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Creativity Prompts Compendium

Noche de luna llena - Full moon night, by Flowery *L*u*z*a*

What makes you feel so creatively inspired that you automatically take action? Powerful inspiration propels us through and beyond wonder, to the place where we must make the vision manifest now. Carefully chosen for their strength and staying power, this growing collection of creativity prompts is on a mission to fire you up with electric joy-juice, open your circuits, and spark your genius to light.

Explore the art-focused prompts even if you’re not an artist. They provide encouragement for any creative situation. Whether you’re painting, designing a marketing plan, writing poetry, planning your child’s birthday party, or making changes in a relationship, the tools here can help you find the light switch.

Please check back often for updates and additions to the list. What’s here now is only the beginning.

POSTS FROM HIGHLY SENSITIVE POWER

The topic of creativity threads through many of the articles posted on this website – particularly these:

BOOKS

It’s Not How Good You Are, Its How Good You Want to Be, by Paul Arden. This is Paul Arden, as described by Robert Kennedy of Saatchi & Saatchi, the advertising firm Arden founded: “Brilliant, bad, charming, irascible and totally off the wall. An original with extraordinary drive and energy, blessed with a creative genius allied to a kind of common sese that just isn’t, well, common.” Arden’s book presents spare thoughts in visually interesting ways – thoughts about standing out in a crowd, wooing creativity, and being as great as you want to be.

“You can achieve the unachievable. Firstly you need to aim beyond what you are capable of. You must develop a complete disregard for where your abilities end. Try to do the things that you’re incapable of.”
~ Paul Arden

“The most popular conception of creativity is that it’s something to do with the arts. Nonsense. Creativity is imagination, and imagination is for everyone.”
~ Paul Arden

Art & Fear: Observations On the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking, by David Bayles and Ted Orland. Bayles and Orland’s great pep talk addresses the roots of creative fear, dismantling the prison piece by piece through the force of their reasoning and experience.

“To require perfection is to invite paralysis.”
~ David Bayles and Ted Orland

“The function of the overwhelming majority of your artwork is simply to teach you how to make the small fraction of your artwork that soars.”
~ David Bayles and Ted Orland

The Creative License: Giving Yourself Permission to Be The Artist You Truly Are, by Danny Gregory. Danny Gregory is one of the best missionaries for creativity I know. His own medium is drawing, but his message is creativity in general, offered with conviction and inspiration.

“I want to help you re-engage with your life and your dream. I want to show you that it is possible. … This has nothing to do with how much money you have or how much time. It has nothing to do with what you’ve done in the past or what people tell you that you can do or with how you make a living or where you live or any of that.”
~ Danny Gregory

Jump Start Your Brain: How Everyone at Every Age Can Be Smarter and More Creative, by Doug Hall. The sheer quantity of propelling ideas in this book make it an encyclopedia of creativity prompts. Hall’s puppy-like enthusiasm for romping with creativity comes through loud and clear in every suggestion. Ignore the exclamation points and silly graphics if you like, but don’t miss out on the bountiful wisdom offered by this exuberant and successful creator.

“Take back control of your imagination. The key to achieving a childlike state of mind is to engage in childish behaviour.”
~ Doug Hall

“There’s no way around it. You absolutely must have fun. Without fun, there’s no enthusiasm. Without enthusiasm, there’s no energy. Without energy, there are only shades of gray.”
~ Doug Hall

“The more ideas you generate, the more good ideas you’ll have. And your good ideas will be of a higher caliber. Quantity is the shortest possible distance to quality.”
~ Doug Hall

Living Out Loud: Activities to Fuel a Creative Life, by Keri Smith. Don’t let the small size of this book fool you. It’s packed with enough well-explained, lifting ideas for engaging creativity to last for months. The provocative ideas in this book make me feel like a kid set free to play – eager and ready to roll.

“We are all collectors at heart. Creating a Box of Secrets gives you the chance to explore and to research things that will help you see the big picture when you need perspective.”
~ Keri Smith

“Adopt a rest ethic (instead of a work ethic). Make rest a daily priority.”
~ Keri Smith

Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool’s Guide to Surviving with Grace, by Gordon MacKenzie. Gordon MacKenzie may have spent the bulk of his creative career ensconced within the corporate world of Hallmark Cards, but don’t let that put you off. What he has to teach about creativity crosses all boundaries. This beautiful and artfully designed little book bristles with accessible, high-quality encouragement. (See the Highly Sensitive Power book review.)

“Why would anyone want to suppress genius? Well, it is not intentional. It is not a plot. Genius is an innocent casualty in society’s efforts to train children away from natural-born foolishness.”
~ Gordon MacKenzie

“Orville Wright did not have a pilot’s license.”
~ Gordon MacKenzie

VIDEOS

Elizabeth Gilbert: A Different Way to Think About Creative Genius – Gilbert, the author of the runaway best-seller Eat, Pray, Love speaks eloquently and compellingly about nurturing creativity in this 18-minute talk she gave in February 2009 at one of the marvelous TED conferences. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. From their website: “The annual conference now brings together the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes).” On the TED website there are many videos of these short talks given by inspiring people.

WEBSITES AND ONLINE TOOLS

Bruce Mau’s Incomplete Manifesto for Growth – Designer extraordinaire Bruce Mau lists more than 40 “beliefs, strategies, and motivations” that he and his design team use when creating.

The Directors Bureau’s Special Projects Idea Generator – For thought-provoking prompts made of random combinations of words, click on the center button of this Idea Generator.

OH Cards – These cards of association provide inspiration by engaging the many levels of the mind, conscious and subconscious, in response to images. Each of the more than a dozen decks in the OH Card collection focuses on a theme, from the mythic images of the Saga and Mythos decks to the mind-bendingly whacky collage images of the Lydia Jakob Story deck and the excerpts of paintings in the Hieronymus Bosch deck. Flip a card over and let the associations swirl inspiration and information up from the depths.

Oblique Strategies – Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt created the Oblique Strategies cards in 1975 to give their creative endeavours a nudge when needed, to remind them of what’s important in the creative process. According to the introduction on Gregory Taylor’s comprehensive Oblique Strategies site, Eno and Schmidt “tended to keep a set of basic working principles which guided them through … moments of pressure.” You can explore cards in the various editions of the deck through this clickable interface for the Oblique Strategies versions. Also, Brian Eno’s website page about the cards (scroll down to see the page in the left sidebar) includes an Oblique Strategies Chooser, which presents the individual Strategies.

Shalu Wasu’s 16 Habits of Highly Creative People – Shalu Wasu’s article on Tickled by Life delivers a crucial encouragement in the introduction to the article: “Everyone is born creative. In the process of growing up, educating yourself and adapting yourself to your environment, you slowly add blocks to your creativity and forget that you had it in the first place. The difference between a creative person and a person who is not so creative is not in the creativity that they were born with but in the creativity that they have lost.” The 16 habits that follow offer guidelines for opening toward the creativity you were born with.

Developing Talent – Developing Talent is a section of Talent Development Resources – Douglas Eby’s vast and interesting network of websites – which focuses on providing “information and inspiration to enhance personal growth and creative expression.” The accessible, friendly tone of the site, combined with an apparently endless array of helpful resources, makes finding something helpful to the creative process more than merely likely. See also Highly Sensitive Power’s review of Talent Development Resources.

QUOTES

“A person might be able to play without being creative, but sure can’t be creative without playing.”
~ Kurt Hanks and Jay Parry
“I like to turn the problem inside out by asking myself seemingly irrelevant questions. For example: What if this were a place? What if it happened on the moon? What if they named a street after it? What if it had no top? These ‘what ifs’ get me going. It’s sort of like playing your own private party game.”
~ Liz Nickles

“Mostly I just followed my inner feelings and passions … and kept going to where it got warmer and warmer, until it finally got hot. … Everybody has talent. It’s just a matter of moving around until you’ve discovered what it is.”
~ George Lucas

“We may think we’re protecting ourselves by denying our creative impulses, but all we’re doing is burying our authentic selves alive.”
~ Sarah Ban Breathnach

“The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.”
~ Linus Pauling

“Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.”
~ Scott Adams

“Originality does not consist in saying what no one has ever said before, but in saying exactly what you think yourself.”
~ James Stephens

“Whether we are poets or parents or teachers or artists or gardeners, we must start where we are and use what we have. In the process of creation and relationship, what seems mundane and trivial may show itself to be a holy, precious, part of a pattern.”
~ Luci Shaw

“The creative is the place where no one else has ever been. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you’ll discover will be wonderful. What you’ll discover is yourself.”
~ Alan Alda

“Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.”
~ Erich Fromm

Flickr photo: Noche de luna llena – Full moon night, by Flowery *L*u*z*a*.