Misc Essay on Creativity

[dstraito]

Creativity Inherited or Learned​

I've studied the way the brain works. I believe creativity and other talents are strongly influenced by whether you’re "Right Brain" or "Left Brain" dominant and to a large degree, this will be inherited. That being said I took a class the company I worked for provided, it was called Mind Mapping. The class explained a lot of the physiology and how things worked but it also provided techniques to exercise both sides of your brain.

This opened a new world for me as I learned you can do just about whatever you want with knowledge/training of the correct technique and a lot of practice. You probably won't ever be as good as someone who comes by the talent naturally but you will be able to accomplish a lot more than you ever thought.

In this class we were asked what we didn't think we could do. People mentioned singing, drawing, juggling and other skills. I said I couldn't draw or juggle. The teacher taught the technique for juggling and I was making over 10 circuits juggling 3 balls within 45 minutes. The next exercise was drawing. I was given a black and white copy of a model's face. I was asked to draw it and in 30 minutes I could barely manage a cartoon-ish representation of the model's face. Then I was told to fold the 8 1/2 x 11 paper into 16 quadrants and make corresponding grids on the paper I was drawing on. I then took the model's picture and turned it upside down and drew 1 quadrant at a time. In the same amount of time it took me to do the first sketch I completed my second one only this time you could actually tell who I was drawing. It was a fair (not great) representation. The light bulb went on, technique and practice.

Since then I've done many pencil sketches I'm proud of, not great works of art, but given my past expectations of what I could do, worlds above that.

For six months I tried an experiment that worked pretty well. I decided to only write with my left hand since I was right hand dominant. In boring meetings I would practice writing in block letters the alphabet and numbers with my left hand. After a while I started practicing cursive. Now I can write with my left hand though not as fast or not quite as good but it's legible. I never thought I could do that before.

Now there is so many things I would like to try, I just don't have the time (work gets in the way). I'd like to get proficient at playing lead guitar, I'd like to get better at drawing. I've written 4 novels and I'd like to improve my writing abilities. I may never produce a classic work of art but I enjoy being creative and I attend the DFW Writers Workshop where I continue to learn better techniques.

I firmly believe we all have more capabilities in us that lay dormant and just need to learn technique and practice to open a world of possibilities.

Don't let anyone tell you CAN'T do anything.

 

[Lynx]

Thank you for this. Very encouraging.

 

[pauldude000]

What you can accomplish with your mind is limited only by your true desire and willingness, a willingness to put forth the necessary effort required to break through various environmental barriers that hinder you. Most people are not, as it is a lot of work. What you speak of is ultimately intelligence.

Despite intellectual arrogance, from what I have observed intelligence is relative, not static. (A static intelligence is one that is genetically determined, the level you have at birth is the same at death. A relative intelligence changes over time due to stimulation, use, and environment.)

Basically, all people are given a similar toolkit. This toolkit is built upon most heavily in the early formative growth stages, before a person reaches their teenage years. If a person is heavily encouraged to utilize these tools at a very young age, then those tools were strengthened or even added to. If a person is mildly encouraged, then they will have both strong and weak tools. If they were not encouraged, only those tools they personally chose to strengthen are usable. If they were actively discouraged, then most of the tools will be weak unless they rebelled against the discouragement. Some people strengthen one or more of the tools out of sheer necessity due to survival instinct.

Intelligence is not a 'right/left brain' thing, though people tend to show a clear dominance. Whether someone is right or left brain dominant tends to be environmental. Much tends to be a focus on emotional tendencies and therefore individual body chemistry. Extremely logical people tend to have a limited use of emotion, where highly creative people tend to be heavier into emotion. This is just a general rule of thumb which quite often does not apply, as nothing in this universe usually proves to be so simple. Just call it a working rule of thumb for around the 20-30 percent of people that actually fall into a supposedly 'normal' range. I have seen profoundly logical people who commonly suffer emotional overload, as an exemplary 'for instance'.

What we call intelligence is an applied blend of all of the mental tools. The stronger the individual tools in the mental toolbox, the higher the perceived intelligence of the individual. Memory, logical information processing (mathematics/problem solving/etc.), and creativity (mental imagery/drawing/painting/abstract correlation/etc.) all work hand in hand to determine your intelligence quotient, or IQ. There are techniques that exist which can strengthen all of these. However, the one which is the simplest to build, due to a general lack of age-old mental blocks placed by our glorious (sarcasm) education system, is creativity.

Creativity is critical, as it determines what you can ultimately do with what you know or have learned. For a writer, mental imagery is key. Mental imagery is your ability to envision either simple or complex images and or events using your mental chalkboard, to be able to create and SEE complex things or even 'movies' inside your own head at will.

You must see what you are trying to describe, to make them see your story in their own mind, to suck someone inside your story, to draw them into your created world. It is the difference between a blase story that is mildly entertaining but full of cut-out characters and pasted events, or a vibrant world that explodes into their mind without much effort as they read. That will HELP make a good story, or it will take an already good story line and make it a great book.

To build your mental imagery, practice envisioning, starting from where you are and working towards more complex images. There is no such thing as a one size fits all solution. People are individually variable by nature as to their current level of ability. Some may have a hard time envisioning stick figures, while others may be able to envision a complex machine in motion. Some may be able to envision items in full color, while others may be stuck with black and white.

Start with the most complex item you can easily and clearly close your eyes and create, and then work on something harder. Practice this until you succeed, and then move on to something harder still.

Fixing that limitation is indeed that simple and your writing will become much more vibrant.

That will not guarantee a great story, but it will make anything you write much more enjoyable. If your level writing ability is already good, then you may become great.

Remember, intelligence is relative.

 

[Mark Armstrong]

I think what we call creativity is primarily association.

You start with a prompt--which could be a physical object, situation, or event; or anything you've read or seen on TV or the internet or newspapers; or anything you've experienced or witnessed or heard about second-hand; or a random subject plucked from an encyclopedia or dictionary or random subject generator; or something subconscious that you don't even realize you are using as a prompt--then your mind makes associations from that prompt.

The path to story ideas, in my opinion, is:
(1) Prompt.
(2) Initial idea.
(3) Secondary ideas (using the initial idea as a prompt).
(4) Story Concept.