I have been on a life-long quest to find my inner creativity spirit or source. Mostly I’ve learned what I am not good at creating. It has been a long journey of tragic failures, child-like odd looking results, outright plagiarism and countless frustrations. Finally, I had to accept that I don’t have an original creative bone, muscle or fibre in my body.
However, not all is lost. I am not a woman without style or flare either. What I have decided is that I am what I call a “borrower.” To explain further, I have created a definition system that classifies everyone’s creativity type. Everybody is creative in some way. It’s just a matter of distinguishing their particular strength and recognising that.
This man is a creative and very dedicated. He has spent years decorating this tree with coloured eggs. Beautiful art.
Classifications of Creativity:
~ Creators ~ These people are obviously the ones who can come up with totally original ideas and put them together in ways that work and are awesome. Their ideas are super unique and to the rest of us completely awe-inspiring.
~ Borrowers ~ These people are not able to come up with their own unique, creative and workable projects. However, all they need is a prompt. Often any prompt will trigger a splendid idea and then they’re off to the races. These are the people who use products for different applications and can make rooms look outstanding in yesterday’s colours.
~ Praisers ~ What would we do without these people? These people the ones who appreciate, compliment and use the ideas of Creators and Borrowers. But also, these lovely people can duplicate a store window display or a magazine layout to perfection. They are the ones to spread the news.
So in which group do you think you fit? Or are you a little bit of a few? As I mentioned earlier, I am most certainly a borrower. I can and love to create anything from the most obscure prompt, starting point or place. I even do this a lot with my writing. You would be amazed where some of my posts start!
Since I wrote this post, I came across the attached article. I was particularly interested in it because it addresses the topic of original creativity. Something that I know, I am lacking.
David Lose writes the article, and there is a there is a link to the original post and resource.
The report also confirms a lot of what I was trying to define in my post. The only difference is that this article claims that there is no original creativity. I tend to disagree. To me, it seems that there are a few unique people in this world who just have an innate talent to create original ideas.
See what you think about the article.
There is No Such Thing as An Original Idea
- July 10th, 2012
Creativity is all the rage these days: what it is, how you develop it, the various ways in which you express it. A slew of bestselling books, including my favorite Imagine: How Creativity Works by Jonah Lehrer, offers insight into the nature, origin and application of our fundamental, foundational, and phenomenal ability to engage in creative acts.
While the approaches and analyses differ somewhat at various points, one of the major points of convergence revolves around destroying the myth of the “solitary genius.” Creativity doesn’t, in other words, happen in a vacuum – creative ideas are always inspired, nurtured, cajoled, and spurred forward by other ideas. Which means that creative people are always drawing on the work of others, consciously or unconsciously.
“For substantially all ideas are second-hand.” The technical terms that seem to be the garnering support are the “combinatorial nature of creativity.” And while that may sound like a mouthful, the essence of the idea is that good ideas are always the product, to one degree or another, of collaboration.
One of the things that I love about this idea is that it removes the burden we may feel for being “original.” I’ve said for years – and there are few things more enjoyable than having one’s biases vindicated – that there is no such thing as an original idea. Rather, there are only ideas that are adapted, extended, or improved to meet one’s particular need or circumstances.
Further, naming and exploring the combinatorial, or collaborative, nature of creativity makes something that is often portrayed as mysterious and elusive far more accessible and down to earth. Anyone is capable of adapting ideas. Anyone can find something she loves and extend on it, or discover an insight that changes his outlook and to apply it differently. Creativity isn’t beyond the reach of anyone willing to learn from and share with others.
