“All of us contain a divine, expressive spark, a creative candle intended to light our path and that of our fellows. We are shiny, not tarnished; large, not small; beautiful, not damaged – although we may be ignorant of our grace, power, and dignity.” – Julia Camerson, The Artist’s Way
The blank page, the empty canvas, can be daunting. Each time I begin a new article, I get a touch of imposter’s syndrome, feeling inadequate and doubting that I can execute. It fades to the background as soon as I start and enter the process of creative expression. Wandering, losing track of time and getting the first draft on paper are the main ingredients of idea generation and narrative development.
In addition to starting right where I’m at in the moment, I also use Julia Cameron’s practices of morning pages and artist’s dates to generate ideas and uncover what’s hiding inside waiting to be released.
Morning pages consists of writing three stream of consciousness pages as soon as you wake up. When I do this consistently, it always uncovers new insights and revelations. Writing without overthinking, stopping, judging or editing opens the gates to subconscious thoughts that get drowned out by the noise of daily activities.
The Artist’s Date is a once a week date with yourself to foster curiosity and exploration. A museum, a conservatory, a playground can all spark whimsy and release new seeds of creative energy.
Brainstorming is a technique that generates a lot of ideas, unhindered by judgment and criticism. Studies have shown that individual brainstorming can often be more effective than group brainstorming. Sergey Markov shares several brainstorming techniques including free writing, free word association and brain drawing.
Mindmapping is a popular visual technique and there are a lot of software platforms to accelerate and guide the process. Mindmapping.com offers an excellent overview of the theory and process of mindmapping. There are three steps to creating a mindmap:
1. Set a central topic;
2. Add branches of related ideas;
3. Add sub-branches for more relevant ideas;
In her article, Sara McGuire, Venngage shares 21 Mind Map Templates To Help You Visualize Ideas. One example in the article summarizes the concept of design thinking, which is another popular technique for innovation, problem solving and idea generation.
David Kelley, founder of design firm IDEO has created IDEOU, which offers excellent tools and resources on design thinking.
In 1985, Dr. Edward de Bono created the Six Thinking Hats® method based on the brain’s different modes of thinking. Generating ideas under each “hat” for a short time compartmentalizes each for clearer decision-making.
1. White Hat – Facts and Information
2. Red Hat – Feeling and Intuition
3. Black Hat – Caution and Problems
4. Yellow Hat – Benefits and Advantages
5. Blue Hat – Managing Thinking
6. Green Hat – Creativity and Solution
“We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we're curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.” – Walt Disney
Creativity, imagination and innovation are synonymous with Walt Disney. Todd Epstein and Robert Dilts modelled Walt Disney’s Creative Method into three distinct and connected stages:
1. Dreamer: Vision, What? = unlimited ideas and imagination
2. Realist: Action, How? = turning the ideas into an action plan
3. Critic: Logic, Why = constructive critique
The SCAMPER Technique was introduced by Bob Eberle, based on Alex Osborne’s brainstorming technique:
S — Substitute
C — Combine
A — Adapt
M — Modify
P — Put to other uses
E — Eliminate
R — Rearrange or reverse
The first step to creating ideas is filling the blank page without hesitation. Mindmapping, design thinking and other techniques can help cultivate and germinate those seeds so they can break ground into fruition. Experiment and find the one that inspires you to keep moving to the finish line of execution.
Julia Cameron encapsulates the daily process beautifully, “Let our gardening hands be gentle ones. Let us not root up one another’s ideas before they have time to bloom. Let us bear with the process of growth, dormancy, cyclicality, fruition, and reseeding. Let us never be hasty to judge, reckless in our urgency to force unnatural growth. Let there be, always, a place for the artist toddler to try, to falter, to fail, to try again. Let us remember that in nature’s world every loss has meaning. The same is true for us. Turned to good use, a creative failure may be the compost that nourishes next season’s creative success. Remember, we are in this for the long haul, the ripening and harvest, not the quick fix.”