Creativity Insight

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I AM AS I BECOME

Creativity Insight

In Life as a Museum Junkie,I  discuss creativity and the ability to problem solve. The subject is important since I embraced career that valued inventiveness and honored ideas. Though I thought of myself as a creative person, I was always afraid of losing my edge and be unable to solve the complex issues that faced me daily. As an artist I wondered about the source of my next inspiration, concerned about my ability to express on canvas the thoughts I had in my mind.

I spent quite a bit of time researching what makes one person more creative than another. I wondered if creativity could be learned or if it was entirely a genetic gift given to you from your parents. What I discerned is that not only does environment plays a big role in developing the ability to think creatively but that there are tricks to be learned that can stimulate the imaginative process.

An example –  A practice that can stimulate imaginative thinking, is to identify two unrelated activities and braid them together in order to create a new entity. The problem  is to find a new use for those hollow plastic eggs ( activity #1) that surface at Easter and Christmas waiting to be filled with candy. The second pairing  (activity #2) is to let your mind take a mental walk through the isles of a supermarket while trying to solve the problem. When my creativity class tried this exercise we came up with 86 suggestions including a holder for plant starts, a baby mobile, and musical rattles.

The challenge to remain creative remains with me in retirement and fear of losing my way enters my consciousness every once in a while. But recently I had a
prolific experience that has put these fears to rest. It added to my understanding of creativity and made me realize that just because I am older does not mean enduring a life of mediocre thinking. It reinforced the exercise I learned earlier, that of putting together of two disparate entities to develop a solution to a problem.

Today’s problem: Most of my writing to date is labeled as non-fiction. When attending writing critique groups I am constantly being told to put more emotion into the words of my tales and to write more like a fiction writer. Listening to others whose fertile minds produce fictional stories often mesmerizes me. I admire their work immensely, wishing I could be as inventive, but to date have been afraid try.
The introduced element: In addition to writing I exercise daily. Recently I joined a new class offered by my NIA (Non-Impact Aroebic) instructor. She asks students to dance freely and emotionally for an hour. It was quite difficult at first and I asked myself how was I going to survive the class? At 7 AM I do not feel very emotional and am mainly pleased to be able to get myself out of bed at 6:15 in order to arrive at my club in time.

I decided that the only way to generate emotional feelings  is to make up a story and dance to it. So I concocted in my mind a crazy trip to the mountains where I discovered a small hole in the rocks that upon entering its narrow passageway winds up in a cathedral like cavern. I had to enter the passage way with daring, crawling like a worm, continuing through the black cave in fear. I cried out in exasperation with myself. But as I continued there was the ecstasy when I imagined coming to a large cavern filled with stalagmites and stalactites, lit by a stream of light from above. You probably get the idea by now. The story was a prop to get me to dance my emotions, but what really surprised me as I worked out the details of my tale and started to add complexity to the story, is that I wanted to go home and write it down.

Now I have the start of a novel that has intrigue, mystery, good and mean characters. It is so much fun to work on that I find it difficult to do anything else. When I get stuck and can’t understanding my characters’ intention or emotions I take the situation to the next class and dance it out, realizing that the characters are all a part of my own psyche. Now I find that both exercise and writing routines are thriving in each other’s company, and I am pleased to have discovered another trick to add to my arsenal to maintain creativity.

Each of you, my readers, may have developed your own tricks to help you come up with new ideas or ways to solve problems. It would be wonderful if you would share them below.

The photo above is was made while sitting in an airplane and messing around with my tablet.

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