by Budge Burgess

Created on: March 22, 2009

Imagine, if you will, the sound of one mind thinking. Are the sounds made up of words or pictures? Do you detect lyricism or cacophony? Can you smell rose blossom or burning rubber?

Is the thinker piecing together a string of logical thoughts, assembling a jigsaw, or laying courses of bricks on a wall?

Or is s/he randomly searching a pile of disjointed images, concepts, sensations, and memories, discarding this one, putting that one aside for further inspection?

There's no universally acknowledged definition of creativity, no accepted, definitive means of measuring it. For some it takes the almost mystical form of inspiration, for others a potentially comprehensible cognitive process; for still others it can be understood in terms of the individual's personality and intelligence, for others, it is generated by the individual's unique interaction with a social and cultural environment. And then, of course, there's the imponderable factor: sheer, blessed luck.

Creativity is the process of inventing or discovering the new, of finding a new twist or a new perspective which transforms the mundane into the exceptional, or at least something different.

It's been associated with genius, and with lunacy, with a sudden flash of insight, or with years of perspiration. It's been seen as innate, and as something which can be learned, and therefore taught. It happens when fully conscious and concentrating on a problem, it happens when daydreaming or fast asleep.

And every writer who has ever lived has been asked, "Where do you get your ideas from?" If the answer was Walmart, or Macy's, there would be queues a mile long outside the stores.

And if any writer could identify precisely where the ideas came from, writing would be simplicity - each morning s/he'd go to the creativity drawer, or cupboard, corner shop, bank, or well, and draw out the ideas needed for the day's work. Kinda takes the fun out of it, though.

As a professional writer, I haven't a clue where my ideas come from. Correction. I know they come from my mind, from within my resources of memories and experiences, knowledge and understanding, the concrete and the fantastical, the emotions, joys, pains, hopes and fears that have accumulated over the years or which I'm experiencing at that particular moment.

They don't come as answers, but rather as questions. For me, creativity is about feeling confident with uncertainty, about exploring the known from a different perspective or blindly feeling my way round the unknown

• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• Next Page >>