How Do You Foster Creativity

Creativity is a small, tender seedling sprouting in the garden. Sordid forces could snuff this sprout before it grows into a healthy adult plant. The seedling could be stepped on by a dog or chewed on by a rabbit. It could be the victim of bugs, neglect or disease. Sordid forces threaten this tender sprout, just as sordid forces threaten any nascent creative impulse. To nurture the seedling to fruition, we need to protect it from threats, and let it can grow without interruption. We need to fence it off from the dog and the rabbit. We need to guard it from the pests and disease.

Likewise, we need to nurture our creative impulses: fence them off from threats, and guard them from the pests which could destroy them.

What the hell am I talking about? Well, if you get a creative idea, don't kill it off too soon. If you have an idea, you need to foster it, nurture it and work with it to see where the idea can take your thinking and your work. Don't kill the idea off before you've had a chance to explore it, to see what you can develop from it. And don't let anybody else kill it off either!

What are the forces that kill off creative ideas? Well, they consist purely of simple negative phrases. Like, "That's a crazy idea." Or, "That sort of thing has been done to death." Or, "Shakespeare already used that plot." Anything negative phrase said or thought about the idea can kill it off. So you guard the idea, and your creativity, by keeping negative thoughts and impulses away from it. Way far away.

For instance, "Tommorow Never Knows" by The Beatles is a song with only one chord in it. Now that's extremely unusual in music. Nearly unique actually. (Tommorow Never Knows is the one that starts out with a few sound effects and the lyric, "Turn off your mind relax and float downstream.") The story goes that Lennon and McCartney were actually challenging themselves with the idea of writing a song with only one chord. Their starting point in the process was, "can we write a song with only one chord that will actually be musical, and make some sense?" Now, if, in kicking around this idea, this creative germ, one or the other had said, "Oh no. A one chord song would have no development or resolution. It'd suck. Let's not even bother" then their creative impulse would have been smothered in its crib.

But they didn't. They took the idea, and worked it and pushed it until they had something tangible. And what they ended up with was a very creative and unusual song, which helped define the entire psychedelic music era. Lennon and McCartney fostered their creativity by working in an atmosphere that negative thoughts and phrases could not penetrate. It was simple: they worked alone together, so no outside naysayer could smother one of their ideas. And they agreed beforehand to not be negative about any of the ideas they had. They might choose one idea in preference to another, but they would never say anything bad about any of their ideas.

Which reminds me of a brilliant thing my friend Nancy Bernard said, "Ideas are easy. It's the energy and determination that turns them into something that's hard." New and fresh ideas come up so frequently, especially if you're looking for them, that it's easy to treat them as cheap, and do nothing further with them. But, herein lies a fatal trap. Because if you treat the ideas as easy and cheap, and don't pursue them to any finish point, you soon won't be pursuing anything. You'll have destroyed your motivation, because you will no longer value your ideas.

So, when you get an idea, protect it form negative forces that might stunt its growth. Protect it from the naysayers who might say just the wrong thing, and kill it off before it's barely geminated. Protect it from your own inclination to not value your ideas.

Writing down your idea might be a good way to show you that actually value it. Writing it down says you will actually think about the idea again, and come back to it, and might want to remember it. Keeping your idea secret until you've had a chance to work with it, and explore is probably a good way to protect from the naysayers who might talk you out of pursuing it.

And work with each idea. Explore its possibilities, study its nuances, see where it can lead you. Don't ever discard an idea until you've really worked with it.

Here's an idea, gratis: guy and a girl fall in love, but their families despise each other. It's true that it's a crazy idea, and it's been done to death, and Shakespeare already used the plot. But with a little work, it might make a good play! Don't kill the idea until you've explored it a little, and you'll keep your creativity alive.