h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

(Yes, Ever, I have them.)

I was responding to a post when I had a thought. (Yes, I admit, just one) It amazes me that some of my best (and creepiest) writing springs like Athena from my head when I reach the most utter states of boredom. This was written while I was supposed to be researching leperasy (which is less exciting than it sounds. Who knew that having your body rot while you still lived in it could be so agonizingly dull?). I wrote Heroes while folding laundry. I fear I may be mad. Or perhaps I'm inhabited by a strange, creative being which can only take over when I'm my mind is sufficiently dulled...come to think of it, I write well when I'm very tired too...hmm...

It made me wonder. Where does creativity come from? How does the mind come up with new things? Personally, I don't believe that happens. There is no true originality, just a resurfacing, refurbishing of old thoughts and ideas. Old concepts rearranged and looked at from a different perspective. So creativity is misnamed. It is not creative, but reconstructive. And it does not seem that it is so hard a thing - after all, how else can you look at an idea (or anything, for that matter) except from your own perspective? The trick, I suppose is that the "creative" people are able to understand their own view enough to make it exist for others as well. It is the willingness to understand yourself better, and to share that understanding with others. But again, is that so hard. "Creative" people stand out as such. They cannot help but share themselves with others. So perhaps creativity is not a trait that some have and others don't. Perhaps it is just a paradoxical twist of extroverted-introversion. The ablility and willingness to examine oneself, the ability to share oneself with others, willing or not. Perhaps this doesn't make sense at all, but I'm a bored, tired, extroverted introvert. I don't know what I am.

I think you're right...much of what passes for personal creativity involves reaaranging existing information...every once in a while somebody makes a breakthough...Galileo, Thomas Sumner...but mostly we don't manage it.