Creative Fire by Mary O'Gara, Ph.D.

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NEW for August 2011

What Makes One Person More Creative than Another?

We all know what creativity looks like—maybe. It looks different, but not different enough to be crazy. Or maybe just a little crazy. Creativity also looks productive—even if you write one novel (and it's Gone with the Wind) or start painting in your very senior years like Grandma Moses. But those are all effects, the results of creativity at work (or of creativity gone wrong).

The simplest definition of creativity is that it involves recognizing an attribute of one thing that would enhance another and shifting the attribute from the first thing to the second. In a romantic suspense novel I read recently, the computer geek hero was also a football player in college and has the brains of a geek and the brawn and attitude of an alpha hero.

Metaphors are as simple as the attribute definition of creativity. At core, they're a comparison that ascribes the attribute of one thing to another. Carried to an extreme, a metaphor becomes a conceit. Or it may appear as another part of speech entirely, as it does when we ascribe human emotions to a beloved pet.

Some of my best recipes are the results of mistakes-and the creativity came in recognizing the value of an unexpected recipe change. Necessity and substitutions, while we may not think of them as metaphorical, are part of the whole attribute shifting kind of creativity.

But what about huge discoveries? What about choreography or Beethoven symphonies or complex heavy metal music. Move a lot of things from one place to another. The relevant question is "What if?"

Although the attribute shifting definition is useful and productive, there are questions it doesn't answer. Is an action truly creative if no one recognizes its value? Does a tree falling in an empty forest make a sound?

Emily Dickinson's poems were poems while they were in her trunk-but they were work that someone would have recognized as creative wordsmithing if she had shared them with qualified people.

Creative work, on the level we'll be discussing in this column, may not rise to the level of changing its field as Shakespeare changed theatre and Einstein changed physics. On the whole, though, we'll be talking about creativity that could be recognized and would be valued by peers.

If you live alone in an Alaskan forest, and your creative work is inventing new tools, they should be tools another solitary forest dweller would find interesting. Photography isn't really creative unless it makes the viewer see something in a different way. Words should evoke emotions from people who don't already love you.

We won't leave out the domestic arts. Creative cooks and decorators are welcome here. Makers of all things are creators. One of the most creative men I remember from my childhood was Carl Mellott, a small town carpenter who could and did fashion an astonishing number of objects with wood. Here in New Mexico, we treasure churches built by hand with adobe and stuccoed and preserved over the years by local craftsmen.

What do they all have in common?

I think it may be trusting the process. Sometimes you trust your body to find a dance. Sometimes you get away from the work and trust your subconscious mind to come up with an answer. Sometimes you sit in a chair and write until the words say something new.

Without trust, who would do the work that leads to new discoveries? There's necessity, of course-but even necessity rests on the rock of trust. There's passion, but passion is usually the result of trust put to work by craft.

Creativity is my passion. Creativity, poetry, story-and photography. Needlework and garden designs. One of my favorite poets was a chocolatier in her day job. (Chocolate samples are welcome).

I've been exploring creativity and talking with creative craftsmen and artists for more than half a century. We'll roam around a bit in this column-and your ideas and questions are always welcome—but at the core, we'll be talking about creative work, creative passion, and ways to light the fire.

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