There was a super post on creativity by Wendy Stevens at Compose Create this week. In it, she linked to the article, 10 Creativity Tips by Donald Miller and highlighted the second and third items on his list: finishing what you start and avoiding discussion of your current projects. Wendy likened talking about your project with discussing New Year Resolutions. “The thrill of talking about what you are going to do feels a bit like accomplishing it and de-motivates people to work toward their goals.”

I have posted on creativity in the past and I particularly like the third item on Donald Miller’s list about not entertaining hypotheticals. He says, “Most of the fears we entertain as creators have to do with hypothetical situations, things that could happen. But this is a waste of valuable creative energy. Most likely, things we think will happen won’t. A creator takes risks, a consumer lives in safety.”

Am I a creator or consumer? Most of the time, I am a creator but I also do plenty of consuming.  I do sometimes, in the words of certain Food Network chefs, accept help from the grocery store shelves. I use method books but try to devise activities and projects for my students from the pieces and exercises within them. My students and I listen to plenty of recordings but never to copy, always to compare and contrast—to find inspiration.

I also feel a connection to the first item on the second page on being ready when luck strikes. “…unless you actually spend the hours painting those paintings, meeting the curator amounts to nothing. And unless you put in the year to write the book, it can’t get left behind on Oprah’s counter.”

Have I been lucky? There have certainly been plenty of times in which opportunities have arisen at precisely correct moments. The work I had disciplined myself to do plus my own willingness to take a risk, allowed me to take advantage of those opportunities. Mostly those have been good decisions based on what I thought were my strengths and weaknesses.

Yes, I have also said no to opportunities- because I wasn’t ready, because the timing was bad, because philosophies clashed, because I was told I had to make Bedouin tea for my daughter’s social studies project at 10:00 pm, the phone was ringing off the hook, and I was trying to memorize a Prokofiev Sonata. I have also been told no plenty of times and have not been afraid to make my own opportunities such as this here blog.

In college, I found conducting to be a breeze (and we had to take on challenging projects like conducting the first two movements of the Histoire du Soldat from memory and sight conducting overtures and symphonic movements.)  When I was about finish my undergraduate degree, my conducting professor took me aside and offered me the opportunity to study conducting as his mentor.

Out of what was most probably fear of failure, I did not take him up on it. At the time, I felt that I was able to do all well this by gut instinct and that I didn’t really have the functional skill set that would allow me to thrive as a conductor. Looking back, I wonder if that gut instinct was talent and the functional skill set experience that I would have been able to build because of that talent. I will never know.

Some time ago I was reading a magazine in the Doctor’s waiting room and was reminded that true creativity involves making something both novel and appropriate. The illustrations included using salami to pave a driveway (novel but inappropriate) and designing an innovative bridge that won’t stand (appropriate but not novel). At MIT, they call this Inventional Wisdom.

I see appropriateness as convention and novelty as innovation or modernity. In my view, to be a creator we must find the spot between these two opposite poles where we are comfortable but not too comfortable. We must balance risk vs. safety. Because the parameters of each situation are different, the balance point will also be different in each situation. And, because most of us love safety, we have to test our limits and constantly push ourselves toward the uncomfortable—toward risk.

 

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