pameladlloyd | What is Creativity? (Reply)

I've been reading The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer's Block, and the Creative Brain, by Alice W. Flaherty. There's lots of food for thought in there, but the morsel I want to consider for the moment is creativity. What is it, and must it produce something of value?

I'd already been thinking about this, due to a mention of a couple of definitions for creativity in a marketing workshop I took. Here's what I wrote about this in my recent post about workshops I attended last month:

One of the terms discussed was creativity, and Dr. Ackerley gave us a few definitions, the first of which he attributed to Voltaire, but which seems to be more correctly attributed to Arens: "combining two or more previously unconnected
objects or ideas into something new." In the process of searching for the source, I discovered this quote which is sometimes attributed to Voltaire, and sometimes to Edward de Bono, "originality is nothing but judicious limitation." (I leave figuring this out to my readers, with my apologies.) He also gave us the definition "creativity is the act of regularly solving problems, fashioning products, or defining new questions in a domain in a way that is initially considered novel but that ultimately becomes accepted in a particular cultural setting." The source was given as, "Gardner (1993, p. 35), but since we didn't have a bibliography, I'm left to guess at the author and work; a short search suggests that this is most likely a work by Howard Gardner, a noted researcher who studies creativity and one of the major contributors to the concept of "multiple intelligences."

I find it interesting that Gardner's definition is so specific about the results of the creative process, to the point that if his statement is taken at face value, any similar effort whose results do not become culturally accepted is not defined as creative, an idea I must take issue with. But, perhaps, had I come across this definition in context, I would discover that he was speaking toungue in cheek, as it were.

In The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer's Block, and the Creative Brain, Dr. Flaherty states: "Most agree that a useful definition of creative work is that it includes a combination of novelty and value. Creativity requires novelty because tried-and-true solutions are not creative, even if they are ingenious and useful. And creative works must be valuable (useful or illuminating to at least some members of the population) because a work that is merely odd is not creative" (p. 51).

Now, I value quality in creative works, but I find myself bothered by the idea that in order for something to be considered a creative activity, it must produce something of value. When a two-year-old child scribbles on a piece of paper (or the wall) is that not a creative act? Yes, the child's parents may value the results, but they may do so out of love for the child, rather than for the result itself. (Parents are also less likely to be thrilled about the wall.) Does the child scribble with the intention of producing something, or for the joy of the expressing some inner muse? Does the child even attach value to the scribbles before Mom or Dad teaches them that the scribbles have value by making a fuss and posting the "picture" on the wall? Yet, surely, most would agree that the child was engaging in a creative act. Perhaps, creativity lies not so much in the value of the results, but in the potential for value. This makes some sense to me, because as a writer, I'd like to feel that every time I sit down to work on a story, I'm being creative, even if I wind up deciding that my output from a given day (or, say, the first several years I wrote, before I began to think that maybe I wanted to be a writer) has no value.

I cringed at Dr. Flaherty's statement that "creative work requires both novelty and value, the creative thinker who produces it requires both talent and drive." So, my young friend who bounces with excitement as she shares her poorly written story with me wasn't being creative as she wrote it? Or, someone who writes beautifully, but rarely finds the will to write, perhaps writing only one short story or a single exquisite poem in the their lives, isn't creative? I can't accept this.

My husband, who has recently been in the throes of giving birth to some music, just poked his head in, listened to me as I commented on my feeling of discomfort with these definitions for creativity, and mentioned our neighbor who lavishes care on his car, polishing it with pride, as engaging in a creative act: one which arises from a dream of perfection and produces a clean, well-cared-for car. If I understand his point of view, any act, done with care and thoughtfulness, is a creative one. This seemed to me to suggest that there is an element of the spiritual in the act of creation, and writing this line reminds me of a song I've heard a few times, Acts of Creation, by Echo's Children, the chorus of which ends with the line: "Every act of creation is an act of faith."

So, I know that my friends are a creative bunch. What are your thoughts on creativity? Can you suggest a better definition than those I've mentioned here?