Name of the book: Creativity Author: unknown Type of book: good advice for beginning writers
Here is something I found while looking for something quite different. I don't know who wrote it or where I found it. (It has only been 30 years after all and could have been on a BBS in Davenport Iowa.)
CREATIVITY Published December 1989/January 1990 "Where do you get your ideas?" That is probably the first and most popular question interviewers ask writers. The implication seems to be that the interviewer believes that writers have some magical formula for creative thinking. Nothing could be further from the truth. For many years researchers have sought to identify the elements that make up creativity. The concept is so elusive, that they do not fully agree on a definition of creativity. Certainly, when someone thinks of a concept that no one has had before, they would agree that is creative. Many would agree that if two or more people come up with the same concept independently that all are creative. Still fewer would agree on the creativity of the individual who takes someone else's concept and applies it to a new use. For centuries, philosophers and psychologists have sought to identify and explain the phenomena of creative thinking. More recently, physiologists and neurologists have applied sophisticated technologies to measure brain functions. Out of this work has come the left brain, right brain concept. According the their findings (theories, if you prefer) the brain is composed of two hemishperes connected by the corpus callosum. The left hemisphere is dominant in most people and performs the functions of logic, reason, analytical thinking, linear thinking, etc. The right hemisphere, which was dominant at birth and for the first few years of life, supplies the functions associated with creativity, imagination, intuition, spacial abilities, holistic thinking, sense of humor, etc. In the arts, much that is considered creative would fail in the judgment of the early researchers. They would view most paintings, articles, and stories as mere variations on works that have been done before. The physiologists and neurologists, less concerned with rigid definitions, have pursued various behavior patterns, among them writing and other artistic kinds of activities. Of particular interest to writers is their finding that writers, in general, are uncomfortable trying to edit their work as they write. They do their best work when they capture their concepts in a rough draft (right brain function) and later analyze (left brain function) what they have done and correct their language errors and polish the work. This supports the conclusions drawn by writers from their own experience. Most experienced writers not only advise the beginner to get their ideas down quickly and revise them later, but to avoid discussing their work before getting it down on paper (or on disk). If the writer expends his creativity in talking about what he is going to write, he is wasting his creative thinking and making his actual writing a total brain function. He is analyzing while he is writing, an activity which neurological research has identified as undesirable. This is why writing seems so much more of a chore after the material has been discussed extensively. It may also partially explain why so many people talk about becoming writers, but never write anything. Whether a writer's ideas are creative in the classical sense is immaterial. His objective is to inform and/or entertain the reader. If he gets his concepts from researching the literature or reformulating his own and others' experiences does not matter. He is constantly stimulated by things he sees, reads, and hears. He must develop the skill to react to these stimuli. So, getting back to the question, "Where do you get your ideas?" I guess I get mine wherever I happen to be at the time.