Only a creative would click on this article and I think I’ll shock you with what you’ll find here.
Creativity or the creative process is the basis of theft.
Yes, that’s what you understand, stealing.
T. S. Eliot wrote: Immature poets imitate, mature poets steal, bad poets disfigure what they take away, good poets make it into something better or at least different. The good poet merges his theft in a sensitive universe that is unique, totally different from the one from which he was snatched.
Every creative process comes from the idea of someone else you’ve had contact with, you can’t create something that just popped into your head, everything is the result of what we see and hear, just so when the brain processes information it gives rise to something innovative and in this, I agree with T. S. Eliot.
When I was looking for ideas for writing or recording videos, composing a song or a poem I always had few results, but when I learned about the semantic panel, using references to have a starting point there I started to get more results and these references are ideas from other people.
‘‘Everything that needs to be said has already been saying. But since no one was listening, you have to say it all over again.’’
Andrew Gide.
We won’t invent anything else, everything we will invent will be based on what already exists, we’ll just give it a new identity, but this is also a bit relative as William Range Inge said: ‘‘What is originality? Plagiarism not detected’’
It is also in the Bible: ‘’What was will become again, what was made will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.’’
Ecclesiastes 1:9
When I refer to theft, like these authors, I mean that we need to be inspired with all our soul, what touches our soul leads us to recreate, give a new identity if you saw a great work you would say that the author was very original, but that’s because you don’t know where his inspiration came from if you knew where it comes from you wouldn’t say it’s very original.
As Jonathan Lethem stated that 9 out of 10 times that people consider something ‘‘original’’ they don’t know the source of the references in question.
That’s how the creative process works, or rather, that’s how creativity works.
‘‘All artists or creatives hear the question: Where are you going to get your ideas?
The honest artist or creative response: I steal them.’’
Austin Kleon.
I had to swallow this truth because creativity is a process without standards, a lot influences our creative process, read what Jim Jarmusch said:
‘‘Steal anything that resonates with inspiration or feeds your imagination. Devour old movies, recent movies, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, serendipity, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Steal only things that speak directly to your soul, if you do, your work (and theft) will be authentic.’’
I just wanted to use the phrases of these great authors and leave some reading recommendations in case you are interested in knowing more about how to improve your creativity.
Recommended books:
Lynda Barry, What it is
Hugh Macleod, Ignore everybody
Jason Fried + David Heinemeier Hansson, Rework: Change the way you work forever
Lewis Hude, The Gift
Jonathan Lethem, The Ecstasy of Influence
David Shields, Reality Hunger
Scott McCloud, Understanding comics
Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyl, Flow
Ed Emberley, Make a world
I hope it helped and I wish all writers and readers good writing and much success!
