experience with an audience.

If your only idea of a successful playwright is someone with a show on Broadway or that a screenwriter’s work must be produced with a star-studded Hollywood cast, then you’re out of luck. But getting group projects done can be a lot easier than you’d think. Actors, producers, and directors will become invested in your project as their own when they sign on because putting on the best performance possible is a benefit to everyone on the team. With ambitious young filmmakers submitting their work to every film festival they can find, even student films can go further than you might expect.

Live Storytelling and Public Speaking

For some writers, though, the idea of working with other people feels less like building a team and more like losing sight of your own creative vision. Those other artists will come with their own opinions and ideas, and there’s nothing wrong with preferring to keep the creative process to yourself. 

But live performance has a lot of space to be creative and different, and lots of people want to perform their own work. You don’t even have to be an actor.

The Moth is perhaps the most famous platform for live storytelling, focusing on true stories told for a live audience. It’s basically a live memoir! The Moth is extremely popular and, as a result, extremely competitive for potential performers, but they don’t have a patent on telling a story into a microphone. Independent performance venues, from theaters to bars, love to showcase scrappy, independent performers.

Another direction you could go with telling stories from your life is as a public speaker. If you want to share wisdom from your life, lead with that! Maybe you only learned how to truly love yourself after a painful divorce or maybe a major injury that threw your life into chaos taught you to embrace the unexpected. Writing a compelling speech can inspire your audience to make real, positive changes.

And if you’re not trying to get on The Moth or the inspirational speech circuit, there’s no reason you have to tell the truth. Fiction would provide an amazing opportunity for a comedic performance where you riff on the concept of Moth-style storytelling with something silly or a horror performance for Halloween, where you tell a story about being chased by a werewolf. 

Stand-Up Comedy

If performing those goofy stories for Halloween teaches you that you love making people laugh, you can take your writing chops straight into stand-up comedy.

Watching famous comedians perform for massive audiences, you might think that everything they say is off the cuff, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Before your favorite stand-ups get filmed for streaming services, they spend months or years working on their jokes in front of smaller audiences. Jokes are painstakingly reworded, the order of anecdotes changed, and the timing of dramatic pauses is more exact than a casual viewer could possibly imagine. 

Stand-up comedy has become an extremely broad art form, especially in recent years—it’s the perfect avenue for a writer to think outside the box and take an audience for a wild ride. Stand-up is obviously a performance art, but it’s one you can learn as an adult without feeling like you’re behind; lots of people take stand-up comedy classes at all different ages. 

There Are No Rules

The best thing about being an artist is that you don’t have to follow anyone’s rules but your own. If there’s any part of your chosen medium you find limiting, there’s no one to stop you from doing whatever you like. You’ll inevitably find readers, audience members, and fans who have been waiting for someone to share exactly what you’ve been wanting to create. 

Chelsea Ennen is a writer living in Brooklyn with her husband and her dog. When not writing or reading, she is a fiber and textile artist who sews, knits, crochets, weaves, and spins.