Typically, we think about creativity in terms of the creative act, the product that solves a problem. Thinking about it a bit deeper, we recognize that there’s a person that solves a problem that results in the product. But, we tend to ignore the most important P of creativity: process.
Viewing creativity as a sudden act is found in almost all tales of great discoveries; it is the iconic eureka moment. The popular story of Samuel Taylor Coleridge writing Kubla Khan involves Coleridge having a dream, suddenly waking up and having the whole poem in his mind. Yet, when scholars looked at Coleridge’s notebooks and the poem, they found passages already written and lines borrowed from other people.
One of the classic quotations on creative inspiration is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s: “When I am…completely in myself, entirely alone, and of good cheer…it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence and how they come, I know not; nor can I force them.”
Mozart also realized that his creativity was the result of hard work, but this is often ignored: “People err who think my art comes easily to me. I assure you…nobody has devoted so much time and thought to composition as I. There is not a famous master whose music I have not industriously studied many times.”
Creativity is something that everyone has access to; it is not the provenance of select individuals. Although there isn’t a rigid creative process, there are acts that can be undertaken to facilitate and develop the creativity ability. It isn’t easy but it can be learned.
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