Creativity is the art of doing

In the first in a series of interviews with inspiring people, Virginia Winder meets an exponent of creativity.

Being creative means taking action, says New Plymouth artist and musician Wayne Morris.

“I could have bits of ideas but if I don’t do anything with them I have no creativity.”

Wayne Morris: Everybody as the potential to be creative.

Wayne, who has been a keynote speaker at creativity conferences around the world, says that first of all comes imagination, then creativity, followed by innovation.

“Imagination is the ability to conceive of what is not,” he says. “Creativity is applying that and innovation is novel and useful creativity that generates value.”

Just what creativity can be is wide – it can involve everything from making a garden or art piece to making a life.

“The process of being creative is the same for a painting and for a life,” he says. “If I’m going to be creative, I have to get it out into the world somewhere.”

There is a myth that creativity hits only some people at certain times like a bolt of lightning or when the muse comes a-calling. 

Wayne believes it’s learnable, achievable and not a mystery.

“Sometimes you have to start working and the muse hits. It’s getting involved. If you wait for a muse it may never arrive. Sometimes you have to start writing or painting or gardening…”

Creativity is the art of doing.

“It’s like having an itch. You are not sure what it’s about, but you scratch it and you’re not sure where it’s going to go.”

But what do creative people actually do? “They make stuff up. You become more creative by becoming more creative. Heavily creative people have to be creative – it’s not about choice.”

The quickest way to become creative is hanging around with creative people, Wayne says.

Highly creative people also have habits that less creative people don’t.

A sheet from an international conference written by Wayne lists these as: Open, collect, challenge, explore, surround, seclude, play and make.

There are also a great deal of opposites in the creative character, as written by Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi, in the book Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery of Invention.

These are:

1. Has a great deal of physical energy AND is also quiet and often at rest.
2. Tend to be smart AND naïve at the same time.
3. Playful AND disciplined.
4. Alternates between imagination and fantasy AND a rooted sense of reality.
5. Extroverted AND introverted.
6. Humble AND proud.
7. Psychologically androgynous – strengths of own gender and those of other.
8. Rebellious and independent AND traditional and conservative.
9. Passionate AND objective.
10. Openness and sensitivity exposes them to suffering and pain AND a great deal of enjoyment.

“I believe everybody has the potential to be creative,” Wayne says.

For those folk who are already creative, it’s who they are and what they do. “It took me a long time to get that.”

Those highly creative bods are a little bit different, or feel that they are. 

“Creative people often spend a whole bunch of time alone.”

And highly creative people work – hard. 

“The biggest difference between you and Picasso (pictured) or Einstein or whoever your heroes are is that they out work you. They spend more time in front of a canvas, or guitar or computer, working away at applying their minds and souls to specific things,” writes author Scott Berkun.

So, to be a creative person, you need to get going in an area you care about and put in the time and effort, says Wayne, who organised the first NZ Creative Challenge conference, held in New Plymouth in April 2013.

Pick up that pen, pencil, paintbrush, guitar, trowel or spatula – the time is now.