If you are looking for information, tips and insights into finding and maintaining creative energy, you need look no farther than Thoughtwrestling and the many posts on creativity. Almost every post is about creative energy.
So I’m going to write about, “What on earth is creative energy?”
Many of us know it when we experience it, but articulating it … that’s not so easy. I think that is why descriptions of it often use analogies and metaphors and similes such as, “It’s like being a beautiful bird flying high above the earth …” It’s a nice image but it doesn’t give you anything really tangible to grasp.
What is creative energy?
Creative energy is inspiration. I like the way my dictionary defines inspiration: “… the process of being mentally stimulated to do or feel something, esp. to do something creative.”
It has a second meaning, one that relates even more directly to the origins of the word ‘inspire’: inhalation. Inspire is from the Latin word inspirare, meaning ‘breathe or blow into.’ That is a pretty good description of creative energy.
We’ve inhaled, in this case an idea, and the process of being creative is the exhalation. Yes, we’re back to metaphors again. 
There is another characteristic of breathing that is similar to creativity. We are seldom aware that we are breathing. When we are aware of our breathing, it is when we are having difficulty doing it. Likewise, when we’re being creative we’re seldom aware of being creative; we’re just doing it. We’re only aware of creativity when we have problems.
That’s why most books, posts and articles about creativity tend to focus on the problem of not being creative. They’re about fixing that.
Breathing is flow
There is one obvious exception to this: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and his book titled, Flow. In his book he tries to describe creative energy and largely succeeds. In his terminology it is flow – a pretty good word for it. (See the Mark McGuinness post, Creative flow.)
Describing creative energy is one thing; figuring out how to find it is another. (We’re back to the problem of creativity – I want it; I can’t find it; where is it?) I think inspiration has two sources:
- ideas
- people
We don’t get inspired in a vacuum. There is always a source. We see something, hear something, experience something … suddenly our brain is jazzed with ideas that go something like, “What would happen if …?”
And we try something. And something clicks. And that click produces another click and we find ourselves in Csikszentmihalyi’s flow (except we’re not aware of it because we’re too absorbed by the flow).
An idea has stimulated us. It has inspired us. But creativity is process: we begin here and we end there, usually by a very meandering path. Along the way, our flow waxes and wanes – our oxygen supply occasionally needs to be topped up so we can keep breathing.
People are oxygen
Part of creativity is dialogue. It’s often with ourselves; but it is also with others. Sometimes it is direct, like a conversation. Sometimes it’s from reading someone, watching someone or listening to someone. But it’s the back and forth of dialogue that allows for the work to evolve. It maintains the energy. It is air for breathing.
Much of creativity is about contradictions. We need distractions but we can’t be distracted. We have a system but we can’t be systematized. We need solitude but we need people.
The reason for the seeming contradictions is because being creative is a process; it’s not static. It has phases. In some stages, we need isolation. In others, we need people.
When we need other people, it isn’t simply feedback that we need. Feedback is one way. We need dialogue; we need to exchange thoughts because it is in the back and forth the idea develops. It’s breathing again. We breathe in; we breathe out, again and again.
One last thing
Here’s one more thought about how creative energy is breathing. We all need air; everybody breathes.
Everyone’s creative.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on flow:
Thoughtwrestling and creativity:
Image: Flickr (LunaDiRimmel)
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I’m a big fan of Csikszentmihalyi’s flow concept, so I’ve really enjoyed reading this post.
It’s interesting that you mention the concepts of breath and creative inspiration when you look at some of the spiritual concepts originating out of Judaism and Christianity where they seem to draw relationships with breath, wind, spirituality and possibly creativity/creative inspiration as well. There’s a term called ruach which captures some of these ideas.
I’m not going religious here, by the way: just saw a connection between concepts.
I went down that road when I saw the root for (and meaning) of inspire. It’s a wonderful metaphor, applicable to creativity, spirituality and other things. You’ll see it occurring in poetry and song too (like Leonard Cohen). So it relates on many levels.
As I mentioned in the post, it’s hard to describe or define creativity (or spirituality or poetry or etc.) without resorting to metaphors and similes.
The connection between spirituality and creativity is also one that goes way back to the Greeks and earlier, partly (I think) because it (like spirituality) is difficult to get a handle on in any tangible sense.