Enhancing Creativity

A five-year old artist summed up one aspect of the creative process this way: "Drawing is easy. You just think your thought and draw your think!"*

It sounds simple enough. But what happens when you don't have a Mink? There are times when any person who is actively involved in the creative process seems to find the imagination fading, the "flashes" of insight occurring with less frequency, or the ideas of no apparent value. Often, to complicate matters, fear takes over and slows the creative generator to a sluggish pace or seems to stop it altogether. Seems is an important word here, because it is highly unlikely that the creative process of an imaginative person ever stops. Creativity evolves from many sources, and it would be difficult if not impossible for it to stop entirely.

To understand how your creative level may drop, it is first necessary to examine the qualities and conditions that make possible the optimum creative experience. They are:

These do not occur in any rigid order, and many of them could, in fact, be operating simultaneously.

*From Helping Young Children, by Evelyn Pitcher, Miriam Lasher, Sylvia Feinburg, and Linda Abrams Braun.