Month: August 2019

Side projects are a good thing

Neera 1 Comment

Some of you must have noticed some wired circles in my Instagram posts and at the bottom of blog posts wondered what are those about.

Time to reveal the secret.

I am doing a drawing course, a cartoon drawing course to be more precise, and our first assignment is to draw circles. Circle-y-circles as they call them. Three times a day, for five minutes each time.

Not only we are to draw circles but we are to share them as well on social media. That is the commitment. And I am fully on-board with it. This particular course uses the old Eastern (and Renaissance) teaching methodology where repetition and incremental learning is used to bring the expertise.

We were in fact asked to read the book The Talent Code (which goes on to break the myth that talent is inborn) and watched the videos from The Karate Kid movie series.

As some of you might be aware that I wanted to learn drawing for some time now. I tried to do it myself, by trying to do a sketch a day, but it didn’t last long. Now with this course, within five days I have made so much progress.

While writing is my main vocation, drawing is my side project. Side projects are very important to unleash creativity. Because they are done for fun they bring out the playfulness much easily than our passion where we tend to behave like a martyr.

Austin Kleon wrote in his book How to Steal Like an Artist:

One thing I have learned in my brief career: It’s the side projects that really take off. By side projects I mean the stuff that you thought was just messing arouod. Stuff that’s just play. That’s actually the good stuff. That’s when the magic happens.

[…]

It is good to have a few projects going at a time, then when you get stuck on something with one, you can jump on to the next one. This is called ‘productive procrastination.’

Hobbies are other things that are beneficial to unleash creativity. A hobby is something creative that you do just for yourself. You don’t try to make it your vocation or get famous for it. It is something that gives you pleasure and helps you unwind.

There is no one better than Stephen Duneier to talk about hobbies. He tells a story about when he got into knitting on his wife’s suggestion.

He was not that passionate initially, but one day while sitting underneath a forty feet tall eucalyptus tree he had a thought, “that tree would look really cool covered in yarn.”

At that time he didn’t know there was any such thing called yarn-bombing where people wrap public structures with yarn. This is what he exactly did. In 82 days he finished his first project of yarn-bombing.

Image from Ishknits

He got so hooked that he kept going with bigger more ambitious projects that required engineering skills and the use of different materials such as fiberglass and metal.

He ended up wrapping 18 boulders and the whole of TMC Children’s Hospital in Southern Arizona.

Photo from Rhodetails

The moral of the story is if you haven’t got a side project or a hobby, it is time to start one.

I publish two to three new posts every week to help unleash your creativity. If you don’t want to miss any, join my email list.

Journal writing – a simple practice that will make you the writer you want to become.

Neera

Writing is a challenge even for the best of the writers. For beginners, the undertaking is so daunting that most of them give up after a few tries. When the first novel or a bunch of short stories or hastily written poems don’t bring them either the satisfaction or the accolade they were looking for, they give up; without realizing that they could have kept their dream alive by doing one single practice.

Journal writing.

Journal writing is one simple tool that can make you an eloquent writer, a clear thinker and a much better human being.

What is a journal, anyway?

A journal is a place where you record your observations, insights, memories, impressions, and feelings. It is a keeper of your secrets and holder of your dreams and hopes. It is a whiteboard where you analyze stuff and make plans. It is a safe haven to vent your anger and share your hurts.

The simple practice of journal writing, if pursued faithfully, can make you the writer you want to become. Whether you write fiction, nonfiction, blog or business documents, you will find that the practice of keeping a journal makes you a much better writer.

Journal writing has been around for centuries. It is a practice adopted by the old and new writers alike.

Many prolific writers were journal-writers. Rainer Maris Rilke, Virginia Wolf, Whinston Churchill, Louis XiV, Henry David Thoreau, Carl Jung, Anais Nin, and Susan Sontag became the writers they are through the practice of keeping journals.

This is how Anne Frank started, at age thirteen, with the following words in The Diary of a Young Girl.

Thirteen years old Anne went on to become the most famous journal writer in the world even though her life was tragically cut short only a few years after she wrote those words.

If you have too many obstacles in the way to follow your dream, then do just one thing, keep a journal. Here are ten ways a journal will help you become a writer.

1. Journal writing will keep your writing dream alive

Twenty years ago, when I felt an urge to write, I couldn’t even put a decent sentence together. Having not written anything other than a bunch of letters I had no expertise in writing. Out of sheer luck, I picked up an old diary and started writing.

My first entry was a letter to my husband. I wrote on-and-off for a few years, gradually increasing the frequency to weekends and whenever life threw lemons at me. Little by little the urge to write took hold of me so much that any day I don’t write doesn’t feel like the day I have lived.

Journal writing, more than anything else, kept the dream of becoming a writer alive for me. All through the years while I was busy with work, home, raising children and parenting the parents, the only writing I was doing was in the journals. But this simple act made me a much better writer than I was before. I am a full-time writer now. It wouldn’t have been possible without the practice of journal writing.

2. Journal writing helps you become a better writer

When I started writing I had a very limited vocabulary. My writing expression was plain and I didn’t know a lot about literary devices and my knowledge of fiction and non-fiction writing was next to nil. All I had was a desire to write.

My journal became my teacher. I wrote in it whichever way it came, never editing, never trying to improve anything. For the first couple of years, I wrote with a pencil rather than a pen so that I could erase whatever I didn’t like but I don’t remember using it much. It was just there for comfort.

As I wrote I got better and better at it. My vocabulary increased and my sentences improved.

Journal writing provides you with a safe environment to practice. No one is going to read your journals. They are for you and you only. You can write in it whichever way it comes. Broken sentences, random rants, off-tangent remarks, unfinished poems, mundane stories – everything is acceptable.

In journal writing, it is not the outcome but the practice that matters.

3. Journal writing will bring out what lies buried deep inside you

A journal is a place where you can write intimately, truthfully, and without any constraint. No one is going to read what you write. You are writing for yourself.

It is also a very effective tool to bring out to surface what is buried deep inside you. When you write in a journal you inevitably return to the center of your being. A journal becomes a trusted companion to whom you can tell everything without the fear of being judged.

On the surface everything was fine, but deep down I knew something was wrong. I couldn’t put my finger on it and the nagging feeling wouldn’t go away. I went through the day, distracted, a part of my brain continuously trying to figure out the problem.

Finally, when the day was over, all the chores done, I sat in my bed and opened up to my journal. Layer by layer I started peeling off the ambiguity. One by one, I recounted all the reasons. Every pent up emotion came out. Raw and fierce.

At times I went off the tangent, but it didn’t matter. In about half an hour I started feeling better as if there was weight on my chest and it has been lifted. I could breathe normally now.

The problem was still there but I had dissected it. It was not a huge monster any more. It lay there in tiny pieces and I was not afraid of it any longer. I knew solution will come to me sometime in future. I closed my journal and drifted off to sleep.

An excerpt from my journal

Journal writing teaches reflection and brings focus. It gives you room to know yourself in depth.

4. Journal writing will help you know yourself

Writing in a journal helps you self-examine. It is a supreme way to record your thoughts and to understand your own thinking process.

The patterns of your thinking, emotions, and actions start becoming evident very early in the process of journal writing.

Unfolding these patterns can empower you to see what you are giving time and attention to; where your thoughts are taking you; what emotions accompany your thoughts; what insights are there and what changes are needed.

Self-awareness brings acceptance and widens our perceptions. The less aware we are about ourselves the more closed and restraint we become. The more secure we feel about ourselves, the easier it is to open up to what’s around us, including to other people’s views and experiences. Journal writing supports this.

5. Journal writing will help you become an observer

Journal writing will train and hone your eye for beauty. It will invite you into the present moment while also allowing you to roam your past. It will open you to experience awe and wonder. It will let you intensify and renew your pleasure in events and situations that have gone well. It will support your recovery and the gaining of wisdom from the times you wish had never happened.

The habit of journal writing creates the most interesting distance between you and your thoughts. Your feelings change when you write your thoughts down and you are able to change your perspective. Experiencing your own powers of observation, coupled with a greater awareness that you have choices, increases your sense of self-mastery and inner stability.

As your journal writing continues, this means that you become not only an acute observer of your own life but also an acute observer of life itself.

6. Journal writing will help you understand the world around you

Journal writing is a supremely effective way to engage more intimately with the world that is all around you.

It will help you become less judgemental and critical of other people and generally less judgemental and more supportive of yourself.

Journal writing is a self-directed source of inner development, yet it also makes the world beyond your own self more real and more vivid. It can be an interface between you and the outside world.

The change might take place at a glacial speed, but you will find out that your writing will become less and less about yourself and more and more about the outside world even if it is about the palm tree outside your window or the birds chatting to each other.

7. Journal writing makes you an original writer

Only you can write your journal. Only you know most about yourself. And only you have your own perspective. When you write in your journals you are not imitating or copying. You are just being you. In your journals, you find your voice.

The freshness that comes from writing a journal permeates your life.

It is impossible to write a journal consistently and not become more reflective, insightful, and original in your writing.

8. Journal writing helps you silence your inner critic

Journal writing is all about process – not goals or outcomes. It is freeing – not constraining. Journal is the place where you can retire the inner critic. How you write, what you write, matter only to you. You are writing to please yourself, no one else.

Sometimes when I read my old notebooks I get drawn into them like a novel. I almost forget that I have written it. Some insights are so profound that I stop and wonder where that came from. All negativity about my writing ability vanishes and a sense of acceptance of my own abilities surfaces.

Journal is a thinking place, where you are least inhibited. Many writers use journals as the place to develop ideas or reflect on their intellectual work in progress.

It can be a place of discovery, learning, emotional relief, and insight. It can also be a playground, where the everyday rules of writing, reflecting, problem-solving, goal-setting, production, and planning no longer apply.

9. Your journals are the containers for your stories

An empty page in your journal is an invitation.

It is a place to collect your stories. A perfect repository of your anecdotes. This is where you describe things that can’t be captured in pictures. Like your home, what it means for you, how it functions and what comfort it brings you.

In your journals your practice noticing and capturing details to make your writing intense. Through your journal, you learn to see the world in more vivid colors. Widen your vision. Excite your senses.

I was hanging clothes on the clothesline when I took off a pair of socks I had already hung and straightened them by pressing them between the palms of my hands. Then I put them up again my cheeks to feel their texture. I hanged them up again, this time slowly and nicely so that when they dry I can fold them the way Marie Kondo suggested. It was then the realization struck me – I now have time to thank my socks. I laughed when I read that suggestion in The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying. Now I just did that.

Excerpt from my journal

These stories make perfect reading for rocking-chair days.

Journal writing is a supremely effective way to engage with your own inner world – and to engage more intimately and confidently with the world that is all around you.

10. Your journals itself will become your writing

Over time your journals will become your life’s work, something more precious, truthful, and rich than any book you can write. Many journal writers have left their journals as their legacy. Anais Nin made an art form out of her journal writing. She left behind 150 volumes (about 150,000 pages) many of which got published in her life making her a feminist icon of the sixties.

If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing or sing in writing then don’t write because our culture has no use for it.

Anais Nin

Start a journal you don’t have one, and for the love of writing keep going if you already have one.

Photo by Essentialiving on Unsplash

I publish two new posts every week to help unleash your creativity. If you don’t want to miss any, join my email list.

Why have a platform?

Neera 1 Comment

Dear Creative Souls,

I have been writing for twenty years now. In those years, I have filled countless diaries, notebooks, digital files, and online apps. I was writing for myself and never thought of publishing anything.

As I got a bit better at writing, a tiny desire to share some of my writings with others started lifting its head.

But I am too scared to send any of my short stories to the competition. My novel needs at least three for four serious rewrites, and my diaries are personal. What can I share?

That is when I came across Austin Kleon’s book Show Your Work in which he describes the importance of having a platform.

A platform is a medium through which you share your ideas and your work. It can be physical (a gallery, a salon…) or digital (blog, Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook…), although in today’s age digital is preferred because of its reach and affordability.

Austin wrote:

More than ten years ago, I staked my own little Intrnet claim and bought the domain name austinkleon.com. I was a complete ameture with no skills when I began building my website: It started off bare bones and ugly. Eventually, I figured out how to install a blog, and that changed everything. A blog is an ideal machine to turn the flow into stock. One post is nothing on its own. Publish a thousand posts in a decade and it turns out into your life’s work.

[…]

My books, my art shows, my speaking gigs, some of my best friendships – they all exists because I have a my own little piece of turf on the internet.

That advice was the inspiration for the start of this blog. Since last year, I started sharing my work and my learnings on this blog. It has completely changed my perspective on my craft. I am writing better, learning faster and feeling a sense of accomplishment I never felt before.

If you are really interested in sharing your work and expressing yourself nothing beats owning your own space online, a place that you control, a place that no one can take away from you, a place where people can always find you.

Carving out a space for yourself online, somewhere where you can express yourself and share your work is still one of the best possible investments you can make with your time.

Andy Baio, a technologist and blogger. 

Your blog can be your sketchbook, your studio, your gallery, your storefront, and your salon.

It is like a shopfront.

It will be a place where you can be yourself. You can reveal the part of you which not even your family knows about. Your secret yearnings, your desires, your dreams.

Don’t think of it as a self-promoting machine, think of it as a self-invention machine. Online you can become a person you really wanted to be. Fill your website with your work and your ideas and stuff you care about. Social media trends will come and go but blog and email have been around since the beginning of the internet and are here to stay.

[…]

Over years you will be tempted to abandon it for the newest, shiniest, social network. Don’t give in. Don’t let it fall into neglect. Think about it for the long term. Stick with it, maintain it and let it change it with you over time. Whether people show up or they don’t, you’re out there, doing your thing, ready whenever they are.

Austin Kleon

Blogging is a simple strategy that the new age creatives use to build a name for themselves which overtime becomes their most valuable asset.

This kind of blogging is different from professional blogging where you are wanting to earn money from blogging. It is more in line with the advice the great writer and visual artist William Burroughs gave to Patti Smith, a singer, songwriter, musician, author, and poet

Build a good name. Keep your name clean. Don’t make compromises. Don’t worry about making a bunch of money or being successful. Be concerned with doing good work… and if you can build a good name, eventually that name will be its own currency.

William Burroughs

I am not sure whether you have given it a thought or not yet but you need a platform too. Every creative person does.

Let me know when you build one. I would love to visit it.

Photo by Matthias Wagner on Unsplash

10 Characteristics of a new age creative

Neera

I have been using the term new age creatives in my posts for some time. Recently when someone asked me what I meant by them I realized it may not be a widely used term and I might have invented it for my own understanding.

I did a quick google search. That came back with a video series documenting the stories of artists and entrepreneurs to educate and inspire the next generation. Very relevant, but not exactly on the terms I have been thinking about when I was referring to them in my posts – How new age creatives are not only surviving but thriving, What is art, We are all artists, and How to be an artist in the new age.

So I decided to do a list of the characteristics of new-age creatives. Here are ten, I came up with.

1. New age creatives take their imagination seriously

They nurture it. They feed it by constantly learning. They find ways to stretch it usually by challenging the status quo. Think of Janet Echelman here.

2. New age creatives know creativity is a way of life

They know creativity is not an occasional strike of the muse but a way of living their life. They adopt it like with the ardor of an artist. Think Elizabeth Gilbert here.

3. New age creatives are idea catchers.

They know ideas are bubbles and they vanish in thin air as quickly as they form. They build mechanisms to capture them and to follow them until they become something tangible or die a natural death. Read James Altucher’s Ultimate Guide to Becoming an Idea Machine.

4. New age creatives have a platform

They build a platform to share their ideas. They know that the world needs their ideas and the power of an idea lies in sharing it and gaining energy from the universe. This is why Ted Talks has become such a phenomenon. Listen to Robert Tercek’s Ted Talk to understand the power of a personal platform.

5. New age creatives are a part of a scenius.

They are like a node in a matrix of creative individuals who generate and nurture great ideas. Listen to Brian Eno here.

6. New age creatives are focused on the process rather than the product

They understand that the product appears as a result of the process. It is as imminent as day follows night. Better the process, the better will be the product. So they invest their energy in refining the process. Listen to Austin Kleon here.

7. New age creatives are financially savvy.

They don’t burden their creativity to earn them a living. They either minimize their needs or figure out alternate ways to make a living until their creativity bring them abundance beyond their wildest dreams.

https://youtube/DapmXzk7bd4

8. New age creatives are resilient

They are not afraid of setbacks. They know in their way of life the failure is as common as is euphoria. They develop the ability to get up after each fall. Their strength is in their faith and persistence. Think Hugh Macleod here.

9. New age creatives are friends with fear

They play with fear. Sometimes they dodge fear other times they let it beat them because they know it will bring the best out of them. Think Tim Ferris here.

10. New age creatives are generous

They are generous with their time, their knowledge, and their products. They give them freely because they know there is more from where this has come from. Listen to Seth Godin here.

I hope this list and listening to the innovative ideas help paint the picture of New Age Creatives in your mind as it has in mine.

The lost art of letter writing

Neera 3 Comments

Dear Creative Souls,

Yesterday, while waiting in the reception area of the local hospital, where my niece was going through a minor procedure, I felt the urge to write to you. Not just any writing but deep, meaningful, connecting kind of writing. I pondered how to do that. For a long time now, I have been trying to figure out ways to communicate with you on a personal level. One to one, you see.

I don’t seem to be achieving that through blog posts. At least I don’t feel that. Blog posts with their ‘scannable’ nature sometimes sound distant and preachy. As if there is a thin curtain between the writer and reader.

I want to be able to talk to you like I talk to my friends over a cup of coffee.

I would love to have a cup of coffee with you.

Chances of happening that are slim. Not impossible, but slim.

This constraint reminded me of the longing I felt for my family when I migrated to Australia thirty-plus years ago. In those days there was no mobile phone, or skype and the landlines were outrageously expensive. My only way to stay connected with my family was letters. I used to write long, extra-long letters, by hand.

I loved writing those letters. Pouring my heart out to my mother as a newlywed would. Describing the new landscape and history of my adopted country to my father and father-in-law. Bonding with my sisters-in-law through separate notes.

What I loved more than writing letters was receiving them. Those striped edge envelopes with lots of stamps containing neatly folded lined paper with its unique smell. The anticipation of its content. The stories of food, festivals, neighbors, weather. Somehow, even mundane things would sound special. Those who wrote back regularly hold a special place in my heart forever. They gave me a gift which can’t be paralleled. They comforted me through the loneliness of the initial years.

This is how I want to communicate with you. By writing letters. Providing you comfort and support through your creative journey. As your companion. As someone who fights fear on a daily basis.

Speaking of fear, as my creativity was flowing, and I was coming with these ideas of writing all these letters, FEAR popped its head and reprimanded me.

Sweetheart,

Hold your horses. Just think about what you are going to do. Writing personal letters to your readers? What a dangerous idea. That will expose you on the net. You have any idea how vulnerable it will make you. People will know your deepest desires, your failures, your agonies, your anxiety. Do you really want to announce all those things. Don’t forget you are an introvert. Introvert don’t live their lives out in the open.

As usual FEAR was right on many things. I was almost going to drop the idea when I remembered Elizabeth Gilbert’s advice in Big Magic to write a letter to FEAR.

That’s what I did.

That silenced him.

I hadn’t written a letter to anyone for decades now. It still feels great. Writing letters builds relationships, brings clarity and provides comfort. It not only warms the heart of the recipient but also of the writer.

I urge you to write a letter today. To someone. Anyone. Write to your children and leave it in their lunch box. Or your husband and place it in his briefcase. Or a long lost friend you recently found on Facebook. Tell them you were thinking of them. Tell them you were remembering the times both of you have spent together.

Or write a letter to your fears and see how much clarity and mutual understanding it brings.

Photo by Joanna Kosinska on Unsplash

10 tips to unleash your creativity

Neera 5 Comments

“But I am not creative, like you!” cried my friend when I asked her to join the drawing course with me. All my pleas to assure her that all humans are designed to be creative by nature failed. She wouldn’t budge.

Most people fall in the same category as my friend. They don’t consider themselves creative. “This wouldn’t be a big deal if the self-assessment didn’t tend to become self-fulfilling,” says James C. Kaufman, author of Creativity 101, “but it does. We think we’re not creative, so we don’t cultivate our creative potential and—voilà!—we’re not creative.”

“In his book, Orbiting the Giant Hairball, Gordon MacKenzie discusses how he used to go into elementary schools to teach students how to make sculptures from sheets of steel. When he began each class, he always started with the same question: “How many artists are in the room? Would you please raise your hands?” The pattern of response was invariable. The first graders were all in, leaping in the air, hands enthusiastically shooting for the stars. But with each successive grade, fewer hands were seen waving in the air like they just don’t care. MacKenzie notes, “By the time I reached sixth grade, no more than one or two (raised their hands) and then only ever-so-slightly—guardedly—their eyes glancing from side to side uneasily, betraying a fear of being identified by the group as a ‘closet artist.’” – Vince Gowman

I used to be like that too. I wanted to create but didn’t believe I was creative. I thought only some gifted people were creative. But I didn’t give up my dream so easily. I started studying creativity and found that creativity was not the domain of the select few. Creativity is innate to humans just like flying is to birds and swimming is to fish. Birds fly, fish swim, humans create became my mantra.

Not only that I started doing specific exercises to unleash my creativity. Here are 15 tips to get your creative juices flowing.

1. Practice idleness

Contrary to the common belief that ‘Idle mind is devil’s workshop,’ the idle mind is the germination ground for ideas. We need idle time to be creative. Incorporate idleness into your routine. Switch off the TV and sit still in a quiet room. Meditate. Take regular ‘do nothing’ breaks.

I have often wondered whether especially those days when we are forced to remain idle are not precisely the days spent in the most profound activity.

Whether our actions themselves, even if they do not take place until later, are nothing more than the last reverberations of a vast movement that occurs within us during idle days.

In any case, it is very important to be idle with confidence, with devotion, possibly even with joy. The days when even our hands do not stir are so exceptionally quiet that it is hardly possible to raise them without hearing a whole lot.”

Rainer Maria Rilke in Letters on Life

2. Make unexpected connections

“Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things.

Steve Jobs

Learn to make connections. Warm-up by finding connections between two unrelated things – a cat and a suitcase; a window and a carpet; a bird and a picture. For example, both the cat and the suitcase could be black which leads to confusion, or the cat can fit in the suitcase and travel with her owner. Now you think of the connection between a window and a carpet.

3. Imitate or Copy

Don’t let the mention of imitation or copying put you off. We learn by imitation. After all, humans have originated from monkeys. All great artists start by imitating their heroes. Imitation is an ultimate compliment. It tells the person being imitated that you value their work so much that you want to produce work like them. Of course, you will never be able to become exactly like them because you are you and she is she. Your ultimate compliment to your hero is when you transform their work into something of your own.

Copying an idea or style is not plagiarism. Definition of plagiarism is – trying to pass someone else’s work off as your own. Copying is about reverse engineering. Cast copying was an acceptable way of training new artists during the Renaissance. Copy those whose work you admire and you will find your own voice. Your own style.

“Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery – celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from – it’s where you take them to.”

 Jim Jarmusch [MovieMaker Magazine #53 – Winter, January 22, 2004 ]

4. Generate ten ideas in two minutes

You are having a creativity drought because you are not generating enough ideas. Take a pen and paper and write down ten ideas in two minutes. Don’t evaluate, just keep writing. The first few will be easy, the middle ones will be a bit of a struggle but the last two to three will be the hardest. They will be the nuggets you are looking for. Do this exercise every morning and you will flex your creative muscle within days.

“Many people need idea therapy. Not so that they can come up with great ideas right this second (although maybe you will) but so that people can come up with ideas when they need them: when their car is stuck, when their house blows up, when they are fired from their job, when their spouse betrays them, when they go bankrupt or lose a big customer, or lose a client, or go out of business, or get sick.”

James Saltucher

5. Nurture your courage

Every new idea is different by nature – it’s off the beaten path and it takes courage to risk failure or rejection. The crucial element of being creative is to have the courage to take a risk. Find out what gives you courage. Is it past successes, a well-thought-out plan of action, encouragement from others, belief in yourself, faith in your idea, a big potential payout, having alternatives, or trust in the universe?

“Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others.” Aristotle, Philosopher

6. Follow your curiosity

If courage is the father of creativity, curiosity is the mother. Creative people are always curious. Curiosity is gentler than passion. It leads subtly to the unknown and ultimately leads to answers.

You don’t need to do anything spectacular, just take one lead and start asking questions. Your question could be as simple as this, “Now what do I want to know about this?” Then start looking for the answer. The answer may not excite you to run out naked shouting “Eureka.” But it might hold your attention for a moment. At that moment it might lead you to something else. Then curiosity will ask you to just spend a few more moments and find the answer to another question it has popped in your head.

I roamed the countryside searching for answers to things I did not understand. Why shell exist on the tops of mountains along with imprints of plants usually found in the sea. Why thunder lasts longer than that which causes it. How circles of water form around the spot which has been stuck by a stone. And how a bird suspends itself in the air. Questions like this engaged my thought throughout my life.”

Leonardo da Vinci

7. Ask a fool

This is what the role of the court jester used to be. To present things with a different perspective. If a man is sitting backward on a horse, who is backward, man or the horse? What will be a fool’s idea? How many ideas can you come up with thinking with court jester’s hat on? Read my post to use the energy of a trickster.

8. Find your motivation

What puts fire in your belly? Your motivation is the fuel that ignites creativity. There are many motivators – money, survival, personal expression, creative outlet, passion, recognition, leaving a legacy, having fun, dissatisfaction, deadlines, mortality. What is yours?

9. Use constraints, put obstacles

Creativity thrives with constraints. It loves to overcome obstacles. Nina Katchadourian started using her inflight time to make art using just her mobile phone camera. Her project Seat Assignment has been displayed at several art museums throughout the world and her collection is continuing to grow.

Her project is a prime example of thinking on the feet, the artistic potential that lurks within the mundane, and the curiosity about the productive tension between freedom and constraint.

10. Rearrange things

When out of ideas, rearrange things. Look at them backward. Turn them upside down. Read the chapter from the end and work your way towards the beginning, paragraph by paragraph. It will make you notice things that you would have missed otherwise. Rearranging things make different connections. Like letters of Scrabble, whole new words and meanings will come into play.

“People who are resting on their laurels are wearing them on the wrong end.” – Malcolm Kushner, Philosopher

My friend will not join me in the drawing course but she is an amazing cook. When she goes to any restaurant and likes a dish, her quest is to recreate it at home.

How do you express your creativity?

Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash