On Creativity

Blog – On Creativity

My daughter Caryn has decided to try for her MBA so is taking a night class to test the waters. The focus on this course is creativity – the idea being that the business world needs more creative thinkers.

            I began to wonder if non-creative people think that those they consider creative will come up with solutions easily. That with a snap of the fingers, a moment of furrowed brows, and an “aha”, the answer will appear. Problem solved. That’s not the way it works.

            In clearing out some files, I ran across material that points 

to the process. Pat Cummings wrote something entitle, Talking with 

Artists. Cummings described the process of six authors who won 

Caldecott medals (the award given to the illustrator of children’s books).

            I’ll share just one example.

            Robert McClosky wrote and illustrated the famous book, Make Way for Ducklings, receiving the Caldecott in 1942.

            The interesting thing is how he came to draw his characters. McClosky studied ducks for two years, eventually bringing 16 ducks to live with him. He made hundreds and hundreds of drawing and the text changed as he worked on the illustrations.

            He first named the ducks, Mary, Martha, Phillys, Theodore, Beatrice, Alice, George, and John. Then, Jack, Kack, Lack, Mack, Nack, Ouack, Pack and Quack.

The ducklings in a Boston Park.

No quick and easy solution there.

            One more example. Ernest Hemingway wrote 39 alternate endings to his WWI novel, A Farewell to Arms. Thirty-nine!

            Creative people may have an “aha” moment. But then comes the work. The rethinking, the revising, the starting over.

            Years ago when on sabbatical (this must have been in 1976) I did some research on creativity and wrote a paper I was proud of. I have no idea where that paper is now, but I remember listing five levels of creativity starting with the spontaneous art work of children, and ending at the genius level – the level few manage to achieve.

            On a whim I googled levels of creativity and came upon Lelie Owen Wilson’s site. She lists those same five levels, giving as her source Irving A. Taylor and his book, “The Nature of Creative Process”. Aha, I thought. I remember that name. That was one of the books I read when I was doing research way back when. Wilson describes the levels differently that I did and now claims ownership of her words, as she should. But she can’t claim ownership to the idea of the five levels.

            More internet research brought me to a great article by Jeff DeGuaff, from Fortune.

            Then I came upon an entirely different approach, the idea of creating techniques for measuring creativity. Here it gets too technical for me. I want to focus on the idea of allowing oneself to break barriers, ignore boundaries and go for whatever form or genre makes sense to you as the creator.
That's why I like learning about what people are doing with memoir - combining recipes or setting up a mystery. Why not?