la_marquise | Creativity

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Creativity

One of things that I wonder about, sometimes, is what we mean when we describe someone as 'creative'. I often doubt myself in this regard: my ideas, it seems to me, are nothing exceptional and my talents are narrow. In my head, true creativity should go beyond my on thin ability to play about with words and when I look at others, I see that wider definition reflected back. So many of my friends write and paint/draw or make jewellery or sing or play instruments or cook like angels or dance or sew or knit etc etc. (And not just from patterns or recipes: you lot out their make up your own.) Several of them do multiples -- I'm looking at you,

smallphoenix and

seanan_mcguire. Me, I just move words around. And that, in comparison, is very little. I can't draw or play anything; I can carry a tune but no more than that; my embroidery is workmanlike at best.
So what is this creativity thing anyway? Is it some kind of magic? How should we define it and where are the boundaries?

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Moving words around is a very special talent indeed. There are so many people who can't do it, so many people who really don't have imagination without someone telling them a story.

Developing the imagination and telling people stories that inspire theirs is true creativity, in my opinion. The ability to develop those stories is magic, wonderful creative magic.

That makes YOU creative.

Thank you.

Of course you're creative. You're merely focused. I can't do much but write, either, and yet I've never doubted that I was creative. In fact, I have known people who had so many talents and areas of interest that they never really used any of them to their full capacity. Thus they never achieved much with any of their talents.

Focus is not to be sneezed at, in short.

Seems to me you are elucidating a topic for a novel.

Yes, but what you do with words is something many of us cannot do. You take words and build things of them that only exist in your imagination, and give them to the rest of us to enjoy, every bit as much as a musician or a painter or a cook creates something from different sorts of building blocks.

I bet you they all feel like that too - I know I do. You can use words and when I think about writing books I am overwhelmed by how much creativity and imagination it takes.

Creative is the ability to make something new and fresh out of raw materials, stuff discarded by others; to see the possibilities in a blank page, a blank wall, a blank canvas; to make something more than it was by embellishing it in some way. We are wordsmiths, beating our words on anvils until they fit the shape we are making of them.
Those are my definitions.

No writer "just" moves words around. If we did that, all we'd produce would be summaries of other people's original ideas.
What are writers? We are the lynch pins of society, we go back to the dawn of time.
We are the root of all oral traditions, of laws, of history, of learning, of messages. We are those who sat by the night camp fires as sparks rose into the heavens, and told our tales of folk heroes, warriors who never gave in, of great battles. We were certainly amongst the first travelers and explorers, returning with tales of strange creatures and people beyond the ken of the ordinary person.
We are the shapers of people, of kings, of societies. We see beyond the boundaries of now, of what is possible, and our ability to do that inspires those around us.
We let the poor and downtrodden escape their drudgery for a while as they listen to us; we help the sick and ill live in a pain-free world again for the duration of our tales. We allow the lame to walk, the blind to see... We bring comfort to all who listen to our stories, or read them. We open up unthought of possibilities to those with the ability to look beyond the now; we inspire others with our creativity.

That's what writers do, so very much more than just push words around. That is what you are a vital part of, love. :)

Edited 2009-09-16 19:33 (UTC)

Yeah! Yeah!

That is a beautiful way of putting it. I do wonder, though, about my set of stuff -- it really is the words I am comfortable with, not so much the plotting.

Plotting is just a mechanism for getting from A to Z.

Ian Banks (I think it was) and Chris Priest feel writing is like a field of tall grass. They run into it, push it aside and never worry about where they are going with their writing. Once in a while they stop at a big rock and jump on it to look out over the grass tops and survey the landscape. I am quoting one of them. :)

I like logic, so the mind-mapping, which conversely is very open, appeals to me for plotting. I do one map for each main character and body of characters - like collectively what the Brotherhood or Camarilla is up to - then I merge them in a time line and hey presto, I have a scene by scene break down of the novel with not too much effort.

Seriously, don't sweat the plotting. You are learning your craft still, as are we all, but you have to find out for YOU how you like to put your novels together. Think of it as a Voyage of Discovery, and enjoy the scenery, and the trip, and the folk you meet along the way. Stop getting all wound up about it because there is no right or wrong way to plot - or not. :) You are doing fine, just relax into to it.

I know, easier said than done. I should start the new book now, and usually I have at least 6 false starts before one gels.. but I have not a clue how to start this one at all! Waaaa... !!! So I am quietly stressing out too!

That's a lovely metaphor, with the grass.

It sounds like your definition of creativity is "what other people do". :-)

Oooh, a direct hit, I'd say. :-)

I don't think any of us actually feel creative,you know. Probably all the friends you envy (and, be honest, you know a far-above-average bunch in intelligence and talent) don't feel talented either.

However, I've been what you create, and it's pretty damn good.

my ideas, it seems to me, are nothing exceptional

Everybody's ideas are natural to that person. I think your books sound cool and unusual and not at all boring. Writing is a peculiar art; it's interactive, and almost a performance art - you're creating something in the reader's head, and the better you are at it - even if, and maybe particularly if, you are not drawing attention to your skills - the richer the reader's experience will be. A writer who says 'look at me, aren't I clever' can be amusing for a while, but to me, the one who swallows his ego and mediates between the reader and the story performs the greater feat.

And I think there are different _kinds_ of creativity, too. There are people who can take something simple and make it shine, people who produce something intricate, people who produce something that is startlingly new, or clever, or hitherto unimaginable; people who help you to see the unexpected in ordinary objects, people who can rework something you've known all your life and make it fresh and new...

Sometimes, what's laudable to one set of observers is impenetrable or trite to another. Sometimes it takes a particular artist to make an art form accessible. (I never saw the point of graffitti - until Banksy.)

It's a big continuum. There's room for all of us in it.

I'm probably a fairly creative person. I've had a singing career (and am doing a band reunion next year, so it's not over yet), I've made silver jewellery, done lapidary work, designed and made clothes (sometimes for me and the family, sometimes for a living), designed and made rag dolls (for a very poor living but much satisfaction), have some small talent at drawing, a very small talent for photography and a better talent at designing artwork for print (thank you photoshop) - and I write.

But all the creative urges that I get can be a distraction. My butterfly mind wants to take me in all sorts of directions (often several directions at the same time) and at the end of the day being able to sew a straight seam, make a pretty doll or design a postcard for promoting a music tour only means I have less time to spend perfecting my writing.

Don't worry about the rest of it. Be thankful you can focus on your specific creative urge. Moving words about is a very specific talent. You do it elegantly. Be grateful.

You are one of the most creative people I know! (You and Seanan need to meet, in fact: I suspect you'd like each other a great deal.)

If (generic) you can do something it's less interesting and less magical than what someone else can do, because you don't know how they're doing it. Muchly 'familiarity breeds contempt' concept. I do stuff and it doesn't seem special or creative to *me* though apparently other people think it is. That you can take words and play around with them and create something new *is* a gift, an artform and it's creative.

By it's very definition it's creative - you start with nothing and you end with something. Don't worry about the concepts, just carry on doing it!

It just interests me how some people do many things, and others concentrate on one or two.

Two comments;

to most people if you say creative, they think music or art. It's fandom which is somewhat naturally obsesed with writing as THE thing.

There used to be theory that some people had a G above-average creativity thing - were likely to be very good across the board at writing, art, intellegentsia activities. I think the theory was exploded but there is still substantial evidence lying around for it methinks - I often meet people known for academic achievement and discover they also play the bassooon, sketch, etc .

Mono talent is something post industrial soc created - once all (upper class) women assumed they could be trained to paint, sew, sing, embroider etc. Creativity is nothing special, just society makes it so :-)

Used to be multi-talented folk were called Renaissance Men and Women. :) I still like to think of them as that. (Not laying claim to those abilities myself, I hasten to add)

I think that writing and art are perhaps the hardest skills to excel at. One can always do an OK sketch or watercolour, (talking in terms of Victorian skills here) but a lot of needlework and such was more mechanical, you know, cross stitch or just putting stitches on top of a pre drawn design, as you can do today. I know from my time at the Glasgow school of Art just how creative modern embroidery is to the older styles done by your average girl/woman. Sample here - http://www.thethreadstudio.com/files/gallery/gallery7.htm

You are a true Renaissance Woman!

Exactly!
:-)

I hadn't thought of it in those terms, but you are quite right. We aren't routinely equipped with the basics for art and music any more.

Creativity is a state of living in argument with the world.

Oh, that's a good definition.

OOh I like that one too. :)

Painting, dancing, drawing, the textile arts, musical composition, musical performance etc etc are skills. Anyone can learn at least something of those skills, within the bounds of their interest and physical ability. Once you've mastered a skill to a certain degree, it becomes automatically more interesting to think of doing things beyond what you've been taught.

Making something that wasn't there before is creative, but it could apply just as much to founders of companies or politicians or inventors or engineers or people who find ways to actually improve the administration of their departments, or the ingenuity of scammer or the labourer scrounging for ways to keep their children fed that day. You happen to have chosen literature as your field of creation, but I would consider your non-fiction just as much an expression of this impulse as your fiction.

So I think creativity is a particular expression of the universal interest in trying to make one's world suit one's will. There are other ways. I studied iconography not because I wanted to write icons, but because I wanted to know how to write icons.

That's also a very interesting definition. Thank you.

In its broadest sense, creativity involves making things, bringing them into being. As human beings we are all creative, and I do believe that the more we exercise that creativity, the happier we are.

Modern life doesn't give everybody the time or equip them with the skills to develop their creativity. Knitting, sewing, cooking, pot making, can be creative, or they can be the direst drudgery.

I seem to have an understanding of how one can write fiction, but I have no idea how anyone can compose music. How do tunes come to you - out of thin air? Is this why we invented the muses, because people couldn't imagine creation coming from within?

To me writing is a sublime fusion of the conscious and the unconscious. The plot is the intellectual, conscious part, but when I write I do feel that I am listening for what my unconscious is telling me, and for me that's the creative part. Or I suppose you could call it listening to the muse.

Yes, music is the most mysterious to me, too: it feels like you have to think not simply in another language but somehow in another space entirely to the everyday.
How are you doing?

Not too bad, though I had a horrible headache all last night which meant I didn't get enough sleep, and I still have traces of it. The house feels very empty, though. I think it may cheer me up to go and visit cat rescue centres.

Headaches are horrible. Cat rescue sounds like a very good plan, although

ms_cataclysm was wondering yesterday if you might be interested in adopting Holly.

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