What writers & others say
“Creativity is an import-export game. It is not a creation game.”
— Ronald S. Burt, sociologist, University of Chicago
“Creative people have to be fed from the divine source. I have to get fed. I had to get filled up in order to pour out.”
— Johnny Cash, American singer and songwriter
“The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.”
— Albert Einstein, German theoretical physicist regarded as the greatest scientist of the 20th century
“An idea is a feat of association.”
— Robert Frost, poet
“Art is either plagiarism or revolution.”
— Paul Gauguin, post-Impressionist painter
“Apply the seat of your pants to the seat of the chair.”
— Ernest Hemingway, Nobel Prize-winning author
Avoid “creative incest. As with actual incest, the product of creative incest just keeps getting dumber and dumber and dumber with each generation.”
— Dan S. Kennedy, author of seven “No B.S.” marketing books
“There is a muse, but he’s not going to come fluttering down into your writing room and scatter creative fairy-dust all over your typewriter or computer station. He lives in the ground. He’s a basement guy. You have to descend to his level, and once you get down there, you have to furnish an apartment for him to live in. You have to do all the grunt labor, in other words, while the muse sits and smokes cigars and admires his bowling trophies and pretends to ignore you.”
— Stephen King, prolific author of mostly horror novels, in On Writing
“You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.”
— Jack London, author, oyster pirate, deep-sea sailor, hobo and Alaskan prospector
“I don’t sit at my desk because I have an idea, but in case I do.”
— Flannery O’Connor, Southern Gothic novelist
“Creativity — the power to connect the seemingly unconnected.”
— William Plomer, South African author
“Innovation most of the time is simply taking A, B, C, and D, which already exist, and putting them together in a form called E.”
— Wolfgang Schmitt, chairman, Rubbermaid Corp.
“All the really good ideas I ever had came to me while I was milking a cow.”
— Grant Wood, American painter best known for “American Gothic”
“Work your day around the creative process, don’t work the creative process around your day.”
— Ann Wylie, writing coach, Wylie Communications
“Every really good creative person … has always had two noticeable characteristics. First, there was no subject under the sun in which he could not easily get interested — from, say, Egyptian burial customs to modern art. Every facet of life had fascination for him. Second, he was an extensive browser in all sorts of fields of information.”
— James Webb Young, 1930s advertising executive, in A Technique for Producing Ideas
“It is with the advertising man as with the cow: no browsing, no milk.”
— James Webb Young, 1930s advertising executive, in A Technique for Producing Ideas
“The cold, gray dawn of the morning after.”
— James Webb Young, a pre-Mad Men-era ad executive, in A Technique for Producing Ideas
“The production of ideas is just as definite a process as the production of Fords. The production of ideas, too, runs on an assembly line; that in this production the mind follows an operative technique which can be learned and controlled; and that its effective use is just as much a matter of practice in the technique as is the effective use of any tool.”
— James Webb Young, a pre-Mad Men-era ad executive, in A Technique for Producing Ideas
Master the magic of the creative process
Have you ever come up with a brilliant idea — on the way home from the brainstorming meeting?
Developed a creative theme for the annual report while pulling weeds? Written the perfect headline in the shower?
If so, you’ve tapped into the wonderful and productive world of the creative process.
Now you can learn to access this superpower every single day at our Write Better, Easier & Faster — our writing-process workshops.
There, you’ll learn to come up with brilliant solutions to communication problems and overcome writer’s block and procrastination by working with — not against — your brain.
