Whenever I get into a conversation about writing inevitably someone asks where my ideas come from. I think any person who shares their creative work with the world, whether famous or not, hears this question at some point. Often the questioner follows with a lament that they wish they could write, play piano, paint or whatever but they weren’t born with the creative gene. “I’m just not a creative person,” they say. It’s as if they believe that people who exercise their creativity are blessed with some sort of muse that is the source of their inspiration.
I believe in muses as much as the next writer. My muse likes to come with inspiration at 3 a.m. or in the shower. Some muses come when riding a horse or walking in nature. And, yes, it’s true that those moments of inspiration are magical, but the truth is you don’t need a muse to come up with ideas. In fact, the notion of a muse can be an easy cop out for people to shy away from unlocking the creative energy that lies inside each of us.
This muse concept is consistent with a troubling tendency in our society to treat creativity as some sort of mystical gift that only the lucky few possess. But that’s not true. All of us have it in us, we just need to be willing to put in the effort. Yes, there are lightning bolts of inspiration, but those are few and far between. If the people who produced the art we enjoy waited for those moments the world would be filled with much less creativity.
So where do ideas come from? They’re all around us, everywhere you look. Open a book, scan the headlines, talk a walk downtown, surf the web, go to a museum. You can’t miss them. In fact, I will go one step further, the truth is that there really aren’t any new ideas. Nothing is truly original. All art is a synthesis of what came before; mashed up, combined and re-expressed uniquely by a new artist.
Every artist takes from another. They freely admit it.
Check out Ed Sheehan’s interview with Howard Stern where he demonstrates with his guitar how many legendary songs come from the same 3 chord combination.
Ed Sheehan isn’t the only one.
Picasso: “Good artists borrow. Great artists steal.”
Mark Twain: “It is better to take what does not belong to you than let it lie around neglected.”
Kobe Bryant: “I have stolen all these moves from all these great players.”
To be clear, my intent is not to promote plagiarism. I’m not talking about stealing in the literal sense. And neither are any of the people above. What they are saying is being creative is about embracing and understanding the sources of inspiration right in front of us. What creative people do is learn from the work they admire and the people who inspire them. They follow a path from imitation to inspiration, taking the work they enjoy and reinventing it as their own.
How did Stephen King get inspired to write horror stories? By reading them and then imitating them.
How did Taylor Swift get inspired to start making music? By listening to music and imitating her favorite artists.
Once we understand that nothing comes wholly out of nowhere, we see that creativity isn’t some mystical gift for the few, but something all of us can learn. And that’s the key, we must be willing to learn. The reason why kids are so inherently creative is because they have no problem accepting that they are beginners. Kids have no ego to protect. The hardest part about starting a creative pursuit as an adult is that the older we get the harder it gets to accept not being good at something.
To be clear, I’m not suggesting that there aren’t some people who are better at it then others. As a beginner fiction writer I’m astounded by the work of some authors. Also, I’ve been fortunate in my professional career as a marketer to work closely with some exceptionally gifted creative people. It’s true in any walk of life – natural gifts aren’t distributed equally.
I play a lot of golf and I know I’ll never approach the skill level of Tiger Woods. But if I used that as an excuse to never play, I would rob myself of so many great experiences. The same is true for creative pursuits. We should never let our fear of failure, or not being very good initially, to be an excuse to not try something new.
There’s one more thing all creative people do that those who wish they were creative don’t – they work at their craft consistently. As Stephen Pressfield wrote, the difference between an amateur and professional is the latter shows up every day to do the work, even if they don’t feel like it. No different from how those of us with “regular” jobs operate. What I’ve learned from creative people is the more time you put into doing the work the more ideas you will have.
If you walk away from this post with just one thing, let it be that you should never, ever accept that you aren’t a creative person. You are. You can do it. There’s a well-worn path for you to follow, blazed by the artists you admire. And if you are willing to have a beginner’s mentality and put in the work, the muse you thought didn’t exist will show up when you least expect it.