Creativity is one of those things like love that we all rant about, but whose meaning is always just a little bit out of our wingspan. I read books and blogs about creativity and about other people's creative processes like I read about love stories and celebrity weddings (we're not going to hear of anything other than Will and Kate for the next hundred and two years, are we, really?) - poaching into the book or article surreptitiously, in case I'm caught in the act. With hunger and a guilty pleasure, like I'm peeking into something a little too intimate.
Julia Cameron talks about creativity as play. Put loony pictures and random word thoughts together, throw them up in the air or blend them in a power blender/smoothie maker, and see what falls in your lap. Hugh Macleod (he's very, very funny) talks of it in a very American, I-am-a-brillaint-CEO, look at my big...success, kind of way. Other authors, depending on the hippie content in their daily vitamin supplements, talk about it as a soul-calling, a vocation, or simply the career path that you love the most or that is the least soul destroying.
Is creativity about seeing new things, seeing things that are already there in a new way, or perhaps making things that have the perfect blend of newness and empathy for the audience? That make the viewer/reader/consumer think, wow, that's new and cool, at the same time as they think, damn, I feel like that all the time...
Or maybe it isn't about the consumer at all, as long as it makes you happy...? I'm not sure I've ever bought into the Parisian starving artist picture, though, quite. How very un-bohemian, almost, I am sorry to say, somewhat, slightly capitalism-oriented of me! Shriek!
But maybe it's about routinely and regularly asking yourself the question, what would I create if no one were watching....
Julia Cameron talks about creativity as play. Put loony pictures and random word thoughts together, throw them up in the air or blend them in a power blender/smoothie maker, and see what falls in your lap. Hugh Macleod (he's very, very funny) talks of it in a very American, I-am-a-brillaint-CEO, look at my big...success, kind of way. Other authors, depending on the hippie content in their daily vitamin supplements, talk about it as a soul-calling, a vocation, or simply the career path that you love the most or that is the least soul destroying.
Is creativity about seeing new things, seeing things that are already there in a new way, or perhaps making things that have the perfect blend of newness and empathy for the audience? That make the viewer/reader/consumer think, wow, that's new and cool, at the same time as they think, damn, I feel like that all the time...
Or maybe it isn't about the consumer at all, as long as it makes you happy...? I'm not sure I've ever bought into the Parisian starving artist picture, though, quite. How very un-bohemian, almost, I am sorry to say, somewhat, slightly capitalism-oriented of me! Shriek!
But maybe it's about routinely and regularly asking yourself the question, what would I create if no one were watching....
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