Catching the Creative Spirit
If you were to rate the health of your creativity right now, on a scale of 1–10 with 10 being on fire, how would you rate it? Is your creativity like a spring run-off, plentifully flowing to the point you fear some of your ideas might flood others? Or do you feel like a dry well these days, unable to dig up any gem that nurtures a creative outlet?
I know what it’s like to be at a “1” for creativity, and I know what it’s like to be at a “10.” What drives the energy and health of our creativity?
More and more, I am finding that the creative spirit rarely comes knocking on its own accord. That’s not to say it doesn’t; I will never forget the way a graphic poem tumbled out of me when I was 13. I lay on my bed with a pen and a notebook and a single image in my head — an unfinished letter — and when I put the pen to paper, it was like I was detached from my hand. My hand wrote and wrote, without any regard for my own mind or filters. When it was finished, I had produced this gut-wrenching poem about a young woman who writes an anguished letter to her lover, but doesn’t finish it before her lover climbs the hardwood stairs to the room she is in and kills her.
Where in the HECK did that idea come from? And what did it suggest about me, an innocent and naïve 13-year-old girl? I struggled with how to share my poem with others. I wanted to, because it was good, but would people fear I was suicidal? Afraid of something way bigger than me? In a bad relationship? All of these heavy what-ifs circled me like dogs, when the truth was, an image had simply come to my mind and I had “run” with it (or rather, my hand did).
That experience was almost three decades ago, and it is one example of only a few where I can remember the creative spark simply showing up and taking over. Elizabeth Gilbert would call the sudden arrival of this creative spark “big magic.” It’s a blast when it happens; it’s like you take a step back and watch a totally surprising side of you go to work. But if we had dimes for every time this phenomenon happened, we’d be, well, poor.
The best way I have found to nurture the creative spirit? To live a little. To push ourselves out of whatever cushiony box we call our comfort zones. And to actively look for the countless stories happening around us every day.
What is the strangest thing you saw today? What is the funniest thing that happened to you? What might that middle-aged couple sitting on the bench in the park be talking about?
Creativity starts with paying attention. It welcomes curiosity and questions. Don’t be afraid to explore. Don’t be afraid to wonder.
In her wonderful book, Big Magic, Elizabeth Gilbert personifies creativity and ideas. Ideas, she says, look for receptors, people who will take them in and nurture them and bring them to live. Creativity visits you because it actually likes you; it wants something from you. If we pay attention, even in the seemingly most mundane of moments, there is always hope for a creative spark to spring forth. You just have to be willing to look for it.
