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?’

Psychologist Ted Zeff, among others, notes the personality trait of high sensitivity can be particularly challenging for men, especially in this culture.

But many boys and men find that creative expression is enhanced by the many positive qualities of the trait.

Writer and entrepreneur Peter Messerschmidt [aka 'Denmarkguy'], who – like myself – identifies as being highly sensitive, writes in one of his informative articles on the topic of highly sensitive men (HSM) and how much they “accept” or make use of this aspect of their personality.

He notes, “One group– typically the largest– display all the characteristics of high sensitivity, but forcefully deny and reject the possibility that they are ‘sensitive.’

This is a photo of Merrill Joan Gerber, a novelist and short story writer, who also teaches fiction writing at Caltech (the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California).

She is another artist featured in the documentary Lost in Living.

See Part 1 of this post for a trailer and more.

Director Mary Trunk comments on the site for the film that Gerber “had over 25 books published, was a former fellow of the Wallace Stegner Writing Workshop at Stanford and was contemplating giving it up altogether.

“Her children had been among her subjects and at times they felt that their privacy had been invaded. She was conflicted between her need to write and her desire to maintain relationships with her daughters.”

“If there is one word that makes creative people different from others, it is the word complexity. Instead of being an individual, they are a multitude.”

That is a quote by creativity researcher and author Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who describes a number of pairs of “paradoxical” traits exhibited by creative people, such as both convergent and divergent thinking; extroverted and introverted; humble and proud.

See my post The Complexity of the Creative Personality and my SlideShare presentation below.

In his book Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention he makes some interesting comments about evaluating artists using projective tests like the Rorschach (ink blot) or the Thematic Apperception Test.

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.”

“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.”

Ang Lee recently won his second Academy Award as best director for “Life of Pi” (his first was for “Brokeback Mountain”).

In an article on leadership, Susan Cain gives a number of examples of “effective Asian-American leaders” including Lee, and others: “novelist Chang Rae-Lee; fashion designer Vera Wang; New York Times literary critic Michiko Kakutani…the list goes on and on.”

From Are Asian-Americans Too Quiet to Lead U.S. Businesses?

One of the stars of “Life of Pi,” Adil Hussain, described how the Taiwanese filmmaker works.

He commented that Ang Lee is “so sensitive and the way he directs you is so silent. He’d whisper into your ear what he has to say.

Part of the widely-circulated comments by Pearl Buck (winner of a Nobel Prize in Literature in 1938) includes this: “The truly creative mind [feels] the overpowering necessity to create, create, create — so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, their very breath is cut off… By some strange, unknown, inward urgency they are not really alive unless they are creating.”

That “inward urgency” is a common quality of accomplished creative people.

Director Kathryn Bigelow wrote in praise of her lead actress Jessica Chastain in “Zero Dark Thirty” :

How does the intensity, complexity and “border-crossing” of creative people encourage being more creative?

Creative people often have personalities and inner experiences that are intense and beyond ordinary in multiple ways. [Read Part 1.]

Creativity author and teacher Ken Robinson thinks “To realize our true creative potential—in our organizations, in our schools and in our communities—we need to think differently about ourselves and to act differently towards each other. We must learn to be creative.”

[From post: Reclaiming Our Creativity – Part 2.]

One part of learning to be more creative is to encourage shifting between convergent and divergent thinking.

Creative people often have personalities and inner experiences that are intense and beyond ordinary in multiple ways.

“I’ve been accused of being ‘too much’ all my life. Too loud, too fast, too smart, too multi-talented, too audacious.”

Writing and creativity coach Cynthia Morris goes on to write, “I’ve never been able to live according to that external standard of ‘just right’…It’s the job of the artist and writer to reflect what they see and feel. This expression of their art and talents must be larger than life.”

From her article Creative People Shouldn’t ‘Tone It Down’ – where I also used this photo of Sarah Bernhardt (1844 – 1923), a French stage and film actress, who has been referred to as “the most famous actress the world has ever known.” [Wikipedia]

In a post on her Creative Synthesis blog, Lisa Rivero refers to the creative research and writing of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who “studied the lives of over 90 eminent creative producers and thinkers to learn what they had in common.”