“Well, obviously you need a writing instrument and you need an idea. I’m just not sure which should come first.”

Forensic anthropologist Dr. Temperance ‘Bones’ Brennan (Emily Deschanel), from TV Series “Bones” (imdb.com)

Creative expression is not just about using outside materials and tools, but actually being an instrument oneself.

It is a valuable and challenging idea that has been a theme of a number of acting coaches, but also applies to any form of creative work.

One example was the acclaimed teacher Sanford Meisner who said, “Every actor’s instrument is different because every actors instrument is their humanity, their sensitivity. Their soul. And there is no ‘right way’ or ‘one way’ to get to that instrument. That soul.”

[Book: Sanford Meisner on Acting.]

The following inspiring and insightful perspectives by dancer, choreographer and teacher Martha Graham have been around many years, and widely quoted – but it may be valuable to think about them every now and then.

They may be identified with one form of creativity – such as writing or acting, one of the visual arts, or performing music – but so many people work in multiple ways, in more than one area of creative expression. And they may not even think it is extraordinary to be so multifaceted.

In his post Creatives With Multiple Talents (on his blog The Artist’s Road), writer and instructor Patrick Ross mentions meeting two students in a Masters in Writing program who are about to graduate.

“They told me about a talent show their class held at their last on-campus residency. One of them said he had performed on the violin. The other told me he has acting experience but didn’t want to do a one-man show, so he performed magic tricks. I said it was interesting that all of these writing students had another talent they could perform.

“The violin player looked at me as if I had just expressed bafflement that an orange was the color orange. ‘All creative people have multiple talents, don’t they?’

“Anxiety is the great silencer of the creative person.” Eric Maisel, PhD

One form of anxiety is so-called writer’s block. This photo is Nicolas Cage as screenwriter Charlie Kaufman in the movie “Adaptation” by the real screenwriter Charlie Kaufman. It’s a great film about the kinds of insecurities, anxieties and distractions that can so often affect us as creative people.

Therapist and creativity coach Eric Maisel, PhD notes there are many different kinds of anxiety around creative expression, with different symptoms including confusion and a “weakness of mind and body” and persistent worry.

Author Susan Cain declares: “Without introverts, the world would be devoid of: the theory of gravity; the theory of relativity; W. B. Yeats’s “The Second Coming”; Chopin’s nocturnes; Proust’s In Search of Lost Time; Peter Pan…”

She quotes science journalist Winifred Gallagher: “The glory of the disposition that stops to consider stimuli rather than rushing to engage with them is its long association with intellectual and artistic achievement.

“Neither E = mc2 nor Paradise Lost was dashed off by a party animal.”

Articles and other resources for helping you gain new perspectives and be more creative: ideas for enhancing creativity and innovation.

Continued from How To Be More Creative.

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Need a Creativity Jolt? Drop by a Modern Art Show

By Lawrence E. McCullough | Mar 21, 2013

Synopsis: 8 Imagination Boosters I got from SCOPE New York 2013

WHAT’S TRULY WONDERFUL about so much of today’s visual Art is that it engages every sense, not just what you see (or think you see).

Next time you’re caught in a creative dry spell, spend a while wandering through a Contemporary Art show and have a universe of new ideas rain down on your parched psyche.

This series of posts on “How To Be More Creative” offers articles, books and other resources on developing creative thinking and innovation, and enhancing our creative expression.

My other Creative Mind posts, hopefully, do that as well – but these new posts specifically provide brief excerpts of selected material by other authors that have a more “how to” flavor. Feel free to make any comments or suggestions.

Creative Thinking: How to Be More Creative (with Science!)

by Gregory Ciotti

“Have you ever wished you were more creative? If you do creative work, have you ever suffered from a creative block and been stuck wondering what exactly is wrong, and how you can get yourself out of it?”

~~~~~~~~

“Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand — but tell it. Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never ­being satisfied.”

Zadie Smith

The acclaimed novelist, essayist and short story writer offers more advice on creating in the post Zadie Smith’s 10 Rules of Writing, by Maria Popova.

Smith is among the finalists for the Women’s Prize, known formerly as the Orange Prize, for “NW: A Novel.”

Her comment about “never being satisfied” reminds me of the famous quotes of dancer Martha Graham: “No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time.

“There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.”

“I would burst from all of the emotion inside.”

How do you work with your strong emotions? Creative people experience a wide range and depth of intense emotions, and use that wealth of feeling to create artwork and performances.

The idea of overseeing or regulating emotions is not necessarily about suppressing or stifling, but about staying aware and in control of our feelings, to live with a higher level of well-being, and be more creative.

The quote above is from Gloria Reuben, who said: “The thing I love most about acting is that while I am doing a scene, I am allotted all of the freedom to feel. Sometimes, actually I find that most times in life, one is not able to fully express what one feels.

“And I am the kind of person that feels so much that if I didn’t have acting (and music), I would burst from all of the emotion inside!”

[From officialgloriareuben.com; photo from "Lincoln"]

Being relatively free of disabling moods like high levels of depression and anxiety can enhance and release creative thinking, but a number of writers and psychologists think too much focus on the pursuit of happiness may be limiting how we develop creativity.

“I’m not crazy, I’ve just been in a very bad mood for 40 years.”

Ouiser Boudreaux (Shirley MacLaine), in Steel Magnolias (1989).

As Shirley MacLaine has also noted, “Art is about energy, positive and negative. All art has the power to heal because it helps us see who we are, and what we resist.”

“The only thing I could do was write. I used to crawl from the bedroom to the computer and just sit and write, and then I was alright, because I was not present. ‘Sense and Sensibility’ really saved me from going under, I think, in a very nasty way.”

Emma Thompson on her depression in the past.

From my post: Emma Thompson, depression, and Mental Health Awareness.

[Photo: Emma Thompson as Elinor Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility, 1995, for which she also wrote the screenplay.]

An article on the BP hope site (which “strives to increase the awareness of Bipolar Disorder), quotes a number of psychiatrists and experts, including Kiki D. Chang, MD, quoted in Part 1 of this article.