Discovering the Creative

This past week, I spent time in New York City attending The Creativity Workshop. After getting the supplies list that included sketchbooks, I was a little nervous. Writing and cutting and pasting? I can handle that. But physically drawing objects, people, places?! I was insanely intimidated.

These drawing assignments challenged us to go out into the world, find someone and draw. Then after you were done drawing, you had to write a story. Either what they were going through at that specific moment in time, or their inner life. I found the writing part helped me shape my drawings. As I sat there thinking I had completed the drawing, all of a sudden I’d see something new from my story and need to add to the sketch.

That’s the number one lesson I’m taking from this course, that creativity is never finished. Even as the deadline hits and the pitch/concept goes out the door. Everything’s still a work in progress. Too often I think I look at that looming deadline as the be-all-end-all. And that the project, along with the ideas, just stop.

I’ve also learned to silence that inner critic of mine. That voice telling me as I’m typing, writing, creating to self-edit. It was hard at first to ignore it, but through loads of automatic writing, I’ve managed to quiet it down. After all, that’s what the editing’s process is for; why do double the work?

One of my favorite exercises was taking a blank piece of paper and just drawing lines and squiggles for about 10 minutes. All while you closed your eyes and held your pencil in a new way. It was extremely freeing and really challenged your imagination as you “remembered” where you’d already made lines. Then you opened your eyes and started to make sense of the squiggles by finding objects/shapes in the chaos. It was challenging at first as you forced yourself to make sense of it all, and then I found the more you just glance and scan, the easier it was to “see” something.

Our class was about 25 students from 12 different countries. It was insanely inspiring to hear the stories, the drawings and the thoughts of people I never would have had the opportunity to meet and collaborate alongside. And there was even another Hannah in the mix (from Saudi Arabia).

While I’m never really one for negative-based language, this was our mantra (from Samuel Beckett) throughout the class and it really did help me move past that inner critic that’s so used to being heard.

You May Say I’m a Dreamer

Last month, my boss sent me home with Imagine: How Creativity Works by Jonah Lehrer. It’s a book I’ve had on my reading list, but wasn’t in all that of a hurry to begin. While my reading habits lately include more nonfiction, they’re usually in the way of memoirs or biographies. For some reason, I’ve never been all that jazzed about industry books and tend to really labor through them.

Not the case with this one.

Lehrer breaks creativity, the creative mind and the enabling environments in a wondrous, storytelling way. From Bob Dylan’s songwriting ways (or lack there of) to the way Pixar studios places their bathrooms, Lehrer somehow manages to engage senses and parts of the brain that are dormant while reading.

The chapter about urban living really struck a chord. I never paid much attention to why I feel like I’m more “creative” in Chicago, I just chalked it up to the fact there’s a lot going on…there are a lot of resources to explore…and the people watching is stellar. I never even gave much thought to what all of those components contribute to the way the mind works.

When contemplating a fascinating and engaging read this summer, imagine Lehrer.

“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.” –Picasso

Pinning Inspiration

About six months ago, Maggie told me about this website I just had to get on and start using: Pinterest. At first, I was confused how I could use the site and what it all really meant. But today, I’m a huge believer and find myself continually checking in to see what’s going on. There’s really no boundaries to what the site can be, seeing as you determine how you want to use it every time you create a board for your pins. I find the site is definitely more of an inspiration source, which is why when I saw this latest campaign from Kotex, I just wanted to get up and cheer. Finally, a brand doing something truly original with this still-in-beta site.

To celebrate National Women’s Inspiration Day, Kotex took to people’s Pinterest boards and created gift boxes for them based on the things they pinned. Then they sent these boxes out and as you’re probably guessing, all the recipients took to social media to share their boxes with others.

I’m pining for more campaigns like this.

via AdFreak