What is the Creative’s Biggest Flaw?
Sometimes it seems like there are thousands of articles and blogs talking about creativity, so I find that they often repeat the same things I’ve heard over and over. But, when someone is honest about the negative parts of their own creative personality, I pay attention. This short excerpt from the article, “10 Creativity Tips from Donald Miller” helped motivate me to make some major progress on some projects this week:
I think half the battle of a creator is in finishing their projects. I wonder how many of the world’s greatest creators never created anything great, because while they may have had the intelligence and even the skill, they weren’t finishers. Finishing is part of the art.
A guy I met once ran into Norman Mailer at an airport and asked him what he was working on. Mailer politely declined to answer the question, saying that when he talks about a book too much, it steals his motivation to write it. I agree with Mailer, and I also think it was a brilliant way to get out of answering a question most writers are asked 50,000 times a day! Regardless of his intention, it’s true that when we talk about our work, we give ourselves the feeling that we are working on something when truthfully, we aren’t.
This last paragraph reminded me of something I heard this year about New Years’ resolutions. It seems that people are much less likely to succeed in keeping their resolutions if they tell other people about them. It was supposed that the thrill of talking about what you are going to do feels a bit like accomplishing it and de-motivates people to work toward their goals. Perhaps that is why I don’t talk about the projects that are in development now…though I want to tell you about them very badly! [hmmm...does that count as talking about them? I guess we'll see what happens to my motivation this week.]
Does anyone have another “Creative’s flaw” you want to share?
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Where Do Good Ideas Come From? [Inspiration Point]
Steven Johnson has a great white board animation that describes his view of where good ideas come from. He suggests that though the internet has distracted us, it has also given us many more ways of connecting with people which is one of the places we get new pieces of information to combine with our hunches, resulting in great ideas. The connectivity between people seems to be a critical factor in his theory on creativity. Johnson says, “Chance favors the connected mind.” It’s a beautiful 4 minute lesson to watch.
Read MoreA Mental Squint [Inspiration Point]
Today’s inspiration point is from Lewis Carroll:
When you are describing,
A shape, or sound, or tint;
Don’t state the matter plainly,
But put it in a hint;
And learn to look at all things,
With a sort of mental squint.
I like this because it reminds me that everything is not as it first seems. Every object, person, chemical, song, etc. has layers and layers of complexity. When I live my life acknowledging that there is “more beyond,” I am suddenly fascinated by every detail and seek to learn what it has to teach me. Perhaps Carroll was just cleverly stating how to interest the reader in words, but his poem has much to say to me about the excitement of living a life full of wonder.
Read MoreFortune or Virtue [Inspiration Point]
Today’s Inspiration Point comes from Beethoven,
Read MoreRecommend virtue to your children; it alone, not money, can make them happy. I speak from experience.
Humility Begets Wonder [Inspiration Point]
My Master’s Thesis was a symphonic band piece entitled, Pursuing the Wonder. In this piece, I wanted to musically portray the quest for childlike wonder that each of us need to truly appreciate and enjoy life. The concept for the piece was inspired by a visit to the location of a spring in Missouri. This spring came from deep in the earth of a Missouri cave. The simple idea of never ending water from an unknown source so fascinated me that it caused me to begin looking at all kinds of “ordinary” things differently. (A bit more on this here)
I remember walking on campus in the spring when the dogwoods were in bloom. The pink petals in the trees and peppering the ground seemed like such an undeserved visual gift highlighted by the music of wind, animal chatter, and imperceptible layers of organized noise. I began to consciously think about things that were going around me that I might never notice…the ants and insects going about their daily tasks in the flower bed along the sidewalk, the process of photosynthesis occurring in the leaves of the trees blowing above me, the thoughts of the two people that just passed me on the path. There was so much more to this world around me than I could ever know or even begin to acknowledge.
And so this wonder that was awakening in me began to change me and I pray continues to change me so that my awareness of what is truly wonderful informs the way I treat everyone and everything around me.
There’s much more that can be said about wonder and how it influenced the piece of music that I wrote. I don’t want you to think by my title that I experienced wonder because I was humble. But, I do know that when I am truly in awe of the miracles that surround me, I cannot help but realize that I am but a small part of this incredible creation.
All of this brings me to share some thoughts on creativity from the very articulate English writer, G. K. Chesterton. Thomas C. Peters, in the book The Christian Imagination, writes of Chesterton:
Again and again in his writings, Chesterton pointed to the child as the key to imagination. It is in the ‘imitation of the child,’ that adults can rediscover the imagination that has been extinguished within them.
The fact must not be overlooked that this call for poets and critics to imitate the child is essentially a call to humility. Indeed, Chesterton believed that humility is literally the foundation for greatness, and no less so in art than in any other department of life. In one of his youthful poems, G.K. had sincerely wondered how he had even managed ‘to earn the reward of looking at a dandelion’. Later in this Autobiography he recalled that child is humility as the very source of the sense of wonder that is necessary for imagination. He wrote:
But in substance what I said about the dandelion is exactly what I should say about the sunflower or the sun, or the glory which (as the poet said) is brighter than the sun. The only way to enjoy even a weed is to feel unworthy even of a weed.
Here is a remarkable statement, pregnant with all of Chesterton’s doctrine of imagination. Humility–a true sense of my unworthiness in relation to the Creator and the created universe–is the key to wonder, the door into true imagination.
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