Keeping Your Creative Edge

[Daedalus]

Creativity, imagination, invention. The chaotic powers of the mind that create Something from Nothing. It's a little different for everybody, but it drives nearly everything interesting in our lives.

How do you stay creative? It doesn't matter if your an artist, a writer, or just someone who has to come up with a clever solution for something. How do you flex the mental creative muscle and keep it in shape?

 

[mcad4]

As a writer I'm often thinking about the next project or how to develop this current one. I like to include real fragments from my personal life, my friends, and the world/current events. I've trained my mind to be open and alert, ready to take in these moments, such as a powerful sentence a friend says in conversation or a captivating moment in a movie. Most of the time I don't find anything super profound, but I press onward. In fact, after a couple weeks or months I may realize there may be a string of things compiled together into one motif, like a repeated phrase, that I hear throughout this time. Because I pressed onward during the more 'mundane' parts of life, I was able to recognize one really deep thing that inspires me to create new pieces, perhaps even in a perspective/mindset that I haven't thought of previously.