In her post “A Little Weird? Prone to Depression? Blame Your Creative Brain,” Susan Biali, M.D. writes about a friend of hers turning her on to “The Creative Brain” by psychiatrist and neuroscientist Nancy C. Andreasen.

Biali says, “If you’re a creative sort, this book will make you feel blissfully normal in your strangeness.

“It was pretty much one big sigh of happy relief and recognition for me.”

She goes on to include some of her favorite highlights of the book, with comments. Here are a few excerpts:

1) “We cannot afford to waste human gifts. We need to learn how to nurture the creative nature.”

Every parent needs to know this. Every person who has a talent that they long to play with and develop, but thinks it’s silly or a waste of time or too late, needs to understand how important this gift is and understand its worth in their very cells.

“Graduates from creative writing programs do not include insecurity, rejection and disappointment in their plans.” Dani Shapiro

“The feeling of frustration is an essential part of the creative process… Before we can find the answer — before we probably even know the question — we must be immersed in disappointment.” Johan Lehrer

We may get all enthused about a creative idea – a section of a novel or play, a dance routine, a concept for a photograph – but then we have to face the often frustrating challenges of making that idea real – while facing inner and outer hurdles.

The photo is Nicolas Cage as screenwriter Charlie Kaufman in ‘Adaptation’ (2002).

You can see a brief video clip from the movie in the article Why We Don’t Create, by coach and writer Cynthia Morris, who notes, “The original impulse of an idea is fun, energizing, exciting. The actual path to executing and completing that idea is fraught with our very human fears.”

Creativity coach Eric Maisel, PhD warns this is one of our challenges. He says, “Only a small percentage of creative people work as often or as deeply as, by all rights, they might be expected to work.

“What stops them? Anxiety or some face of anxiety like doubt, worry, or fear. Anxiety is the great silencer of the creative person.”

“To assume, then, that such diseases usually promote artistic talent wrongly reinforces simplistic notions of the ‘mad genius.’” Kay Redfield Jamison

In an interview for the NPR radio program Fresh Air with Terry Gross, science writer Jonah Lehrer commented, “One of the surprising things that’s emerged from the study of moods…is that putting [people] in a bad mood — making them a little bit sad or melancholy — comes with some cognitive benefits.

“So sadness, although it is not fun and is not pleasant, it does sharpen the mind a little bit.

“And one of the long-standing mysteries in the field of creativity is this correlation — and this was first identified by Kay Redfield Jamison and others — is people suffering from various kinds of depression and creative output.”

He continued, “People who are successful creators — especially writers — are anywhere between 8 and 40 times more likely to suffer from bipolar depression than the general public. And no one’s known what to make of this.”

[See Part One if you haven't read it already.]

Motherhood and creative work

“I’d be in the middle of a sentence and someone needed to go to mall for new shoes, so the sentence would be lost.”

That is a quote by Amy Bloom, who has worked as a psychotherapist, taught at Yale University, and is Wesleyan University’s Writer-in-Residence.

In an interview about being a mother and writer, she commented, “When I started, I wrote late at night, after they were in bed.

“I could do that and get away with it because I’m not much of a housekeeper and I didn’t need much sleep.

“I liked my kids and didn’t care much about my house, so it worked.”

“I want to do wardrobe. I want to do hair. I want to do makeup. I want to do writing. I want to do directing. And I want to do producing. I want to do all of it. I like it.“ Abigail Breslin

“I must have been crazy to have donned so many hats.” Jennifer Westfeldt

Many multitalented people feel inspired and energized to pursue multiple creative projects, often at the same time. One potential downside is physical and emotional burnout.

Abigail Breslin made her comment above at a younger age (she is now 15), and has acted in a number of films since “Signs” (2002), including “Little Miss Sunshine” (2006), and expresses the kind of polymath passion that many actors, writers and other creative people have.

Jennifer Westfeldt wrote, produced and acted in “Kissing Jessica Stein” and “Ira & Abby.” For her new movie “Friends With Kids,” she not only wrote the screenplay, acted and produced (along with other people, including her long time partner, actor Jon Hamm), she also directed the “two-year, round-the-clock endeavor” as a Los Angeles Times article describes it – not an uncommonly demanding schedule for movies.

“I must have been crazy to have donned so many hats,” Westfeldt said. “It made good sense for me to direct it, since I was involved in every aspect anyway. But I’m not sure I’d ever do it again.”

“I equated creativity with artists, innovators, entrepreneurs, designers, fashion… I was none of that – until I sunk into depression.”

Writer Enoch Li says she never thought she had any creative talent, but in dealing with depression “rediscovered my creativity, which spurred my recovery.”

From post on my Depression and Creativity site: Depressed Creativity.

Many of us have found that creative expression can help deal with depressive feelings.

But a number of writers and psychologists are questioning the validity of the long history of associating depression with creativity.

In her post Depression, Creativity, and a New Pair of Shoes, Shelley H. Carson, Ph.D. writes, “After reading a newspaper article about some of the current research linking depressive disorders to creativity, an artist friend of mine commented, ‘Well, I guess now all I have to do is get depressed and my work will improve.’

Novelist Taylor Stevens was born and raised in an infamous cult.

A New York Times article says, “Growing up, she bounced from city to city, often living in cramped and impoverished conditions, rarely spending more than a few months at a stretch at one of the cult’s dozens of communes around the world.”

The article notes her first novel The Informationist has “already secured gushy blurbs from brand-name thriller writers like Tess Gerritsen and Vince Flynn and the inevitable comparisons to Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy, which also features an offbeat, spunky heroine…”

[From An Unorthodox Life Yields a Novelist of Promise, By Christopher Kelly.]

[Also see a guest article on my High Ability site: 3 Things To Learn From The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – A Gifted Trauma Survivor, By Lisa Erickson, MS, LMHC.]

In another article, Stevens comments, “We never called it a cult when I was growing up. We were told that we were chosen by God to be special.”

“There were a lot of benefits to being dyslexic for me…I think I came into an appreciation of all those qualities of language…” Novelist Richard Ford

The traditional framing of ADHD, dyslexia and some other conditions as “learning disorders” seems to be increasingly challenged by the views of many researchers and artists that these can be considered “learning differences” and that such neurodiversity can actually benefit creative expression.

Of course, something like ADHD doesn’t magically become “good” or benign just having a different label, and many people’s lives are disrupted by such conditions.

An article on actor Charlize Theron, for example, said she “finds acting a struggle, because she suffers from chronic Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD)” and the symptoms of “distractibility, restlessness, inability to sit still and difficulty concentrating on one thing for any period of time make it much harder for her to concentrate on a movie project.

“She tells gossip site The Scoop, ‘I have ADD, so for me to go and really dedicate myself to something for a period of time, it’s very important for me to like it.’” [Daily Dish sfgate.com, Wednesday, January 5, 2005]

In her article The Creative Struggle, Julie Burstein writes about painter Chuck Close and his challenges.

There are many different flavors of video games – and many critical or conflicting studies on their psychological and social impacts. Articles on Psych Central, for example, include Brain Scans Show Violent Video Games Alter Brain Activity, By Rick Nauert PhD and Video Games May Not Enhance Cognitive Skills After All, By Traci Pedersen.

Gaming is not of any particular interest to me, but I was intrigued with a recent newspaper report about Erin Reynolds, a USC cinematic arts graduate student, and her team who are developing a video game that “uses heart-rate sensors to help players learn to stay calm as they wind their way through a decrepit house filled with their characters’ horrific memories.

“She believes her psychological thriller game, Nevermind, can help people develop ways to cope with stress.”

“I have always spent most of my time staring out the window, noting what is there, daydreaming, or brooding.”  Joyce Carol Oates

How do you use your time to encourage creative imagination and expression?

In her post If you don’t value your imaginative life, no one else will, author and writing teacher Lisa Rivero notes that some of how she uses her 24 hours each day “might look to the outside world like frivolous fun, downtime, anything but work: reading the writing of others, making notes for future projects, networking with other writers, staring out the window, taking a walk while listening to the latest New Yorker fiction podcast (something I highly recommend), even writing blog posts.”

She explains this is all “part of what Joyce Carol Oates calls the imaginative life” (from The Faith of a Writer: Life, Craft, Art):