To be, to have, to think, to move — which of these verbs is the one you feel most connected to? Or is there another verb that characterizes you better?
‘To cease to think creatively is but little different from ceasing to live.’
— Benjamin Franklin
Sometimes I feel as though all I have are my thoughts and my creativity, and when my creativity fails me, I feel like a failure.
I’ve always revelled in my creativity and actually making use of the weird and twisted shit that keeps swirling around in my brain; getting an idea and just completely running with it to its fullest extent. Sometimes it just takes a simple sentence to create an idea in my brain, and then it’s like opening the flood gates for so many possibilities.
When I’ve actually got the time to write a creative piece, and I have an idea, I just want to go with it, and see what ends up coming through my fingers. Most of the time, I see everything play out in my head like a movie, and my hands just can’t seem to type fast enough to keep up.
I think I’ve always been like that.
When I was a kid, I remember I was obsessed with writing creative stories and they were always about space: going to space; living in space; being abducted; talking to aliens etc and I’d type them out and turn them into small story books. I’d cut out paragraphs and paste them onto separate pages, and then draw some pictures, and then Mum would help make a cover out of an old manila folder and that would be my school project.
But I can always remember having an attraction to writing. Predominantly, my creativity has always come through in dance, as that’s been my passion since I was a child, but my other quieter passion has been writing. I just regret losing touch with it for so many years.
Instead of actually writing something, I’d sit there and think about it instead. I’d think about the types of things I’d like to write; the type of stories I’d like to tell – mainly because my brain is just so overactive most of the time, I use writing as a way of getting everything out of my head and letting it quieten down… slightly.
I remember once when I was at Drama Camp, and one of our exercises was to create a mind map in our books… In ten minutes, I had completely filled my two-page spread in my notebook, and asked for some extra paper, and in the end, I used 4 separate A4 pages, and had to fold and sticky tape them all to my notebook. When we finished, I stood up as part of my group and presented mine last, and people looked at me as if I was some kind of freak. Granted, they all got up to have a closer look, and some of them congratulated me on being so detailed.
I remember when I asked for more paper the teacher gave me a puzzled look, thinking that I’d made some kind of mistake and wanted to start again, but couldn’t understand why I didn’t just start on a new page in my book… so I showed him the book and he didn’t really know what to say. To say he was surprised would be an understatement. All he did was say that it was amazing, and that I was simply remarkable and made me present mine last – perhaps because it was so thorough and detailed, and went off in tangents that weren’t quite expected. It was the perfect insight into my brain – even as a teenager some said it was ‘disturbing’.
I, however, always found mind maps quite fascinating – moreso for my own study and understanding. I could start with one word and then somehow manage to link all kinds of weird and wonderful and unusual concepts, ideas, themes etc to it.
To have only (what I consider) recently re-tapped into my creativity in the form of writing and writing this blog has been fantastic, and quite challenging – I just wish that I had the ability to dedicate more time to actually writing and developing ideas, as well as completing all my catch-up posts.
http://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/verbal-confirmation/
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