A few years ago a grocery checkout lady saw that I was buying crayons and remarked, "My son is only three but he is so creative. He's already learned to outline the things he'll color before coloring them in." And I thought this was rather sad, for both the child and the mother, because what she described is the antithesis of creativity.
I had a number of talks this weekend with friends about that rarified thing, "the creative process." Much of my energy was spent debunking commonly held misconceptions about that process and how it affects the life of a person who's expected — and paid to be — as creative as possible. Here are a couple points:
• Photo-realism is not the pinnacle of creativity. Sorry, it's not. It's just photo-realism. To have a child who can draw something that looks "just like it does in real life!" indicates some pretty good hand-eye coordination, but that's about it. To have a child who's scrupulously coloring within the lines means you might have a meticulous kid, or someone who'll develop rigid, anal-retentive tendencies later. This is because...
• Creativity is about the world of ideas. We're not talking about just visual or performing arts now, but about a mental muscle that needs to work out each day in order to excel. This means being able to imagine things, to envision, and to field questions that start with phrases like "What if...?" My clients don't need me to come back with the most avant-garde, outlandish ideas, but brainstorming encourages over-reach, so keeping my personal "visual vocabulary" stimulated and replenished means I can come up appropriate ideas faster. This is because...
• Creativity is a problem-solving process, not a lifestyle. If you're thinking of creatives as people in black turtlenecks or boho clothing, living a freewheeling approach to life and deadlines, you're only considering a fraction of the overall. Nobody ever gets paid to miss deadlines or not solve problems. Someone like me may not yearn to read balance sheets for fun, but my so-called "artist's life" is very much determined by project deadlines, client priorities, and budget constraints. In fact, some of my best work came from accommodating all such things — finding "simple but significant" solutions (thanks, Mr. Draper!) without lots of time and budget. This is because...
After 35 years in the streams and tributaries of design, marketing, course development, and fiction writing, I have a fairly good idea of how my personal "creative process" scopes out, and how to manage it, which includes understanding what I need in order to stay creative.
Next post: What do creatives need?
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