Learn about your creative process
Starting in March 2024, moving to Substack. But check here for blog posts on creativity, the creative process and how to hack creative growth.
Start here: Starting concepts
Procrastination, marination, freezing and the Inner Critic
Creativity and interoception (physiological self-awareness)
The ‘Third Layer’ process itself
The Creative Foundation and Creativity Pyramid
Having a creative barrier? Enter in a search term (emotions, procrastination, etc) here:
TTS: Ten True Statements
Write down ten statements that are currently true about creativity.
These statements can be anything: “My grandmother was so creative,” “I need a messy/clean desk in order to be creative,” “I like the color yellow.” Anything.
They can be about your creativity, creativity in general, creative thinking. Seriously; anything.
The creativity of traveling locally
In many ways, travel in a foreign locale is easier. You don't have to do anything, the creativity and newness is everywhere. Travel nearby -- especially to places not over-popularized -- *takes* creativity. This is one of the reasons I loved being a guidebook author. You can't cover a place if you look at it on the first layer only. What's the second layer? How about the third? What can I learn about my own backyard that's different to my preconceptions?
The Inner Critic Comes Knocking
Even the names you give them bring a smile to my writerly heart. I’ve met the Sludge Monster, Doctor Doom, California Barbie, The Bird, Shapeshifter, Wicked Witch, Fuckface, Professor Von Fancypants IV, and many delightfully, creatively-named others.
The. Pre-Creativity. Foundation. Is. Everything.
Learn your creativity rules so you can break them without breaking you.
The Creativity Ladder, safety and primordial soup
Why is it important we know our unique Creativity Ladders?
Because we are radically different people creatively/artistically/problem-solvingly when we’re at a layer 1 vs a layer 6. (Not to mention vs the surprisingly elusive layers 7, 8 or 9.)
Because, as the ladder shows, if we push creativity when we’re below a 0, we can — and often do — lasting damage. To our own creativity and mental health, but also to others’ creativity without us realizing.
Creative frustation (and why it’s a good thing)
Creative frustration (or fear, envy, boredom, et al) is a treasure trove of information.
Why go horizontal before you go vertical
So go ahead and get creative. Get a second opinion. Or a third. Come up with five horizontally equal ways to ask your boss for a raise, before you pick one to go vertical on. If you’re young, it could make the difference of a million dollars over your lifetime.
Ten Rules for Third Layer Creativity
Our brains are wired for survival, not creativity. Survival brain is what keeps us going; what we create with it makes it worthwhile. But we need a way to communicate with our survival brain, to let it know creativity isn’t going to hurt us.
Noping, defined
‘Noping’ denies, negates, belittles, refuses, gaslights, shuts down, lacks empathy … often all of the above.
The ‘Fuck It’ budget
Creativity — like a financial budget — is messy. The fuck-it budget predicts some of that messiness and gives the privilege of acceptance.
Mathematical idioms, unspoken quantification and creativity
We quantify the creatively unquantifiable all the time without realizing it. A list of how we use language to put ourselves on the map.
Writing: Self-awareness vs rumination
Writing can improve your mental health, but the writing should elicit self-awareness (not rumination).
Perfectionism is death
Perfectionism is stagnation, fear and death. And nothing is a perfect 10 anyway.
Interoception’s influence on creativity, Pt I
Want to work on your creativity? Listen to your body through interoception.
Be willing to get squiggly
Creativity is messy, inelegant, tangential. But it’s precisely within this messiness where our creativity starts to take shape.
Start where you are. Start where they are.
Creativity is hard. So start where you are, not where the world expects you to be.