the profession of Creativity

"In order for us to truly create and contribute to culture, we have to be able to connect countless dots, to cross-pollinate ideas from a wealth of disciplines, to combine and recombine these ideas and build new ideas — like LEGOs. The more of these building blocks we have, and the more diverse their shapes and colors, the more interesting our creations will become."

"…creativity, after all, is a combinatorial force. It’s our ability to tap into the mental pool of resources — ideas, insights, knowledge, inspiration — that we’ve accumulated over the years just by being present and alive and awake to the world, and to combine them in extraordinary new ways."

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WHAT ARE THE BEST AND WORST PARTS ABOUT YOUR JOB?

Best? Clients. They inspire me, give me opportunity, pay me, trust me to represent them. Without clients none of it is possible or matters.
Worst? Clients. They hinder, inhibit and at times prevent the realization of great ideas.
But, in their defense, it is their money.

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Anne Lamott is the author of one of my favorite books on writing – Bird By Bird. The title itself is one of the first lessons Anne gives us, in which she recalls having to write a long report about birds for school. She was daunted by the size of the project and finally in frustration asked her dad, “How am I ever going to write this?!?” And her wise father answered, “Bird by bird, Anne. Bird by bird.”

And so it goes with all of our creative projects, be it writing, art, or film.

how to be creative | Hugh MacLeod

"Sometimes it’s really clear what to do with an idea, but usually it’s not. So I’ll just start writing it down. No matter what it is, I’ll start it as a Microsoft Word document, and just break down the most exciting aspects of whatever the idea is—the best jokes I can think of, the most interesting plot twists I can think of. Then I’ll stare at it and think about “Where does this belong?” And I’m often wrong. I’m usually wrong. Sometimes I’ll write a story and think, “This whole story can be told without any words and just 30 seconds of stage directions in a movie—why did I just waste a whole week on this horrible piece of short fiction?” I’m often completely wrong."

"I find in general that if I don’t have any ideas on what to write about, I just research whatever at the moment I’m extremely interested in. I read a lot of nonfiction on subjects I’m interested in, and that usually knocks something loose. A few months ago, I was stuck and I wasn’t really sure which of my projects to work on, and I was kind of bored with some of the stuff I was doing, so I just spent a few days reading books about monkeys and sign language and teaching them how to talk. Nothing came of it really, but by the time I was finished reading about monkeys, I was ready to jump back into my novel. Reading a lot of nonfiction helps. Wikipedia is also a big help. There’s always something interesting on Wikipedia—the random article button is great. When I was writing Free Range Chickens, I had just discovered Wikipedia and one of the ways I came up with ideas was to just keep refreshing, and keep clicking the random article until a premise occurred to me."

Simon Rich
American humorist, novelist, and television writer, known for being the second youngest writer ever hired on Saturday Night Live and writing the Thurber Prize-nominated humor collection Ant Farm: And Other Desperate Situations.
(Wikipedia) 

(Source: fastcocreate.com)

"As I moved through the material of This is a Book, I started to realize that it’d be more interesting if there were variants so that it was almost like a show—like little performances and different ways of presenting the material. I could put jokes in the form of Charts and Graphs, and Ideas and Opinions, and Statistics. I tried to be careful of how the order of the content flowed, if you moved straight through it. I was excited when I realized the form was informing the content."