The Elements of Creativity

TRAINING YOUR BRAIN

Your brain can be changed by how you use it, by how you

activate it every day—no matter your age. Be astonished

at what a powerful role you play in changing your brain.

All of the core brainpowers—strategic attention, integrated

reasoning, and innovation—require hard work.

We falsely think we are either gift ed in an area or not.

But you can become more innovative if you take the

challenge to heart and open your mind. You can become

more creative and inventive with practice. You just need

to recognize and fully embrace that you have the capacity

to increase your genius.

— Make Your Brain Smarter: Increase Your Brain’s

Creativity, Energy and Focus by Sandra Bond

Chapman, Ph.D., with Shelly Kirkland (Simon

& Schuster)

WRITING LIKE YOURSELF

If you’re like most writers I know, you’ve probably experienced

a feeling similar to this: Aft er reading X Author’s

work, I never want to write again!

At one point or another, most of us suff er from envy,

desiring to write like other talented writers. And it’s

understandable—the literary landscape is rich with a

symphony of voices and resonant with talent.

One of my best friends, Amy, wrote poetry in college

about one of her favorite topics: the natural world. She

told a teacher: “I want to write a poem about leaves, but

that’s been done so many times.”

Th e teacher wisely said, “But every poem about leaves

is diff erent. Write your poem about leaves.” …

You are not always the best person to judge your

uniqueness (especially if you’re feeling low or insecure).

But you are the only one who can make a diff erence in

the quality of your writing. Only you can seek and capture

and hone that which makes your writing special.

When you doubt your voice, speak to yourself the

way you would a best friend struggling to value herself.

Says Anne Lamott, “I doubt that you would read a close

friend’s early eff orts and, in his or her presence, roll your

eyes and snicker. … I think you might say something

along the lines of, ‘Good for you. We can work out some

of the problems later, but for now, full steam ahead!’”

You wouldn’t be mean to your friend if she asked you to

assess her work, and you also wouldn’t encourage her to

stop or abandon meaningful pursuits. When you hear

the voices saying you aren’t good enough and you don’t

have anything to say, talk them down. Remind them that

you are the only one who can write the way you do. Your

voice is worthy. Your voice is unique.

— A Writer’s Guide to Persistence by Jordan

Rosenfeld (Writer's Digest Books)

PURSUING PASSION

Passion fuels an artist’s journey. If you are to succeed as

an artist, you must bring the passion. Try answering the

following questions:

• Are you passionate enough about your

creative work?

• What causes you to lose passion for your

creative work?

• How do you sustain passion for your creative projects?

• What do you see as the diff erence between passion

and mere interest?

• What are your thoughts on the kindling and

rekindling of desire?

You will not be able to muster passion all the time.

Human beings are not built to be perpetual volcanoes.

You may go for days just forcing yourself to show up at

your creative work. Th at forcing and that showing up

are honorable and necessary. At the same time, do try

to locate and kindle your passion. You don’t need it, and

you can’t have it, every day, but you do need it as your

core orientation. Something in you must ignite at least

some of the time if your work is to feel alive and if you

are to feel alive.

— Making Your Creative Mark: Nine Keys to

Achieving Your Artistic Goals by Eric Maisel (New

World Library)

BEING ORIGINAL

Th e idea of having to be original oft en scares us; but to be

creative doesn’t mean coming up with something no one

has ever thought of before: It means coming up with something

you have never thought or imagined or made before.

— How to Be a Writer: Building Your Creative Skills

Through Practice and Play by Barbara Baig (WD Books)

FREE-ASSOCIATING

Th e philosopher of science Michael Polanyi once distinguished

between our “tacit knowledge” and our “articulate

knowledge.” Th e latter is knowledge we know we possess

and draw from consciously as we see fi t. Th e former is

knowledge we didn’t know we possessed because it exists

“tacitly,” sub- or semiconsciously. For example, when we

use a word we never realized we knew, we are drawing

from tacit knowledge.

It is important for writers to be aware of the fact that

their tacit knowledge lurks like a surging subterranean

sea inside their heads, waiting to be tapped into—but

how? Simply by writing freely—that is, by free-associating

on paper (or on the screen) without resorting to

premature editing. Free-association writing (or simply

freewriting) opens the channels to that hidden reservoir

of tacit knowledge. Invariably writers surprise themselves

when they review what they have churned out in a

matter of minutes.

We know a lot more than we think we know. Much of

what we learn we in eff ect place in deep storage because we

can fi nd no use for it in our daily lives. But writing requires

more dynamic knowledge retrieval than ordinary thinking.

Th e more you write, the thinner will be the boundary

between your tacit and articulate knowledge.

Try this: Spend a half-hour writing nonstop, freeassociating

on a broad topic, and writing down whatever

comes to mind, no matter how irrational or irrelevant it

seems. Shut off the editor in your brain that will want to

put a stop to such nonsense. Your goal here is to see how

readily you can retrieve tacit knowledge about the subject.

Aft erward, pluck out the morsels and use them as

the basis for a poem or short story.

— The Daily Writer: 366 Meditations to Cultivate

a Productive and Meaningful Writing Life by Fred

White (WD Books)

PLAYING ON THE PAGE

When a musician says that someone can play, it means

they are skilled, responsive and nimble; the person

knows how to harmonize or off er dissonance when it’s

right. Th e musician can play like Esperanza Spalding,

with her hands on the bass and her voice running in a

diff erent direction altogether. But it is also the emphasis

on the word. Musicians oft en say it with a downbeat at

the end, stretched out like a bass bow, as if the word is as

heavy as the talent they’ve described. Th eir tone conveys

that this skill is serious. We hear the heft inherent in the

creative act of play when, for example, author Toni

Morrison says that an idea for a book never comes to her

“in a fl ash,” but is “a sustained thing I have to play with.”

Yet outside of the creative process, play is a term that can

hurt the concept it names. It’s nearly axiomatic that play

is considered the opposite of much that we value—heft

and thoroughness. Use it as a noun, an adverb or a verb,

and most of these words will only skim the surface of

what play means, and what it can lead to.

— The Rise: Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the

Search for Mastery by Sarah Lewis (Simon & Schuster)

"All of the core brainpowers—

strategic att ention, integrated

reasoning, and innovation—require

hard work. We falsely think we

are either gifted in an area or not. "

—Sandra Bond Chapman

I 29

MIRRORING THE WORLD

When your eyes see an image of something shocking or

painful, someone getting stuck with a pin, for instance, a

part of your brain reacts to that image and it is the same

part of your brain that would react if you had been stuck

with the pin. Th e neurons in this part of the brain are

called “mirror neurons.” Mirroring plays an important

role in how we learn communication skills, as well as

empathy and creativity.

— Every Idea Is a Good Idea: Be Creative Anytime,

Anywhere by Tom Sturges (Tarcher/Penguin Books)

THINKING DIVERGENTLY

Sometimes creativity is thought of as divergent thinking:

the ability to use an object for an original or novel purpose.

Here are some exercises to help you think diff erently.

• Th ink of four new uses for common items that you

use every day: toothbrush, toaster, stapler, rubber

band, and so on.

• Th ink of a new way to drink your cup of coff ee.

• Th ink of three new ways to ask your kids (or someone

else) what they did today at school (or work).

• Th ink of three new ways to walk your dog or play

with your cat.

• Find a new use for all the items that you would typically

recycle.

• Find a new way to get to work and try to make it even

more effi cient than the way you are doing it now.

— Healthy Brain, Happy Life by Wendy Suzuki, Ph.D.,

with Billie Fitzpatrick (Dey Street Books)

TURNING PAGES INTO BOOKS

What does it take to turn pages into books? What does

it take to fi nish a book? I’ve witnessed writers complete

their work, and I’ve witnessed others stumble along the

way and stop working. I think it’s important for us writers

to understand that it takes a diff erent set of skills to fi nish

a book than it does to produce pages. Finishing a book

demands that we think about a score of issues that we

needn’t concern ourselves about in the earliest stages of

our work. It requires us to assess what we’ve already written

to determine what’s working and what’s not; to revise

and refi ne our work. It requires our willingness, in eff ect,

to rethink what we’ve written as we decide how to shape

our work, and to jettison what doesn’t fi t, and to write

completely new material as required. …

Years ago, I attended a lecture by the late historian

Robin W. Winks, who spoke about his book Th e Historian

as Detective. Th e writer, Winks said, must live with the

knowledge that any book will be incomplete and imperfect.

He suggested that we think of each work as an

essay: an attempt to get at something and not as a

defi nitive work.

“I work until I’m fi nished, not until the book’s fi nished,”

Winks said. Th e book is never fi nished. … To complete

a book, we must accept that it won’t be perfect. And our

pages will never become books unless we take the necessary

steps to complete them, imperfect as they are.

— The Art of Slow Writing: Refl ections on Time, Craft,

and Creativity by Louise DeSalvo (St. Martin’s Griffi n)

PUSHING PAST BLOCKS

Start noticing the times when you stop working. Is it when

you get stuck on something? When the writing starts to

feel “too hard”? Is it when you get thrown off your routine

because something unexpected comes up? Is it when

you’re on the verge of taking your story to a deeper level?

Keep track of your sticking points. You might even want

to take a few notes about these stopping patterns.

Use the information you’ve collected against yourself.

If you’re a writer who stops when the writing gets tough,

keep a timer by your desk and set it for fi ve minutes

when you feel like stopping. Tell yourself you only need

to write for the fi ve extra minutes (but of course, here’s

hoping you keep going past that). If the unexpected

throws you off , keep a notebook in your purse or backpack,

and tell yourself you need to fi nd fi ve minutes in

your day to write—whether it’s waiting at the DMV or

at your kid’s soccer practice. (I’ve written in the Costco

parking lot with a baby asleep beside me. I’ve also not

written when I’ve had all the time and quiet needed.)

You might be surprised what you can write in fi ve minutes:

a few sentences, maybe a paragraph, and it might

be just the paragraph you’ve been waiting for.

— Writing Is My Drink: A Writer’s Story of Finding Her

Voice (and a Guide to How You Can Too) by Theo

Pauline Nestor (Simon & Schuster).