Creativity is a Commodity
Everyone that I know is pretty creative. When I think about all the late night conversations I've had with most people, even complete strangers that I only ever talked to once, I'm always fairly impressed with the ideas that people come up with. It might some gadget that they wanted in their kitchen or bathroom, or maybe it's some idea for a television show they'd like to see put into production. More often than not, it's a simple idea expressed in a clever way or unique way. Or maybe all of these people have stolen all of these things that I'm impressed by. I dunno.
I really doubt it. When you get right down to it, most people are pretty creative. We all pretty much share the same basic experiences in life, the same struggles, and tend to find escapes from daily routine in the same basic ideas. It's this fundamental lowest common denominator we all share that gives us an intuitive sense of what other people want. Sure, I have an idea for a television show that people might think is funny, and if I could get it produced, and have it executed properly, people might watch it and the damn thing might be profitable. Who knows?
I think the only reason we aren't all trying to express ourselves and be more creative is simply because most people lack focus. This isn't a bad thing...there are times when I need to turn off the little voice in my head and just stop thinking about crazy stuff, like when I'm at work in a meeting. If I really let my mind wander all over the place, who knows what I might suddenly spurt out in front of everyone? It's a survival tactic. It's pragmatism.
But my overall point is that we all have really good ideas. They come to us when we're in the shower, driving to work, or any other time when our brains are basically just drifting through monotony. The thing is that most of us don't bother to retain those ideas in any fashion. We don't write them down, and so they escape us. I was really planning on starting out this post with an example of a really good idea that someone I know had come up with lately...I couldn't think of a single one. Ideas aren't sticky.
So basically, we all have good ideas, but very few of us make the effort to write them down. And of the handful of people who write down the ideas, only a few of them are really good and worth following through on. And of these few, probably only a small handful of these are followed through on, either due to lack of initiative or resources. And of this miniscule portion, probably only a small portion of them are implemented or executed well enough to be successful. No wonder we don't write them down.
But I think in general we don't give ourselves enough credit, and this is unfortunate, because it's a side of ourselves that we fail to nurture. It's part of the reason that I started writing on here. I used to read lots of fiction when I was in high school, and I made a decent effort to write my own stuff. I have a couple of works of "novella" length that I composed during college which will probably never see the light of day again. At some point, I stopped reading fiction because reading stories about stuff that never happened to people who don't exist stopped offering me any entertainment value, and because I stopped reading it, I stopped writing. Fortunately, there are other things for me to read besides fiction, and I live in the age of the Internet, where I can exercise this writing muscle by bloggin about whatever I like.
I've started keeping a notebook handy wherever I go. I once heard the author of "The New Kid on the Block", Jack Prelutsky, say, "The difference between a writer and a non-writer is that a writer writes things down when they come to him." A good summation of just how sloppy our brains our at retaining information. Next time you get that great idea, write it down. It may seem like a thankless chore, but creativity is itself is really only worth so much. Sooner or later you might be looking back over your idea list and see something worth following through on.
I really doubt it. When you get right down to it, most people are pretty creative. We all pretty much share the same basic experiences in life, the same struggles, and tend to find escapes from daily routine in the same basic ideas. It's this fundamental lowest common denominator we all share that gives us an intuitive sense of what other people want. Sure, I have an idea for a television show that people might think is funny, and if I could get it produced, and have it executed properly, people might watch it and the damn thing might be profitable. Who knows?
I think the only reason we aren't all trying to express ourselves and be more creative is simply because most people lack focus. This isn't a bad thing...there are times when I need to turn off the little voice in my head and just stop thinking about crazy stuff, like when I'm at work in a meeting. If I really let my mind wander all over the place, who knows what I might suddenly spurt out in front of everyone? It's a survival tactic. It's pragmatism.
But my overall point is that we all have really good ideas. They come to us when we're in the shower, driving to work, or any other time when our brains are basically just drifting through monotony. The thing is that most of us don't bother to retain those ideas in any fashion. We don't write them down, and so they escape us. I was really planning on starting out this post with an example of a really good idea that someone I know had come up with lately...I couldn't think of a single one. Ideas aren't sticky.
So basically, we all have good ideas, but very few of us make the effort to write them down. And of the handful of people who write down the ideas, only a few of them are really good and worth following through on. And of these few, probably only a small handful of these are followed through on, either due to lack of initiative or resources. And of this miniscule portion, probably only a small portion of them are implemented or executed well enough to be successful. No wonder we don't write them down.
But I think in general we don't give ourselves enough credit, and this is unfortunate, because it's a side of ourselves that we fail to nurture. It's part of the reason that I started writing on here. I used to read lots of fiction when I was in high school, and I made a decent effort to write my own stuff. I have a couple of works of "novella" length that I composed during college which will probably never see the light of day again. At some point, I stopped reading fiction because reading stories about stuff that never happened to people who don't exist stopped offering me any entertainment value, and because I stopped reading it, I stopped writing. Fortunately, there are other things for me to read besides fiction, and I live in the age of the Internet, where I can exercise this writing muscle by bloggin about whatever I like.
I've started keeping a notebook handy wherever I go. I once heard the author of "The New Kid on the Block", Jack Prelutsky, say, "The difference between a writer and a non-writer is that a writer writes things down when they come to him." A good summation of just how sloppy our brains our at retaining information. Next time you get that great idea, write it down. It may seem like a thankless chore, but creativity is itself is really only worth so much. Sooner or later you might be looking back over your idea list and see something worth following through on.