On Creativity

Creativity is a mental skill/capacity that everyone is innately born with. For a series of reasons, many people give up many creative endeavors in the preteen stage of life. Why do they tend to give this up? A few reasons: First, and most obviously – it is deemphasized as a valuable skill by many school institutions. Most skills taught and valued are very left brain/logical in implementation. So a technical ability like writing would commonly be taught in an analytic (left-brained) fashion as opposed to exploring the more creative components. Second, there is urban myth that a person is either born with native talent or else they will never be able to learn the skills involved. This is of course a fallacy. Third, we are at a point in our social society where children are often encouraged to give up when something doesn’t come naturally to them. We (and I, too, am also guilty of this) tend to try to shield our children from any pain, disappointment, or discomfort. Learning to express your ideas – be it in visual, music, writing, or otherwise – is difficult. It takes time. It is also learning that takes trial and error. You cannot learn everything from observation without actually experiencing the act of creating. Criticism can often be very harsh, and it can be painful. That is simply a part of growing as an Artist.

So what exactly is creativity? Well, it is building something that was not there before. It can take the form of drawing, music, writing, construction, philosophy, business, etc.

But how can we “create something”? Everything is already there. Well… kinda. Look at it this way – all of the things you see around you are made up of atoms. Whether it’s your coffee, your ipod, the computer or book you are reading this on, or your coworker. They are all made of the same basic components. As these components are put together in different ways, we end up with some wildly different results. Likewise, as we put together different ideas we can end up with wildly different results. All genres of western music – Jazz, Heavy metal, Classical, Light Rock, Country, Pop, etc – are constructed from the same 12 note musical scale. 12 notes. That’s it. Many songs don’t even use all 12. Most stay within an 8 note musical scale. All things that we see are created from only a few colors. Everything on your TV screen is build from just Red, yellow, Green, Black and white. 5 colors to construct every visual that you can imagine.

So what is makes some ideas more creative? The more unique the end result is from the other results using the same media. Example: If you have a pen and some paper there are an infinite amount ways to use those tools together. Although that is the case, the majority of uses that people will commonly think of will involve using the pen to write on the paper in some way.
Perhaps there are other ways to use those items. Perhaps you could use the spring inside the pen to create some sort of projectile. Maybe you could build some form of weapon. You could perhaps melt the pen into small pieces of plastic and fold the paper into a container and create a hacky-sack style footbag. I am not saying that these particular ideas are very good. They aren’t. I am not really coming up with much this morning – that happens sometimes. Although they are not good, they are inherently more CREATIVE than using the pen and paper to write because they are using the components in a unique way.

I’ve heard it said that every story has already been written – and have seen lists that describe “every possible story”. I think that idea is pretty dumb. Those “stories” are just tools for creating a story arc. What and how the story is told will fundamentally change the narrative. Suppose we tell a classic love story…. Would it make a difference whether the characters were middle class verses homeless folks? Or about George W. Bush and his wife? How about if the characters were the same sex? What about if they lived in Iraq? What about from an animal’s perspective? How about a love story from the perspective of a pencil fallen in love with paper using personification? What about the length of the story? Would a love story told as a 5 page short story be fundamentally different than one that takes 1200 pages to tell? Would it make a difference if the story had visual representation as it was being told? Or music?

Of course these things would make a difference! On a fundamental level changing even some of the smaller components of a story can make it a different story.

So you want say that you have a difficult time creating? I’ve got some exercises for you to help with creativity. But first I want to take a moment to talk about your mindset – first let go of the idea of making something perfect. Actually, let go of the idea that you will make anything pretty in any way. This (ironically) is the first step towards making something beautiful. This is the first step towards strengthening the right hemisphere of your brain.

You must create without (too much) conscious thought about theory and form. There is always time to critique and refine that after the fact. But while you are creating, you should strive to be totally and utterly immersed in the act of creating. Many Writers or Artists call this being “in the zone”. Once you are in the zone, you become totally focused on what you are doing without regard for the outcome. Your awareness of everything outside of the creation becomes dim or nonexistent and you may find yourself forgetting to eat, use the restroom, or go to sleep. When you are engaging the right hemisphere of your brain (being in the zone), you will find that accidents seem to disappear. Every word, stroke, or note seems to be exactly right for the circumstance. When you do make a mistake, that accidental line easily becomes a new character in the scene. An accidental sentence may spark a relevant tangent in your script. In short, any mistake only becomes a new portion of blank canvas to work with.

Some of my exercises. In truth, I really haven’t found myself without any ideas for a very long time. Usually I have only problems finding the time to nurture my concepts into fruition. Nonetheless, here are some things that I find that tend to inspire me:

1. Just do. If you are a writer, start writing. If you are a musician start playing music. If you are an artist, start arting. Go for quantity over quality. You might not want to show everything you create to anybody. Doesn’t matter. There is time for refinement later.
2. Write (or draw or whatever) when you are supposed to be doing something else. I have no idea WHY this works but for me it really does. For some reason those doodles created while procrastinating on a main project turn into something magical.
3. Stealing other peoples work. Wait! I’m not proposing that you rip someone off! Take an idea that is ‘finished’ and successful, and figure out how you can change one component to change the entire feel of the piece. Sometimes a seemingly small change will make such a HUGE difference that it becomes a different piece. How would the Mona Lisa look as a cow (thank you Gary Larson!)
4. Working under a (or several) major constraint(s). (these are just ideas – your constraints may be more interesting)

• Mess with time constraints. Make a 100 diary entries in two hours. Work on a piece EVERY single day for a year. Work for 18 hours without a break.
• Mess with tool constraints. Use a huge brush to paint on a 2 inch by 2 inch canvas. Post every single word you write online and make comments available. Try writing in crayons. Try doing a complicated landscape using nothing but broccoli.
• Force yourself to use an unfamiliar/unintuitive media. Write by dictation. Try singing your story instead of telling it. If you only draw, try painting. Try broccoli as mentioned before. Make your whole story out of alphabet soup letters.
• Make physical constraints. Try doing your work while standing on your head. Try working with your eyes closed. Draw with your non-dominant hand.
  

So why would we constrain ourselves? Wouldn’t that limit our creativity? Actually, no. When we are forced into new circumstances, we must solve familiar problems in new ways. We cannot as easily fall back on the things that have worked for us before, which helps to avoid unintentional repetitiveness.


Anyhoo, these are just some ideas that work for me. Number 2 seems to be my dominant inspiration as of lately, though.