The Creative Mind

Ben Weinlick...

This article explores some effective practices that will support teams engaged in a collaborative creative process.

The convergent/critical thinking phase is the area where there is the biggest danger of stifling creativity, and throwing wet blankets on people’s creative fire. In the convergent thinking phase, even though we may accept that an idea we had is not relevant, when our ideas are criticized it can easily feel like a wet blanket was thrown on our creative enthusiasm and can deeply stifle future creativity and possible innovation. Giving critique in the wrong way can damage trust, relationships, and ruin an emerging creative organizational culture.

Demi Moore: "Once you've tasted a bit of success, it's more challenging. We have to continue to be willing to take a risk so that we don't get too safe. Unwillingness to risk failure is always there, but it gets harder when you feel you have more to lose..." [Follow link to read more.]

'Written in a scattershot style, Neil Youngs memoir, Waging Heavy Peace, veers from Crazy Horse to a shopping trip in Hawaii to praise for his toothbrush to comments about friends and loved ones.'

'Young's passions -- his family, electric trains, cars and a system to sonically improve digital music files -- get as much space as music.

"If you hang out with somebody, the conversation doesn't always run out in a linear fashion, from A to B," he says. "It's what's on their minds. Things happen. You see things out the window; you get interested in that. You get distracted by things. I always thought that was a natural way to go with it."

Waging Heavy Peace http://vsb.li/pyAo1K

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Related post: Realizing multiple passions

http://talentdevelop.com/726/realizing-multiple-passions/

By Linda West. Roxane Gay had a great article in the Wall Street Journal yesterday about the increased representation of plus-sized women in movies and TV shows.

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Photo: Rebel Wilson... "was painfully shy...‘Then one day, her mother, tired of her daughter’s isolated behavior, dragged her to an acting class..."

From post: Shyness and sensitivity – working it out on stage or off

http://highlysensitive.org/33/shyness-sensitivity-and-working-it-out-on-stage-or-off/

Solitude or workiing alone is certainly not the only way to nourish creative projects. Many artists acknowledge the value of academies such as Juilliard, and less formal artist retreats and workshops, like Idyllwild.

Some forms of creative expression – like acting and filmmaking – require collaborating with many other people. But sometimes an artist needs isolation or works best alone. Writer Erica Jong has commented, "Everyone has a talent. What is rare is the courage to nurture it in solitude and to follow the talent to the dark places where it leads."

George Orwell chose to write Nineteen Eighty-Four while living in Barnhill (1946-1949), an abandoned farmhouse on the isle of Jura in the Inner Hebrides. - From my post Solitude is not pathology for the high sensitivity personality. http://talentdevelop.com/3558/

Quotes also used in my book "Developing Multiple Talents: The personal side of creative expression"
Kindle - http://t.co/KqYN0ORZ
Website - http://developingmultipletalents.com

"It is sometimes argued that multitasking is nothing new. For more than half a century, people grew up talking on the phone while watching TV, doing homework while listening to music, and so on. The multiple, ubiquitous information streams of early-21st-century life, however, are different in kind rather than degree. If we used to ride a cognitive horse-and-buggy, now we're in a racecar."

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Related post: Multitasking is really task-switching. Some people are good at it.

http://talentdevelop.com/5141/multitasking-is-really-task-switching-some-people-are-good-at-it/

Eisa Davis is an actor, playwright, and singer-songwriter.

My related book: "Developing Multiple Talents: The personal side of creative expression."
Kindle - http://talentdevelop.com/DMTK
Website - http://developingmultipletalents.com

Interviews include:

Psychologist Cheryl Arutt on Creative Artist Issues
Shelley Carson [photo] on enhancing our creative brain
Melora Hardin on acting, directing, singing
James C. Kaufman, PhD on creativity research
Judith Orloff,MD on Emotional Freedom
Jenna Forrest on Empowering Sensitivity
Stephen A. Diamond, PhD on Anger and Creativity
Susan K. Perry, Ph.D. on writing

Lena Dunham on how much attention she pays to skeptics:

“I'm in therapy since I was 7 so I thought I'd cornered the market on self-criticality…As an artist I want to shelter myself in a safe place to work in...but as an executive producer I need to open myself up to people’s responses…[So] I dabble in press. I pick and choose. I have a Mom with a Google alert who will forward things to me."

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Related post: Toxic Criticism and Developing Creativity

http://blogs.psychcentral.com/creative-mind/2011/01/toxic-criticism-and-developing-creativity/

Sophie B. Hawkins portrays Janis Joplin in a new musical play. 

"Janis has in many ways taught me to sing with much more conviction," said Hawkins..."I've had always a lot of guts about being on stage and improvising and reaching for something new," she continued. "And that we have in common, of never wanting to be in the same place every night on a song. She thinks in terms of every vowel means something, every consonant. She's really intense. And it would've been hard to be Janis with that intensity."

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Related posts:

Janis Joplin: “Don’t compromise yourself.”
http://talentdevelop.com/3042/

Creating is a way to channel our emotional intensity

http://talentdevelop.com/6047/

The Oscar-winning actress and screenwriter...celebrates the 110th anniversary of Peter Rabbit by writing a brand-new book, The Further Tale of Peter Rabbit.

[What’s the tougher profession, writing or acting?"]
"Writing is a much harder discipline. It’s terribly frustrating and makes me weep, but once you start getting it right, it’s hugely pleasurable."

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An earlier post of mine: Emma Thompson, depression, and Mental Health Awareness Month

http://talentdevelop.com/3304/

Research indicates the cause of the underachievement of many gifted students may be their creativity, which tends to clash with traditional school environments.

“Einstein is a classic example of a highly creative and highly gifted individual that did not do well in traditional school environments.”

by Jason Theodor

There are 3 different classes of chaos that affect creativity: Universal, External, and Personal. Universal chaos is about finding the energy to create Something out of Nothing. External Chaos examines how life events shape us and connect us. Personal Chaos is about getting past our own doubts and fears and embracing what makes us different.

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My related post: Creativity and Chaos

http://blogs.psychcentral.com/creative-mind/2012/08/creativity-and-chaos/

By Gina Perry. "The closest I’ve come to an explanation of the how and the why comes from the work of Hungarian-American psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. He calls this loss of self consciousness, this immersion in the creative process ‘the flow’. Csikszentmihalyi, whose theory is based on hundreds of interviews with artists painters and writers, found that we are likely go into the zone when we’re engaged in a task that is challenging but not overwhelming, and when we feel we’ve got the necessary skills to tackle it."

Her book: Write to Publish http://vsb.li/os4XwN

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Related post: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on the creative personality
http://talentdevelop.com/4439/

Novelist Junot Díaz, a new MacArthur Fellow, provides a number of helpful perspectives on creative expression, for any kind of artist.

“You’ve raised one of the thorniest dialectics of working, which is that you need your critical self: without it you can’t write, but in fact the critical self is what’s got both feet on the brakes of your process."