Where does your creativity come from?

By the time I was old enough to have any idea what was going on around me, my older brother Brian was already very comitted to the dream of becoming a cartoonist for Marvel Comics. He drew his own comics, and made up his own superheroes, and had a whole circle of friends who were either in awe of his skills, or were competing with him to make better comics.

By the time I could hold a crayon and draw a crude spider man, the onus was upon me to invent my own characters and story lines.

More or less, I was raised in this very heady, competitive, creative environment. The neighborhood bullies for me were the older kids who'd come over and mercilessly criticize my drawings, my characters, my ideas. This carried on into the teen years when we were all striving to be rock stars. Writing was just another art-form I picked up along the way.

I've always been creative. I've wrote stories since I was in middle school. I'm in college now and just working on refining my craft now.

I'll give you the short answer. My creativity comes from throwing disparate ideas together and seeing what progeny comes of their unnatural union. Just call me Dr Frankenstein.

The voices. I would be ever so happy if they would just let me sleep.

I was a timid, bookish kid who read several books a week and won spelling bees. I filled dozens of sketch pads with drawings (mostly portraits) and, while studying in London, wrote multipage letters and decorated the envelopes with colored-pencil illustrations inspired by the contents of the letter.

At least until college, everyone considered me a strange aberration. I grew up in a agricultural community of 1500 people, where working the land and drinking corn whiskey constituted a good time.

My mother never went to college, but reads a book or so a day and completes New York Times crossword puzzles at the speed of light. My dad dropped out of high school, but eventually earned an AA and became a police chief. I got a master's degree in art history (well, critical art theory), my sister went to law school.

My family always encouraged my "artistic" interests. Nowadays, they always ask when I'm going to get a real job.

Rose

Well

Boredom

Boredom with society, work, education, the monotony of everything... It's refreshing to consider what could or couldn't be instead of what is.

I grew up in a house full of books. Almost every room in the house had about 10 book shelves, overflowing with books. We were all members of the local library and I would use both my parents' library tickets so that I could take about 12 books a week, instead of the 4 that I was supposed to be limited to. I started reading at the age of 3 and most nights would fall asleep under a pile of books - or, in later years, with a single book lying open on my face.

While neither of my parents were writers, they were both very artistic and creative. My father has a fine art degree and, although my mother didn't get a degree, she also took some classes at art college (where she met my father). They were both incredibly encouraging of any creativity, although they also made sure to provide me with practical skills as well. I learnt to touch-type at the age of seven, using a very clunky old typewriter; a skill which I have long been grateful for. My first computer was a ZX-81, at the age of eight, with which I created strange artistic programs and tried very hard to simulate AI (which basically involved my programming a bunch of rather banal responses to inputs such as 'Hello' and 'What's your name?', but which most of the time had to respond 'I'm sorry. I don't understand.').

I had an incredibly rich fantasy world, which I shared with my best friend. I even went as far as to invent a language for the people of this world (not a particularly interesting language, but it had grammar rules and stuff like that).

I always believed that my creativity was down to my upbringing and perhaps a bit of genetics. However, my husband had a very different (normal?) upbringing and has much more creativity (and talent, I believe) than I do. So, really, who knows where it comes from? I think that perhaps we all have it in us, it's just some of us use it and some don't.

My creative sense was first stimulated by reading some very fantastic novels and short stories by equally fantastic authors. I admired their communication skill in having all the elements of good writing converge and keep me entertained. Irony and humor are big on my list. I look for stylists, those who have a different way with words, but nothing too remote that it reads highbrow. I wish to be able to write like these authors and capture eager readers like they did with me. I guess I need to "impress" just a little bit--to make up for some slight feelings of inadaquacies (sp?)

Triceratops

While my mother never read, my grandmother has a love of books that was passed on to me at an early age. I had a very rocky relationship with my step father and was only able to get a positive remark from him when I wrote him letters, while he was out to sea. I wrote to him in a humorous tone that allowed me to make fun of him, without him understanding it for what it truly was. My mother showed one of the letters to my grandmother who remarked that I wrote just like Erma Bombeck. I picked up one of Erma's books and eventually devoured everything she wrote. I was a very shy child and teenager and preferred to blend into the background, except when I was receiving praise in my English class for my writing. When I write I become someone else. I am no longer afraid to show my emotion or make a fool of myself. I only want to be heard and understood. The freedom I feel is like flying.

I understand that my grandfather was a writer. He had several articles published, but didn't consider himself to be a professional writer.

I think my creativity comes from a combination of an inborn ability, the need to express myself in a safe manner and a true hunger for acceptance.

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or maybe it's just that I like my crayons

RGame said:

Is anyone else like me? My mother encouraged me to read (as most parents do), but my parents never actually wrote anything, and I don't think my father has ever even read a book. Same thing with one of my brothers. I certainly didn't inherit my desire to write, but it was there fairly early, off and on, starting around age eight or so. Is this the experience with most other people here or do you look at some family member and think you get your writing instinct from him or her?

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You might be surprised how creativity manifests itself in your parents. My father is a musician. He could also have been an architect had he finished school and gone to college. He finished the 9th grade. My mother could have designed for Vogue or been a reknowned chef. My grandmother was a quilter. She could make some fantastic quilts which usually sold for hundreds of dollars each.

I'm really a shy person so any small bit of creativity I have comes through less public public pursuits. I paint a bit, work with computer graphics, and write. Once done, I don't have to show anything to anybody unless I want to. As a very young child, I was also mischief prone and liked to tinker with things... well, this continued until I learned that some things I couldn't fix back and managed some self control over of always wanting to take things apart... My mother, in self and household defense, taught me how to read and write by age 3. It did help to some extent... for a few hours a days, she got some peace. I was reading Greek Mythology and Shakespeare by age 7. A love of books and writing were ingrained from a very early age. I grew up in a very isolated rural community. No one in my family really encouraged or valued creativity. It was just there as something to pass time if there was time left over from the day's chores... There was very little television although we had one... some days we had reception; some days we didn't.

So, where does creativity come from? From places where you least expect it because it is an underated, undervalued talent.

Shhhh... that's my secret. The Mothership won't like it if I tell.

Hush now.

I think my creativity stems from the fact that I've always had a slightly askew view of things.

Loathing of cleaning up my own brain after my head explodes because I didn't tell the story that the voices want me to.

Seriously: The stories are in my head and have been all my life. I used to pain and draw, I used to play keyboard and violin. I used to do all sorts of arts and crafts stuff--from my own designs. Now, I put most of it into my writing.

My dad did bead work, as a child I didn't realize how wonderful his work was. My mom did needle work and knitting. Genetics, I am sure, play a role.

But the main source of why I write, where it comes from, is to honestly--shut the dang characters up!

Shawn

I come from a very musical family but I never had the patience to learn an instrument like my siblings did. So, I wrote. Words are my music.

'What if...'

These are my two favourite words in the English language. I sorta let them lead me.

Oh and the drugs, they help too.

Mike

You might be surprised how creativity manifests itself in your parents.

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This is so true.

There were always books in our house and my brother and I were never told we were too young to read anything. Everyone in the house had the habit of just picking up whatever book someone else had left lying around.

Officially, I'm the only creative type in the family, but last fall I was traveling and my mother came into my house to take care of my cat. When I came home, there was a page and a half letter on the table from my cat (in my mother's handwriting, of course -- I guess he dictated it) letting me know everything that had happened around the house while I was gone. It was one of the funniest things I'd read in a long time. Thinking back, my mother was always writing notes and coming up with scenarios like that.

I don't know where I got my creativity from. I guess it could be from reading so many books over the past few years. I started reading when I was a small kid, and my mother encouraged me to do so. She bought me books all the time, and now she can get them at reduced prices because she works at a HarperCollins book factory. Yeah, I think I get my creativity from reading other books. My parents are in no way creative.

I've just always loved stories, really. I think this whole writing thing is just one big addiction to narrative.

Bring it on...

Where my creativity comes from and what influence my family has had are two different things

My creativity comes from my early childhood and asking one simple question "what next?" I had Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory read to me, and I said "that's good, what happened after that?" I couldn't find out (I didn't realise there was a sequel until later ) so I began a sequel I never finished. But I wrote 1 page with a picture and intended to finish it. I discovered that books often don't cover "What next?" so I began to daydream my own situations, but I didn't limit myself to books I'd read, I made up my own, just like the stories I read and tv shows I watched.

Sometimes I'd try to put it to paper, other times I'd act it out, other times I'd just think it up, entertain myself before forgetting it.

Now I seive everything I read and ask "could this be used for a story idea? Could this be used in an existing idea?" One example is I wanted to write a sci-fi/mystery set on a space-station orbiting Jupiter. But I couldn't think of a plot, only that I wanted to set it there. Possibly involving a son. Eventually I remembered about Europa and Io. Europa could be used to get water while Io could be harnessed to get thermal energy or something like that (still need to read a bit more). Eventually I remembered there's an asteroid belt in our solar system, so Jupiter station could be a pit-stop for miners working in the belt. I read this article today from slashdot (which I visit daily). I saw a mention of Europa possibly having the life in it. I did a yahoo search while wikipedia was loading (it was running extremely slow) and saw an article on why Europa is the most likely place to have life outside of Earth. I saw Callisto (another Jupiter moon) has a liquid salt sea, but I saw that it's unlikely to have life. I read a wikipedia article and it mentioned something was crashed into Jupiter because there was fear as it's orbit decayed it would crash into Europa, so we'd never know if life on Europa was from Earth. And then I thought "hang on, what if my story idea has Jupiter station getting water from Callisto, and have Europa be preserved?" Later I was thinking in an imaginary conversation how I don't consider myself an Australian (completely unrelated to my story), I considered myself an Earthling. Then I thought well if we ever live outside such as on Mars I'd have to consider myself a citizen of Sol. I laughed as I realised that sounded like some crazy cult. I then thought back to my story idea and went "hey! What if there is such a terrorist organization/cult that wants to gain access to Europa, so it crashes Jupiter station into Europa, thus contaminating it? The cult's motivation would be to scour for life that may be a threat to Earth and neutralise it."

So for an idea that I've got in my head, it started out as "Something involving Jupiter station" to several weeks later an entire plot involving politics, extra-terrestial life and family relationships. And I'm working on a completely different short story before I even begin it (I also have many other ideas ).

The benefit to putting everything through my mental seive, is I'm finding a lot of information that justifies what I've decided for stories. For instance I wanted to have mars begun to be colonised, but have some of the colonists suffer from mutations. I decided why that was the case wasn't important, that isn't a focus of the story. I read today that Mars doesn't have a magentic-sphere (or something like that) in it's atmosphere, making Mars very prone to solar radiation. I fit it into my story, that's what causes the mutations. Is it important to the reader? No. Is it important to me? Yes, it makes the story more beleivable for me.

As for family influences, I could say my Dad wrote short stories for us kids that he read to us. But I believe creativity is a non-physical attribute and therefore isn't passed down from parent to child. I could say my Dad's a naturally great drawer, but I'm a pathetic one. I also am not naturally a writer, I work at my stories I'm good at creating ideas, putting it to paper in an enjoyable format takes work for me though.

No my parents encouraged it by reading a Roald Dahl book to me when I was 8 (Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory). I loved it and having more of his books read to me. My parents got sick of it so I began reading books myself. My Dad recommended other authors to me, and I continued to expand from fantasy eventually to sci-fi. I enjoyed it a lot, it's only natural for me to want to create my own

I was an only child, and we moved from state to state every 3 years or so. I spent a lot of time alone in my own head, and eventually, it had to come out somewhere. I read a lot a child. Going to seven different schools gives you a lot of character bits to distort into fiction. And I have warped family members. That helps. But don't tell them that!

I've often wondered this. I had a horrible time learning to read as a child. I was always in the lowest reading book and struggling to do that. Then in 9th grade I did a creative writing assignment. When the teacher handed it back she said, "You like to write don't you?" I thought about it and I did. I was teased mercilessly by my brother for writing. He would secretly read my stuff then tease me about it.

I do wonder where it came from. My parent don't really read. As far as I know my siblings don't read often. My brother is a commercial artist, so there must be that gene somewhere. My dad's family has a lot of "forced" musicians (meaning my grandfather made them all take lessons). I know that's where I get the musical ability from. I've always picked up different instruments very easily. ANd I have a cousin who is a newpaper reporter. He's the favorite, so I know anything I manage to get published will never be as "good" as his work.

I've noticed that the majority of writers here didn't grow up in a house full of bookworms. My mom is a casual reader and I can't recall my dad ever reading anything but the local newspaper. Neither of my sisters are heavy readers either. So, where does it come from?

I don't feel that avid reading/writing is learned as much as it's a passion. True, all writers had to learn the basic tools of the craft and we have to continue education. But, writers are driven to create "the perfect story". The drive stems from passion, which cannot be learned.