Horizontal creativity?

In a recent article, Dr Mark Lythgoe, Neuroscientist at University College London, suggested -

"When you're lying down, you relax and the brain is better able to drift, helping us to do tasks that need mulling over or require free association. It's a bit like creativity - while it needs some focused work, creativity often needs a period of subconscious processing while you're not thinking about the problem. Lying down seems to free up the mind."

Have you noticed any connection to this theory in your own experience?

Of course it may be impractical in some circumstances, but try this lying down theory when you next create and see if it makes any difference in freeing up your mind and your creative flow...

Talking to your creative project...

We all get to difficult points in creative ventures, where we know there's something not quite there, or there's a missing element.

There's something lacking, a slight change in direction or finishing touch that will make the work complete. But what this missing element is, isn't immediately obvious.

Or is it?

Sometimes just by asking the obvious, we can unblock and continue.

It may seem unconventional, but by simply asking - "What does this novel/ sculpture/ design want from me next?" - we can often unlock the path forwards.

It's just one way of approaching the issue from a slightly different angle.

A creative way of continuing to be creative...

Try it when you next get to a sticking point in one of your creative projects and see what comes up...

More on creating doorways...

Following on from my recent post about creating doorways, I came across this from Julia Cameron -

"We like to pretend it is hard to follow our heart's dreams. The truth is, it is difficult to avoid walking through the many doors that will open. Turn aside your dream and it will come back to you again. Get willing to follow it again and a second mysterious door will swing open."

As long as we can stay aware and vigilant of the opportunities around us, we can't help but move towards the way we want our lives to be.

Another element to this is letting people know what you're doing and where you're heading. If you keep your ambitions completely to yourself, you drastically reduce the chance of opportunities arising.

As well as seeking out the opportunities that will allow you to move forward, often by simply "letting the world know your name" - letting people know what you do and where you're heading (without ramming it down their throats and becoming a self-obsessed bore of course!) - then doorways are presented.

New tracks to creativity

"Clearly the brain prefers to find new tracks than to keep going over the old ones. It's like the difference between being kissed in a new place and having someone press on a bruise..."

- from Graphic Design book "A Smile in the Mind" by Beryl McAlhone and David Stuart

What new tracks do you allow your brain to find?

What new creative stimuli do you provide yourself with to keep ideas flowing and prevent yourself from writing the same line of poetry or drawing the same figure every time you sit down to create?

By nourishing our creative senses and taking in new ideas, pictures, words, films, music and a variety of other experiences, we give our creativity a greater well to draw from, a richer seam to mine when it comes to creating our next work or project.

These influences can seep in and reveal their influence in such a subtle way that we barely notice sometimes. But they do influence and add to our increasing collection of experiences that have shaped the way we are today as creative people.

And anyway, wouldn't YOU have someone kiss you than press on your bruises..?

Define a clear intention

I was reminded by one of the tutors at the theatre where I do acting classes about the importance of clear intention.

When we take on a new class or project or course, what's the overall aim, what do we hope do gain from it?

Sometimes it's a specific outcome, such as an award or qualification.

More often though, what initially inspires us to begin is something more amorphous. Often too, there are a number of gains we hope to get from taking part.

For example we might attend an acting class to learn how to act, but also to improve our confidence in a group situation, experience other people acting up close, and increase our chances of being offered parts in local productions.

We might attend a photography course to rekindle the old passion we had for it when we were younger, to get up to date with new digital technology, to widen our range of visual creative outlets, or to simply to enjoy meeting people with a similar interest.

By spending a bit of a time thinking about what our intentions are in these activities, we can keep them more closely in mind, and then better fulfill them.

We increase our chances of getting the most from them, and being able to give most to them, rather than just "going through the motions" and attending something regularly just because that's what we've done for the past 10 weeks/months/years...

Define a clear intention, or intentions, and get the most of all the creative activities you're involved in...

Get inside your creative work

"On the floor I am more at ease, I feel nearer, more a part of the painting, since this way I can walk around in it, work from the four sides and be literally "in" the painting."

- Jackson Pollock

How can get inside YOUR creative work?

How can you alter your viewpoint to see, hear, feel and experience it from every possible angle?

The only way to create what you want is... Create it!

A graphic designer was working on a logo for a new company. He had a good understanding of the client's requirements and knew what he wanted in his mind but was struggling with actually putting it on to paper, and creating a tangible logo.

After much research on various words and phrases around the central concept of the new company, he simply drew a blank.

Defeated, he slumped at his desk.

"It's so frustrating!" he exclaimed, "All I want is a logo that looks something like THIS...", and drew a few pencil marks on the page.

Then it hit him.

The logo he'd just drawn, the "something like this", was in fact EXACTLY like what he wanted.

By trying to research the perfect idea, he'd forgotten the simplest way of creating what you want. That is, just create it!

Sometimes in our creative efforts we can try to be too perfect, too detailed, too clever or too accomplished.

Rather than endless planning and analysing, by just starting with our best effort at this point and getting it down on paper, we put ourselves in a great position.

If the idea is very close to what we want, then we need only make a few minor adjustments before we have our finished work.

If it's absolutely nothing like what we want, we can ask why, and look at how it could be made more like what we want.

Either way, by creating this first version, we can move closer to realising what we originally envisioned.

The only true way to fail is to not even begin in the first place...

So how can you apply this to one of your creative projects? Is there an idea or concept that's been floating around incomplete in your head, seemingly elusive and difficult to pin down?

Then pin it down!

Write, sketch, paint, sculpt, or record the first version and see what you feel about it.

Then move closer to your vision, by simply honing this first effort one step at a time...

Creating doorways...

A good analogy for creating opportunities for ourselves is to use the phrase - "create a doorway."

When you know what you want, but there's a wall in the way stopping you from reaching it, then the best way through is to create a doorway.

This could mean any number of things, but essentially means creating the opportunity for yourself to move closer to gaining what it is you want.

For example if you want to design a new website but you have little or no experience, you could create a doorway in a number of ways.

To name just a few, you could - take a course in web design, get some good books on the subject, find some websites you like and use them as a model, do some work experience with a website designer you respect, or find step-by-step tutorials on the internet.

Each of these is a doorway to what you want, in this case to gaining knowledge and experience in designing your new website.

But creating doorways is not quite ALL there is.

Once you've created the doorways, you've got to pick one and walk right through. Simply creating the doorway then standing at it gazing through isn't going to get you where you want to be.

You need to make the commitment - walk through the doorway - and follow through to where it leads.

Once you've done this, you'll be in a stronger place to consider your next options. And you can then go on to create more new doorways, all the time traversing the walls obstructing you and getting you closer to what you want...

So what doorways can YOU create for yourself today? And when will you commit to walking through..?