Flow of Creativity

October 7th, 2007 Fred McVittie Posted in Boundary, Creativity, Liquid, Re-entry, Transformation |

It is widely understood that individual creative processes go through several stages. Activities which mark the early stages of a process are different to those which dominate later. It is further noted that the creative process is not linear, beginning with a particular problem or stimulus and working in an orderly fashion toward a final conclusion or response, but is chaotic and lacking clear boundaries. Inasmuch as there is an end to a creative process, perhaps in the revealing of a product of some kind, this end is likely also to be the beginning of others. Moreover, it is noted that the stages of a creative process tend not to be sequential and singular, but rather are multiple and cyclical. During any period of creative activity, the individual is typically working on different parts of the problem simultaneously, and the results of one activity tend to be recycled into other parts of the process. Also, these cycles within the creative process tend to occupy different scales, with some involving large formations of material undergoing massive transformations, whilst at the same time small problems are being creatively solved and tiny questions answered. We can visualise the creative process, then, as a tumble of circulating material and ideas, rather like the flowing of a river through rocks, with currents entering and re-entering the flow.