Preparing to be Creative

Preparing to be creative is such an odd phrase! Isn’t creativity an innate ability to design and innovate? Something with an inside/outside quality that doesn’t seem really connected to anything more than a sudden idea. For me, many of my ideas come while in the shower or while I’m driving. While doing something else with my hands and my mind that doesn’t involve anything more creative that getting ready for work or going from point A to point B.

And maybe that is the preparation to be creative ~ without pencil, paper or computer at hand. The task becomes how do I hold onto that thought or idea. Well, that in itself is creative and possibly quite wet if the shower is involved. If driving....that involves preparation. A tape recorder that is always there with a button ready to be pushed, comes to mind. But, for me, distraction for grabbing a thought can interfere with my driving, so I have to be willing to let that one go. If it’s important, that thought will return later, maybe in another form and hopefully ‘at a more opportune time’.

Tonight, my level of exhaustion after my Aquafit class, has definitely not prepared me to be creative. Exhaustion often feels equivalent to a great heavy body of water that just wants to settle and pool.  But I wanted to write..to be creative.  I turned, as I have recently to a TED Talk by Elizabeth Gilbert (http://www.ted.com/playlists/11/the_creative_spark). As has so often been the case, my creative energy was renewed, even although my physical energy still was calling for rest. And thus this muse.

“Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It’s 

self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. 

You can’t try to do things. You simply must do things.”

~ Ray Bradbury