“Creativity is mostly persistent iteration and juxtaposition.’ –from The Big Moo, edited by Seth Godin
Creativity
I’m fascinated by creativity–who has it, how you get it, what people do with it. From the time I was little, if forced to choose between being considered creative, athletic, or beautiful, I would choose creative every time. Well, that’s not true. There was a period in junior high school when I would have given just about anything to have a boy named David think I was pretty. But I eventually outgrew that, and creativity reigned supreme.
The funny thing about creativity (and perhaps any other trait) is that it’s hard to know when you have it. I’m not alone in this. Agnes De Mille, the contemporary dancer and choreographer, writes in her autobiography Dance to the Piper about a time when she felt she couldn’t gauge the value of her own work. De Mille had just received acclaim for her work on Oklahoma, which she felt was only fairly good, while for years critics had ignored much of what De Mille considered her best work. Disheartened, she talked with Martha Graham, another leading light in contemporary dance, and confessed that she had “a burning desire to be excellent, but no faith that [she] could be.” Graham responded with what De Mille considered the best advice she ever received, and which I think has a lot to say to any of us pursuing a creative life:
There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening, that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium . . . and be lost.
It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable it is; nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.
Stories like De Mille’s encourage me because, although it is easy to acknowledge her accomplishments and talents in hindsight, seen from the perspective of her own experience, however, there were never any guarantees. She was regularly told she had no talent, that she was too fat or too old. But still, she persisted, in the face of rejection, confusion, and little financial gain. She kept the channel open and kept showing up for her work. (For more on the importance of showing up, see Waiting for Words to Come.) One of the first important things to know about developing your own creativity is to recognize that it will be unique to you. And because there is no other “you” in the world, no one knows the form it will take. You are the only one who can give birth to it, nurture it, strangle or support it. It’s really up to you.
That said, there are some things that scientists and other deep thinkers have discovered about creativity, particularly in the past couple of decades when advances in technology have allowed us to look at the brain in the process of creative thought. Although still a mystery, creativity is a little more accessible that it has been. The following is a brief summary of what we are learning about the creative process, which I’ve sorted into three categories: the creative response, the creative personality, and the creative environment. I’ve also included a link called The Birth of an Idea, in which I try to deconstruct my own creative process as I was writing a book for my client, Jack Jouett, and the things I learned along the way.
