Owl Sees The Light
Getting creative ideas is not something you do.
It’s something you allow to happen.
Getting original ideas is …well let me demonstrate.
Imagine this scenario. You of course take the part of the Creative Person.
BOSS: Ah, there you are. Our Creative Person in person. Ha, ha, ha. Remind me why we pay you such an enormous salary just for being creative. How about earning it? We need ten brilliant ideas for our new marketing campaign. We’re planning to sell sand to Saudi Arabia.
YOU: (After a longish pause.) What”s the deadline?
BOSS: Preferably the Thursday before last. If not, tomorrow.
There we are then. Now what do you do?
Of course if you’re not really a creative person at all, (except in matters of cash,) but merely a sheep in wolf’s clothing, you go back to your desk and sharpen a few pencils. You sharpen a few more, a bit more vigorously. Following this, you proceed to the library, where you read about Arabia and the properties of sand until dehydration sets in.
You then return to your desk and try to think up ideas.
Who knows how, but already the desert has crept up on you. You feel as if you are trying to remember a name that has slipped your memory. It’s on the tip of your tongue, but the harder you try, the less you succeed.
Meanwhile what do you do if you truly are a creative person?
You turn around and go home.
You will of course have to pop into the library for a quick dose of knowledge on the way, but after that you rely on those well known allies, the Bus, the Bath and the Bed. Those are the stations where good ideas generally arrive. Anywhere, in fact, where your thoughts are free to wander.
As JR says in his her blog post ‘Internet Marketing Bright Ideas Should Never be Forgotten’:
…When we are actually sitting at the computer and working … is when we are least creative, mostly because we are too focused on the task at hand.
But when our mind is just drifting around, such as when driving, working out or washing dishes that is when the best ideas can just pop into our heads.
I think for the most part that these ideas are truly the best because they are not forced they come naturally as an inspiration and as the old saying goes, the light bulb goes off.
More in ‘Don’t Waste Those Good Internet Marketing Ideas’
Tags: art, visualisation
COME ALONG NOW, PUT YOUR WORST FACE FORWARD!
PAINTER 12 BRUSHES
That is the sincerity of creativity in presence.
When I am at peace and awareness, I feel I express myself easier through the various means of creativity. This is more often than not, and is reflected in the way I share my message.
Valerie Wise-Owl,
I get amazing information in my dreams – enough so to write a book about – if I were so consumed with the blogging business.
Another place where idea pop are in the bath.
The subconscious mind is an amazing part of our brains — it never sleeps and apparently can work puzzles more efficiently when we rest the conscious brain. The trick, I think, is to give it enough pieces of the puzzle it can put them together to make a picture we can work with.
I know, Anita! When it happens and we can remember it, what a happy eureka!
Maybe I’ll reopen my Dreamweaver as well as the Missing Manual plus the HTML Code book I use as guides and try to sleep through the solution of my corrupted website pages! Hahaha!
Barb
Very interested in your example of the computer game, Anita! Something very similar happened to me. I put it in a comment about it on Barb’s blog, but think it’s worth repeating here.
I do find ’sleeping on it’ particularly effective, not only for dreaming up creative ideas but for finding hard solutions.
Once upon a time in the dawn of the net, I had a go at writing Basic code. One night I got in a frightful tangle, with nested ‘if, then, else’ commands all hopelessly jumbled together. I wrestled with the problem until about 2.30 am and in the end just had to go to bed from mental exhaustion, even more muddled than when I started.
In the morning I woke with everything neatly arranged, the code about a quarter the length and complexity of the night before.
This happened again and more than once.
Great post and I love your humor. I’ve solved lots of problems that way, it really does help to kind of let it go on a conscious level. I remember a computer game I played and I was totally stuck for hours, went to bed and dreamed the solution. I wish my dreams worked like that more often
Anita
My best ideas come after I’ve stewed a bit… for instance, in Chris Price’s Painter Lab at the Digital Art Academy, the first week’s assignment was to paint bold. I asked me what is my bold?
A week later I picked up the brushes (translate Painter X and Wacom Tablet brushes) opened a canvas and started painting. My bold turned out to be not colors or large brush strokes, but something completely different that I allowed to come out of my head impromptu. It was an interesting concept.
My best people paintings come from photos I’ve loved looking at — for whatever reason. Usually they are unposed shots that suggest a story to me. I let those thoughts stew a bit, and then out of the blue I know what I need to paint — or write.
Now if I could just get organized — I’ve been stewing over that for sometime now.
Thank you for commenting, JR. I changed your sex!
Found your article interesting and very true. As an advertising copywriter and sometimes cartoonist, I have many times found the Bus, Bath and Bed advice to be apt. I can cudgel my brains for inspiration to no avail, go away and ideas just drop into my head at the most unexpected moments. Most inconveniently in the middle of the night.
Thanks for the mention, I really appreciate it! Actually it’s “her” blog, lol…so many people think I am a guy, I have to find a way on my blog to disspell that myth!