I have been thinking a lot creativity. What does creativity mean to me? What factors make me feel more creative? How can I be more consistent in refining my skills in my creative pursuits?
The Blog Questions Challenge, in which bloggers are challenged to write about their blogging practice, got me thinking more about my creative questions. Thus, I would like to start a new challenge: the creative questions challenge. If you are interested, here are a few questions I would love to hear people’s perspectives on:
- What creative activities do you do often?
- What creative activities would you like to do more often?
- What environments do you like to create in? How does this differ between the different creative things you do? (i.e. do you prefer different environments when you write vs. play music)
- Do you have a consistent time that you make things, or do you prefer to go with the flow?
- How much time do you spend taking notes and gathering inspiration before you make something new?
- What does the term “creative practice” mean to you?
I’ll start!
I like to write, code, and play music. Writing helps me think. Coding exercises the part of my brain that enjoys logic, but I still need to be creative to think about how best to solve problems. Music helps me relax and feel more free and have fun.
I have been writing, coding, and playing music for years. All of these things bring me joy.
I would like to continue learning to play the ukulele. I can play a few chords and follow a few playalongs on YouTube, but I struggle with many chord changes. I really enjoy following Taylor Swift playalongs. I love it when I can play along to my favourite songs. This gives me a good sense of progress and motivates me to keep going.
I prefer to create in quiet places. When I am writing, I appreciate as little noise as possible – although I do like the background noise of birds and the occasional thing going on outside.
I prefer to make things at home, too. I used to enjoy writing on the go: on trains, in cafes, etc. With that said, I now find that my mind can be more open when it’s just me. I think writing is a time when I need to look within, which takes a lot of focus. I have that focus more at home than in other places.
I do like to think about ideas wherever I go, though. I love having an idea on my mind at any given time – a software project to work on, ambitions for a new blog post, aspirations to make a new layout for a web page. When I am thinking of ideas for blog posts, I often string together sentences in my head – introductions, parts of paragraphs, things I want to say. I take a lot of notes, both in paper and on my phone. I think this is creative in itself: the note isn’t the finished product, but it is the spark that ignites my creativity.
I like to learn music inside and practice music outside. I enjoy performing songs on train station pianos, but I need to spend lots of time at home practicing a song before I have enough confidence to play outside.
I have had both routines and went with the flow in the past. Having a writing routine has been especially helpful for the professional, technical writing I do. It makes it easier to show up every day and work through a large body of work. For personal writing, I like to go with the flow. I like to think about ideas when I can and if one feels right I will start writing about it.
A lot of my ideas take time to go from the initial thought to a final piece. I had been thinking about this piece for a few days, for example, but I was both lacking motivation and did not have a clear picture in my head as to what shape the piece would take. I then sat down and decided that I would give writing the post a go. I’m happy with how it has turned out so far!
Sometimes when I sit down to write I have no ideas and feel a bit discouraged. But then there are the times when I sit down with a faint idea and I start shaping the idea into a fully-fledged creative work. This year, I would like to try and spend more time showing up to the digital canvas and writing a few words.
I find it helpful to make lists of ideas that I can go through – whether the idea is a moment of joy I observed, a technical topic I want to explore, or notes on a topic I have been thinking a lot about. I keep these notes in my digital notebook so that whenever I am looking at my TODO list there are ideas to explore.
I don’t aspire to write every day, but I would like to write as much as I can! This is very much in the vein of going with the flow, but I would like a little bit of structure. What form that takes is yet to be determined, but I am excited to reflect more.
I find that when I start writing something, I start writing more. I may have one idea for a blog post but end up writing two that day. Sometimes an idea comes following the first blog post I wrote. Sometimes I reflect on the last few weeks and realise there is something I could have written about but have not yet documented. Often, writing one thing makes me feel excited and then I ask “what’s next?” and have enough motivation to start working on a new idea.
I take so many notes. I find that the more notes I take, the more likely I am to make something. Notes are especially helpful for the coding tasks I take on. I have also found that having a whiteboard and physical pens and paper are helpful for coding tasks. Sometimes, I need to draw something out, or I really need to think about something and don’t want to be at a screen.
Notes serve several purposes to me. They help me document what I’m thinking about. I can then skim through my notes to see what has been on my mind lately. Notes are almost bookmarks to ideas. Notes also help me think through ideas. Sometimes I will write a note down and I feel inspired and write more notes. Other times, I take a note and realise that I don’t yet know exactly how the idea will manifest but I find it interesting anyway.
When I play music, I prefer to learn songs that have been written rather than writing my own songs. I really enjoy the process of playing music. I don’t usually take notes for this. I like to go to my piano or ukulele when I have time and sit down and learn or play.
I think my creative practice encompasses all of the activities I do that relate to making things. It’s about what I make and how I make it. My creative practice involves thinking, taking lots of notes, trying out different ideas, and then going with the ones that I feel are most interesting.
My creative practice also involves balance. I love writing but I need other activities that exercise different parts of my mind. Music, like writing, takes up all of my headspace at a given time. I can’t think about my TODO list when I am writing. I can only think about what I want to say and how I want to say it. When I am playing music, I sometimes think about other things but I get immersed in the music. I love hearing the sounds and trying to replicate them. I play music by ear.
I would like my creative practice to involve getting out more. I have had many ideas for blog posts – especially stories – after going out for a day and noticing someting interesting. I have started taking paper notebooks with me more often so that I can physically write down notes and sketch out ideas. This has been particularly helpful for me in web design, where I want to sketch out layouts that are on my mind and figure out how a page could flow.
Part of my creative practice is also noting things I like: words I enjoy, web page layouts I like, typography that looks cool, elegant software ideas, songs that I find interesting. Especially in web design, noting things I like has helped me figure out what it is I want to make. The more things I see, the more I can learn what’s possible. From there, I can ask why something is the way it is – why are serif fonts used so much in some places but not others?, for example – try a design for myself, and experiment.
All are welcome to participate! I would also like to tag Tracy, Sara, and Nick in case they are interested too!
