Up until now, I’ve been encouraging you to explore because I think it’s absolutely vital if you wish to be more creative and lead a life of quiet inspiration. Exploration, if you haven’t noticed, occupies the lion’s share of these pages.
Things I’ve Asked You to Explore
So far, I’ve asked you to:
- get curious and ask lots of questions
- collect your thoughts and examine them
- do something daily (the practice of practicing)
- feed your muse a steady diet of tasty art, music, books, and new ideas
- get honest with yourself and be authentic
But What Are You to Make of All This?
And you’ve been kind enough to follow along. But now, you may be wondering when all this exploring is going to lead somewhere. What can you make of it? After all, creative people make things, don’t they?
It’s true. Exploration is vital, crucial, exciting, and fun, but it would seem futile if you never took the things you discovered and made something of them.
Yes, creative people make things, and that’s what this chapter’s about.
Finding Your Thing(s)
Of course, there’s an infinite number of things you could choose to make, and that’s the point of exploring. You’re sifting through the possibilities, searching for the ones that catch your eye, grab your heart, and beg you to make them real.
But once you find them, you have to do something with them.
“But oh,” you might say, “I don’t know how.”
And I would answer, “Of course you don’t. No one ever knows before they begin.”
Getting Things Started
I haven’t the time or the knowledge to teach you how to make everything you’re going to make. No one does. It’s yours to discover.
Of course, you’ll want to learn everything you can about the things you choose to create.
You’ll find people to talk to, books to read, videos to watch, and classes to take, but none of these things will completely prepare you for the act of creation. In the end, it’s still a learn-as-you-go process, so you have to go. You have to go make things. Your things.
Things We All Make
But please don’t feel you’re all alone.
However unique your choices may be, you still have much in common with all the others who have chosen to take this journey, because in order to make anything, there are six things we all have to make.
Yes, creative people make things.
1. They make decisions.
2. They make commitments.
3. They make attempts.
4. They make mistakes.
5. They make adjustments.
6. They make meaning.
And these are the things we’ll be looking at throughout the rest of this chapter. Together, I think we can make it.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
I LOVE creating…it’s the one thing I know for certain! It feeds my spirit and helps me keep my sanity…I don’t get nearly enough opportunity to do it and that’s why when I get offered projects to do, I can never say no! My only problem with that is that they always seem to come on top of one another…so then I have the problem of time working against me! Hence, having the trouble of keeping the balancing act going. I always seem to throw all kinds of other things in there too…then it tends to turn into chaos! I always seem to manage but there are times when it’s touch and go! I love reading your posts though, Ken…it gives me something to strive towards…which is, trying to get it right! I can really relate to that list though!
I believe that you can be creative no matter what you are doing. You are right that creative people MAKE things, they do not sit around and wait for something amazing to happen. They use their creativity in everything from writing articles or books to creatively organizing papers on the table. It does not matter what you are doing as long as you put your heart into it.
Thank you for this post Ken, it is a wonderful reminder of what creativity is all about.
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I think it is especially important for all creative folks to make messes, especially kids. It might be a physical mess to start a project, and it gets cleaned up later. It might be a mess of thoughts that gradually sort themselves out. But making a mess is vital!
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