This month we are going explore creativity a bit more. What is creativity and how does it work. We are also going to explore some things that many people do not consider to be a creative activity but when you understand the fundamental idea, you might change your mind too (as I did).
Today we are looking at how creativity is defined by multiple sources.
CREATIVE: “Creating, able to create, inventive, imaginative, showing imagination as well as routine skill.” (Oxford Concise Dictionary, 1983)
CREATIVE: “Involving the use of skill and the imagination to produce something new or a work or art; having the skill and ability to produce something new, especially a work of art.” (Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary, 2015)
CREATIVITY: “Creativity is an action, not a feeling.” (The Practice, Seth Godin, 2020)
Commit yourself to do the work instead of waiting for some feeling to tell you that its time to create. (paraphrased from The Practice)
CREATIVITY: “Creativity, ..., is a process by which a symbolic domain in the culture is changed.” (Creativity, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, 2013 ed)
Note: a symbolic domain is described as music, physics, art, etc.
Our daily supply of attention is limited and we need to decided how much of this limited resource we are going to spend on the creative process. Because it is a learning process. We need to learn the fundamentals before we can create something new.
🎻 A musician learns musical notation, instrument skills, understand the genre, then create.
📚 A writer learns what makes for good storytelling, style, grammar, plot, dialogue and so on, and then creates the manuscript.
🎨 The artist learns to draw, how to use the tools, studies styles and techniques, and mediums and then creates. (paraphrased with a few extra examples.)
That's a real mouthful, but next time we will leave the academics behind and explore creativity from a practical perspective.
Stay healthy, and live creatively until Monday!
●︙● Linzé 🇿🇦💜
PS: Newsletter out next Monday.
