Legend has it that the opulent, peculiar Dame Edith Sitwell, before commencing her day’s work, would lie still in an open coffin, marinate in her own brewing oblivion, and drink up the macabre she felt necessary to write her poems. Until her end she held that she was no eccentric: “It’s just that I am more alive than most people.”

I’m not quite comfortable buying myself a coffin to lie in. Perhaps by the time the kids have left home, I’ll have worked up the weltschmerz and, frankly, the brass balls to do something so grandiose. For now, the merest little creative prods scattered here and there among the day’s proceedings are enough to run a joyful bunting through the hours and leave me with a sense of wellbeing and expressive contentment, regardless of how dull the day’s work has been.

I am lucky that at least some of my work (this column, for example) is, by definition, creative (although, trust me, I’m no stranger to drudgery) and there is this really stupid idea that people are either creative or they’re not. If they are not creative (so the story goes), then they are for ever banished from the realms of artistic self-expression. “I can’t dance”; “I don’t sing”; “I’m not really one for fancy dress.” Within this deception, you come out armed with either flamboyance or cynicism. In this scenario, cynicism is just a cloak for a fear that takes hold somewhere between the ages of 10 and 16, when the adolescent soul can only stare “Ludovico technique”-like at itself within its community. And if the penalties for “failure” (whatever that means) are deemed too high, if self-expression is seen as too great a risk, limits are set, and they can be difficult to lift.

Unfortunately for the risk-averse, it is likely that the risk of not engaging in creative action is far higher than that of making a fool of yourself. The writer Arthur Koestler defined creative activity as “a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual”. The brain plasticity encouraged by creative thinking helps our brains to develop throughout our lifetimes, and can even keep our romantic relationships passionate for longer.

I’m not saying we should all be master painters, but having attended a weekly art class with my aunty since the beginning of the year, I am quite proud of my Bowl of Fruit No 3. While we can’t all expect to move like Martha Graham, bunny-hopping and dropping to the Before I Let Go challenge has been scientifically proven to be the most fun you can have on solid ground.

The logical opposite of fear is courage, and the 20th-century existential psychologist Rollo May wrote in The Courage to Create: “Creative people … do not run away from non-being, but by encountering and wrestling with it, force it to produce being. They knock on silence for an answering music; they pursue meaninglessness until they can force it to mean.”

My 21st-century sentimentalism leads me to challenge that logical opposite, and propose that the true converse of creative fear is simply freedom. We are all creative; it is just that some of us choose not to allow ourselves out of the box. No matter how artistically nourishing or intensely monotonous the day’s work is, moments of spontaneous creativity, which amount to nothing greater than themselves, make us more alive. If these are not indulged, the less we live. I truly believe that even if you are not ready to find or recover your creativity through artistic self-expression, there are myriad ways to weave creativity through your everyday life.

Aimless singing (almost constantly, and no doubt to the exasperation of my nearest and dearest) has always given me huge joy. A beautifully set table, making a birthday card or a particularly purple use of expletives can be most rewarding. I decorate my house seasonally with the organic detritus I collect from the forest nearby. It is free, it looks pretty, and every part of the process is inventive. More recently, I have been known to kick my kids out of bed and gather a breakfast picnic to eat in the woods, as we watch the sun wink at us between the leaves. Creativity doesn’t have to be solely linked with artistry.

Science is constantly finding ways to explain things that we already had a good idea about, and for great insight into the neuroscience of creativity I would direct you towards Professor Anna Abraham’s work. But really few have put it better than Kurt Vonnegut, who said in his fractured autobiography A Man Without a Country: “Practising an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.”