The Creativity Post: Bloggers and journalists can’t seem to resist discussing the many misconceptions that exist about creativity. Try googling “myths of creativity” (“4 Myths of Creativity”, “10 Myths of Creativity”, “7 Myths of Creativity”...) and you will find any number that have pretty much been debunked.
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I am of the opinion that anyone and everyone can be creative, so I should in theory love things like articles that debunk myths about the bounds of creativity. However, like this author, I believe that they are actually making matters worse by creating new myths (such as the good mood and creativity connection) and narrowing the scope of what defines a creative in ways they don’t realize. I feel like instead of debunking myths we should try to just focus on supporting what is known and promoting the intangible, indefinable concept in positive instead of daunting ways. So many people believe they are not creative not because of myths that it’s only a trait of people of certain fields or certain levels of intelligence, but because they don’t really know what it is as contrasting definitions have been thrown at them their whole lives. If we promote the indefinability of creativity, I believe we promote creativity itself.
When I saw the title of Molly Hollinger’s article, “How About a Few New Myths about Creativity”, I thought of this ted talk I saw called, “Your elusive creative genius”. The author of Eat, Pray Love, Elizabeth Gilbert, discusses after her extremely successful memoir how people treated her like she was doomed. They say things like “Aren’t you afraid you’ve never going to be able to top that?. In the ted talk she acknowledges that fear in herself, but instead of accepting these preconceived myths on creative success, she looked into the root of the term genius; How the world genius changed over the years, and how that reflects on the metal state and pressure on an artist. Genius used to mean, for ancient Greece and Rome, not something that came from the human being but a spirit. Unlike the modern artist, the disembodied genius made it so if your work didn’t work out, it wasn’t entirely your fault. She likes this further to how myths about creativity affects the artist’s psyche. I thought about this while reading Elizabeth’s Article. She brought up main three that bothered her, though I wish she answered these myths in more detail, and I wish she didn’t answer these overall stereotypes with more. Though at the end she did note the overall complexity of judging something like creativity and how it can be hard to explain in such generalized and simple ways. Ways that can hurt people on an individual level.
Ted Talk:(https://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius/transcript)
I agree with the article when it says that when some articles strive to debunk myths surrounding creativity, they really just wind up making the situation worse, i.e. that good mood leads to creativity. Just because not all creative people suffer from a mental illness does not mean that some still do. People are vastly different, so while some get sparks of creativity in their high periods, others may not. The other myths and ‘debunked myth truths’ really seem to all hold the same principle of being based on little to no facts or just personal experience. I know a good number of ‘intelligent’ people who aren’t all that creative, and I also know people who wouldn’t be considered that intelligent that are pretty creative people. I think the problem that comes with a lot of these kinds of articles is that creativity isn’t a tangible thing. It’s a concept on the human mind that’s highly subjective and personal and it’s not easy to gauge. When you start trying to draw lines around what creativity is, what it isn’t, and how it behaves, I think that’s where it starts to hinder creativity.
I was interested in this article because I think the creative process affects PTM quite a bit. When a designer is given back their original design and it is so far over budget that it calls for a redesign, it is hard to get the creative juices flowing again. There is not really any magic button we can push on the designer to make them come up with and design a new idea, it takes time for the process to percolate. I also find it surprising that there is a myth that creativity is linked to intelligence. I do not think that I have ever thought this, what a strange idea to become popular. I suppose you could argue that artists have to speak intelligently about their work in order to sell it. But believe me, I have taken enough art classes to know that you can defend any piece of work with unintelligent thoughts. Just throw out some words like motif and parallelism and you will be good, no matter how intelligent you are.
I really enjoyed that this article really wants to educate and inform, and try and create a new discussion with-in a topic. It states, "It’s not that creativity myths no longer exist—the opposite in fact, but these myths really need an update. Let’s move on to a new series of myths—those that will educate rather than bore readers. And let’s remember the true goal: to increase our collective knowledge of creativity." That is true, often times it feels like in this digital age that we keep having the same conversations over and over and over again. Holding ourselves accountable to exploring new facets of an issue or discussion is important in general to think about. I do like that they focus on the myth that a good mood=creativity. I do think that being positive is very important in life, but the idea that "experiencing a negative, activating emotion will do more for creativity than a deactivating, positive emotion," is an important concept to consider in regards to creativity. Momentum really is the driving factor, and being happy and complacent or inactive really won't help you get things done. I certainly know that sometimes a negative emotion that causes me to get up and do is more helpful even if it is sometimes difficult.
I appreciate this article saying that brainstorming is not the end-all and be-all of creativity because I've always struggled with generating what I think is "enough" ideas during the brainstorm. Especially because the thing I'm worried about the most is how many ideas I'm generating. I've found what works better for me is to generate a few ideas until I find something I'm really excited about, and then I iterate as I work on the idea to see if I can find new and unexpected angles. And sometimes it develops into a whole new idea. But I can also understand why people think that creativity is just something you have or you don't and why they may give up on creative pursuits and label themselves "just not a creative person" because if I had truly thought that one's ability to generate a lot of ideas in a prescribed amount of time was the definition of creativity then I would have given myself that label and moved on to something else, rather than finding an alternative method that works for me.
Creativity is a very interesting concept, because it is so much more than it’s simple definition presents. Creativity in its simplest form, is just using ideas to create something new. However, the truly in-depth part of creativity is the development of ideas. While some would argue that the translation of those ideas is the more difficult part, I would argue the development of ideas is the far more difficult. This post talks about the myths surrounding creativity and how one is creative.Truthfully, and contrary to popular belief, anyone can be creative. Of course, like any other skill, some people are more naturally talented than others, just by nature. But that does not mean, that with practice, anyone can become creative. This article addresses several myths surrounding how one becomes or is creative in general. I think that myths around creativity need to be dispelled in general, and that some of these are especially dangerous, if not removed from the zeitgeist.
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