If you have read the previous page on the creative process, you now understand the types of thinking involved in the creative process (analytical and intuitive) and the stages of the creative process (the spark, collect, tinker, pregnant pause, the aha! and act). That gives us a good start, but there are some other helpful accoutrements.

If we consider the creative process as a journey, the analytical and intuitive thinking would be the modes of transportation, the stages of the process would be the places we encounter along the way and the accoutrements would be the (to paraphrase Winnie the Pooh) "useful stuff to take along."

Creativity requires courage: courage to try new things, courage to risk being wrong (or worse yet, being laughed at); courage to buck the system, break some rules and rattle some cages. It also requires courage to get up every morning and keep working at something that may or may not be going well. Creativity is not always fun, the people around you are not always supportive, things do not always go smoothly. Courage gets you through the criticism and the tough times.

A creative person can never have too much courage; pack as much as you can and save room for the courage which you will gain along the way. For being creative not only requires courage, it builds it as well.

“I don’t recall what my first sentence was, but I am sure that it ended in a question mark.”  ~ Epiphany Jones

Curiosity is the foundation of creativity. Curiosity gets us exploring, asking questions, traveling down new trails. Curiosity brings wonder and wondering: something amazes us or mesmerizes us and we want to know everything about it, how it works, how it got that way, how we can adapt its adaptations to our creative projects. Curiosity keeps us young and keeps our brains active and fit. Curiosity leads to learning, to connecting, to new ideas and more.

Curiosity is the personification of a perpetual motion machine; one thing leads to another and then another and on and on and on. Walt Disney said:

“We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things - because we're curious. And curiosity keeps leading us down new paths. We're always exploring and experimenting.”

Curiosity hides in the nooks and crannies, but fills our lives – and creative works – with all sorts of amazing things. So toss a couple of handfuls of question marks into your bag – and then throw in a few exclamation points just for good measure. And keep moving forward.

Nothing happens unless first a dream. ~ Carl Sandburg

Dreams show us possibilities; they show us what can be. Dreams are the catalysts to creativity. First, you see what can be, then you work to make it so.

Dreamers are visionaries; they are optimists and idealists. Dreamers have faith in their visions and they have faith in themselves - they believe they can create what they see.

A life without dreams is barren and gray; dreams add color, provide focus, give hope. Start by dreaming…and then let your dreams show you how to make them reality.

Soon after the completion of Walt Disney World someone said, "Isn't it too bad Walt Disney didn't live to see this?" I replied, "He did see it—that's why it's here."~ Mike Vance

Imagination allows us to perceive images and concepts in our minds, without needing to actually see them. In fact, in our imaginations, we can see things that we have never seen before, including things that have never even existed.

Everything that is created – from paintings to buildings, elevators to sonatas, cupcakes to ponytails - existed first in someone’s imagination. Think about that for a minute; the website you are viewing, the chair you are sitting in, the floor under your feet, the music you are listening to, everything around you exists thanks to imagination. Imagination is a powerful thing indeed, perhaps the most powerful thing there is.

The license plate holder on my car reads, “My other car is my imagination.” I can go a fair number of places in my car, but I can go anywhere at all in my imagination. As you can in yours. A distant planet, an ancient city, the other side of the world. Where will your imagination take you today?

Great dancers are not great because of their technique; they are great because of their passion. ~ Martha Graham

Passion fires our creativity. You must love – really love – what you are doing and you must be doing it because you love it. The psychologists call this intrinsic motivation; you do a thing for its own sake, not for external rewards such as praise or paychecks.

Passion energizes us so we can do all the hard work necessary to bring an idea to fruition. It sends us to the library, the keyboard, the patent office. It cheers us on as we struggle to learn all we can about our craft; it keeps us company as we practice our scales, letters, algebraic equations. Passion gets us up and keeps us going.

Passion motivates us to push past boundaries and fears, it keeps us going even when things are bleak or we are blocked. It keeps us believing in our ideas, our stories, our projects even if no one around us does. Passion gets us through the dark nights and gives us all the energy we need to create on sunny days.

Passion gives us a reason for doing what we do. It is the why. Our passion is our purpose.

Perceptiveness helps us collect ideas, recognize patterns, make connections and see in new ways.

The more you perceive, the more you are aware of, the more you take in – consciously and unconsciously - the more raw materials you have to work with. Increasing perceptiveness increases ideas.

Being perceptive helps us see patterns, recognize similarities and differences, notice how things fit together, identify organizing principles and view the big picture. Creativity often involves putting things together in new ways and seeing patterns helps us put things together not only in new ways, but in ways that are meaningful.

Perceptiveness helps us make connections. The ability to see and/or create relationships between seemingly unrelated elements leads to new ideas and elements.

Seeing in new ways involves perceiving with fresh eyes and ears and mind. In making the strange familiar (the use of metaphor and analogy) and making the familiar strange (seeing things in the commonplace that we had not seen before), we increase our ideas and understanding.

Playfulness is an attitude; a way of seeing and being that frees us to tinker with ideas and concepts and images and other fascinating things, while helping us avoid the fears and judgments that can limit creativity.

Playing is pottering and puttering, toying with this and that, trying things on and seeing how they fit – ideas, roles, concepts, themes, colors, sounds. If things don’t fit the first time, we keep playing, trying new things, until we find a fit. Play seems random and non-logical, but it allows us to come up with ideas and combinations of things we would not find through normal linear routes.

Play is not at all serious; we are, after all, just playing. This gives us the freedom to go places and do things and think thoughts that our serious adult selves would probably never do.

Playfulness allows us to reinvent ourselves and our world. Remember when you were a kid? A box became a fort or a spaceship; blankets draped over furniture created a cave of wonders. Look around you right now. What could that chair be? What could you do with that bowl, that rock? What if you played around with the bowl and the rock together? And added the chair? And that….and this….and…..

Reflectiveness can be considered a softer version of playfulness. Just as in playfulness, you are playing with ideas, images, problems, turning them over in your mind, looking at them from different angles, making connections. But in reflectiveness, this playing is on a more subtle level. You are absorbed in the details and nuances, the little things that usually go unnoticed, those almost imperceptible differences and similarities that can end up making all the difference. While playing we might jump up and shout, "Oh! Wow! Look at this!" But while reflecting we are more likely to pause and quietly say, "Hmm...now that is interesting."

Reflecting is an ongoing process, running almost constantly in the background. You ponder for awhile, perhaps while taking your morning shower, then put the idea away again. Then later that morning, while taking a walk, you bring the idea to the front of your brain again and play with it a little more after before setting it back aside. And on it goes. It takes time to dig down to the deepest stuff. Sometimes it takes a very long time.

The Ahas! that come from reflecting are more like slight nudges than lightning bolts, but that makes them no less important. Indeed, it is sometimes the smallest things that make the biggest impact.

Since evidence suggests that people often fail to solve problems not because the problems are insoluble but because they give up prematurely, persistence can be seen as one of our greatest allies. ~ Daniel Goleman, Paul Kaufman and Michael Ray, The Creative Spirit

Tenacity can make the difference between a great idea and a mediocre one, between a successful solution and a still-unsolved problem, between success and failure. You simply must persevere, pushing past all sorts of obstacles and fears, if you want to find the best answer/idea/solution.

When generating ideas, either alone or with others, the obvious answers and ideas always come out first. But by sticking with the process, by not settling for an easy answer or a well-worn cliché, by persisting even when you are running out of ideas (especially when you are running out of ideas!), you move past the already-known into the new, past the obvious into the realm of the creative.

To return to our journey metaphor, think about places which are close to home and how they tend to be familiar and comfortable. They are safe (we rarely get lost in our own home town) but there is not much new there either. But when we travel beyond our normal boundaries, especially to a country other than our own, everything is suddenly new and different. The sights and sounds and streets and people and perhaps even the language are all exciting and unusual. We have moved past the already-known into the new. But we would not have arrived there if we weren’t willing to travel a fairly long way and endure a certain amount of discomfort to get there.

So stick with things as long as you can. And then stick with them a little longer. Push the idea, push the image, push the solution, push yourself. The best stuff is way out at the edges. Don’t give up before you get there.

The essence of creation is not knowing, of moving from the unknown and mysterious to the known and revealed. ~ Don Hahn, Dancing Corndogs in the Night

Trust helps us tolerate the ambiguity inherent in the creative process. Creativity is filled with large chunks of not-knowing, areas of vagueness, unclearness, unsureness. We must trust enough to know everything will come right, even if at the moment we don’t know where we are going or if we are even going anywhere at all. We must be able to live and work and create in a fog, when half the answers are hidden and the other half make no sense. Trust keeps our minds steady, keeps us from getting stuck and stopping when it seems there is no clear way to go. Trust says, “I may not know where I am going with this, but I know if I keep going, I will get somewhere,” and “I may not have the answer right now but I know there is one and if I keep looking for it, it will appear.”

Wandering off the path, taking wrong turns and getting lost are all necessary parts of the creative process. Trust is what keeps us putting one foot in front of the other until we find ourselves in a new place. And trust helps us find our way in that new place as well.