Unearthing Creativity

Artistic temperament sometimes seems a battleground, a dark angel of destruction and a bright angel of creativity wrestling. ~Madeleine L’Engle

Creativity comes from looking for the unexpected and stepping outside your own experience. ~Masaru Ibuka

 

What do you do to bolster your creativity? The other day I needed to develop a craft for the book I’m currently writing for Legacy Press, and for the life of me, I just couldn’t come up with any good ideas. I put it aside, worked on other things, went for a jog by the river, returned to my desk, but still NADA! Finally, I remembered PINTEREST! Duh! That’s where I should have gone first. If you’ve never used this pin board, it’s a wonderful place for creativity. People pin photographs of things that are meaningful to them, recipes to try, books to read, hairstyles and clothing, just about anything! So I love to look there for ideas, that is, if I remember. Mind you, for this book I can’t copy a craft, but just being in a virtual place staring at boards of awesome creative ideas is wonderful for my brain. Somehow, it got the wheels turning, and I came up with a unique craft that had absolutely nothing to do with what I was even staring at.

So my take-away lesson is that if we want to be creative or find ideas, we need to be in a place surrounded by creativity. If we want to be wonderful writers, we have to surround ourselves with writings and teachings of other great writers. If we want to find ideas for children’s books, we must surround ourselves with children. Seems like very simple logic, but sometimes I think I forget.

What do you do to unearth your creativity? If you want to look me up on Pinterest, I’m at http://pinterest.com/tinamariecho/
I’m not on there a whole lot, as I have much to write and homeschool. But it’s a fabulous place, if you’ve never been.