Liz Strauss has an interesting post up over at her Successful and Outstanding Blog(gers) in which she discusses some of the traits of creative people and how those traits affect their work and co-workers. The post is called 10 Reasons Creative Folks Make Us Crazy.

Why Read 10 Reasons Creative Folks Make Us Crazy?

I haven’t read the book she quotes, Creativity:Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention by Professor Mihaly Csikentmihalyi, but after reading her article, I think I’m going to get my hands on a copy. Take a look at Liz’s post and you just might recognize yourself or some of your co-workers when looking over the 10 reasons creative folks drive us crazy. As businesses recruit more and more creative folks, chances are we’re going to come into contact with more and more people like ourselves.

Liz points out that talking about creativity makes us more creative. I have to agree with her afterall, it is the underlying reason we created this blog!

An inspiration tag is just a phrase or two meant to give you a jumpstart on your creative expression. So read the tag below and interpret it in a creative way. There are no limitations on the medium. In fact we’d love to see a visual or listen to an audio interpretation. Admittedly, some of the tags will lend themselves more to a written format than any other.

So here it is - Tag! You’re It! Have fun!

I(S/He) knew things were changing as I (s/he) watched shadows crawl against the sky.

This tag works equally well whether its in first or third person - so run with it!

So the character challenge continues - we’ve done a character of our own choice, and Gemini and I have done characters of each other’s choice. For our third out of 5 characters, Moonlight Novelist was kind enough to provide the prompt.

A D&D wizard who has deserted from the military

If you’d like to see the work we’ve already done, we posted an Index with links to the posts. We’ll be keeping the Index updated for you.

I’ve recently added several new RSS feeds to my list of things to look at each day. One of them, Ezines:Creativity, has proven to have a lot of articles that make me think. One, Befriending Your Creativity, posted on July 20, 2006, raises an important point about how we treat our creativity. Author Jennifer Louden says

(W)e don’t often think about befriending, romancing, inveigling our creativity.

I couldn’t help but reflect on how true that statement is - we plead and argue with our creativity, demand it accommodate us, cry, yell and scream over it, complain about it. But how often do we “court” or entice it to cooperate with us?

Ms. Louden gives some examples of other things we do instead of befriending our creativity before suggesting three paths that can help us to a more friendly and cooperative relationship with our creative side. Her article is a good basis for further thought and discussion. Here are my thoughts on the main points in the article.

Don’t be a Creativity Dragon

Or, as it’s expressed in the article,

If you hoard your ideas, if you hold onto them too tightly, or if you fall in love with a certain expression of your creativity (a particular title or that your idea has to be expressed only as an opera never as a one woman show) you stymie the creative flow. You limit your gift. You increase fear and decrease productivity.

Dragons hoard all the sparkling, glittering treasure for themselves in hidden caves. The treasure is safe, but the only way it can increase is if the dragon goes out searching for more. It can’t grow, change or increase in value. And what value does it really have, if no one but the dragon knows it even exists?

Don’t assume that this idea is the only good one you’ll ever have - in all likelihood there are even better ones floating just behind it. If you hold one too tightly, it’ll block your view of the others.

Expecting the Spanish Inquisition

Ms. Louden uses the Monty Python skit to illustrate the fact that things rarely go as we expect them to go. In fact, we should expect the unexpected. It’s how we deal with it and what we do with it that is important. Her advice -

Expecting the Spanish Inquisition DOES NOT give you permission to be a negative cynical old poop who walks around muttering, “I told you so.” That is living in resentment and that just gets you suffering and stuckness. It simply means when something goes differently, don’t waste your time resisting. Instead, learn.

Make the unexpected into an opportunity. Use it, rather than letting it use you. Even if the experience is initially negative - you can take something good away from it. It may be something you learn about yourself or someone else. It may be a new skill that the situation forces you to learn.

Creating is Physical

Obvious, huh? Well, not really in the sense that Ms. Louden is speaking of. She’s not referring to the outcome of our creative process, but rather to our physical being.

We can change how we create by changing the shape of our body

I’m not sure about this myself, but maybe I simply haven’t paid enough attention to how creative or non-creative I am in different situations. Ms. Louden finds that doing yoga increases her sense of creativity and that creative energy and insights seem to be generated by the practice. It has changed the way she goes about creating.

What do you think? Have you ever tried to make friends with your creative nature? What methods have been successful in courting your creativity? I think most of us would like a better relationship with our creativity but may not be sure how to go about making it happen.

Here’s this week’s Say What?

The gods too are fond of a joke — Aristotle

What kind of jokes do you think the gods/God are fond of?

The Character Challenge is producing quite a few posts from Gemini and Edge, so we thought we’d index them here for easy access. We’ll update this post as more characters are revealed. If you’ve been doing the challenge on your own, let us know and we’ll include links to your character posts here as well.

Gemini on Fat Cat Compendium

Character 1

• Rapier - dossier

Character 2: CJ Daines

• Physical Description
• Personality
• Past
• Current Circumstances

Edge on ShadowsEdge

Character 1: Aiden Domhnull

• Physical Description
• Personality
• Past
• Opposition/Conflict
• Current Circumstances
• Miscellaneous

Character 2: Anna Salorene

• Physical Description
• Personality
• Past
• Opposition/Conflict
• Current Circumstances
• Miscellaneous

An inspiration tag is just a phrase or two meant to give you a jumpstart on your creative expression. So read the tag below and interpret it in a creative way. There are no limitations on the medium. In fact we’d love to see a visual or listen to an audio interpretation. Admittedly, some of the tags will lend themselves more to a written format than any other.

So here it is - Tag! You’re It! Have fun!

The glowering storm clouds suited his mood all too well.

Okay, so this tag is a little generic and cliche - show us your creativity and do something different with it!

Here are the previous Inspiration Tags

• Inspiration Tag
• Inspiration Tag Response
• Inspiration Tag #2

Do you find yourself lacking motivation at work? Here’s a quick exercise of your creativity that will also help increase your motivation.

First - a simple truth that we often forget - Someone at your place of employment, at some point in time, believed that what you do was important. That’s why your job exists.

Now for the exercise -

First:
Who sees and uses the results of your work?
What do they do with it?
Is there anything you could do to make your work more effective or efficient?

Second:
Pretend that you are a manager or director who needs to hire someone to do the same thing you do and create a proposal for the job.

Here’s another Say What? quote for you to work with:

“After one look at this planet any visitor form outer space would say ‘I want to see the manager.’” — William S. Burroughs

I can see quite a few possibilities with this quote. Have fun!

Have you ever wondered why it is that some people seem to have a lot of opportunities thrown at them and other people seem to have only a few?

Recognizing opportunities and options is matter of perception and an exercise in creativity. But without a developed sense of creativity, the only options a person is likely to see are those they have been directly presented with. And some people have trouble seeing those.
Creativity allows us to see more options in our lives. Instead of peering through a keyhole, it opens the door wide, giving us a view of the entire room.

We’ve written before about Bumps in the Road. A creative person is open to seeing the possibilities and the opportunity within an obstacle. They look at it as a challenge. Someone for whom creativity itself is a challenge will most likely see an impediment or problem that must be overcome.

Which would you rather be?
Excited about the possibilities and opportunities inherent in each bump in your path?
or
Depressed because all you see is the the obstacle?

Options, opportunities and possibilities come in all sizes. Some require a large exercise of creativity to see; others require just a small one. They may be simple tweaks to something (an item or process) that already exists, or they may be a completely new idea. Maybe your opportunity begins with something as simple as making a process easier or more efficient for yourself. Maybe the possibility extends to help others.

I’d bet that almost everyone, at some time, has looked at a process or an item and thought of at least one way it could be improved or changed. So we’ve exercised our creativity in this way before. But what’s come of it? All too often, we have the idea and then let it go, letting the possibilities slip through our fingers. It might be because implementing the idea seems out of our capabilities, or because we think we’d be the only person interested in it.

It may take an additional exercise of our creativity to figure out how to put our idea into play. So what if you’re the only person who uses it, if it works for you? So maybe you have to build the prototype out of popsicle sticks and glue. . . You never know what opportunities or options it may open up for you in the long run. You can be certain that they won’t appear for you if you don’t do anything with your idea.

So get out there and exercise your creativity - look for and create your own opportunities and possibilities.