Creativity

5 things you can do today to motivate your creativity

As the days grow darker and colder, my creativity and motivation just want to hibernate like a pair of grumpy bears. Even the most creative, motivated, enthusiastic people have those times when their creativity is not exactly fired up. It can be because of the weather, it can be due to depression and stress or other health issues, it can be because of failures or even successes you are facing, or for reasons you cannot quite explain. While I believe productivity is overrated and you don't have to be constantly creating stuff (I mean, that's not even sustainable), I know being creatively stuc...

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Practise imagination to boost your creativity

At my home, and the first six years at school, I was truly encouraged to creativity. I could access drawing tools, such as coloured pencils and basic watercolours, I had empty notebooks for writing and reading books was a big thing. All that raised me to be an imaginative and creative person, who keeps utilising her imagination throughout adulthood. It may be true that some people are more inclined for creativity, more equipped to have a vivid imagination. Perhaps their brains just work that way. However, I believe that creativity is something you can, and perhaps need to, train. As you ca...

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Why I write

I have an urge to write. I just can't stop writing. If I'm not writing words on a device or a paper, I'm writing in my head. Not all the time but often, very often. After blogging about the lifestyle of lifestyle blogging I've been thinking more about my urge to write. Wild things happen in your brain when you write. That is, when you do creative writing, rather than just copying words and sentences. Blogging included, of course. For those who are still wondering if blogging is worth it, I can give a whole bunch of reasons. Reasons such as marketing by blogging. Getting your services an...

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Too many words

It looked promising. A little interior and decoration shop, nothing too fancy, perhaps not too expensive either. I walked in and saw it. Jars and bottles with words on them, yelling at me what I should put in them. Sugar, salt, pasta, flour. No creative usage of this container, please. Don't make a mistake of using it for something else. Other items had text on them too. Little "funny" things, or some uplifting piece. Words all over the place. I looked around, tried to find the wordless things, and gave up. We, the humans, are slapping text on everything. More obvious targets are t-shirts...

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Pleasurable proficiency

A young woman carefully adds thin sheets of gold onto something. In the background you can hear floaty and jubilant piano music. The young woman tells about learning her profession, watching the masters in their work, and wishing to be some day one of them. In the end she gets that something done. It's an onion dome of a church, golden and shiny. A Finnish coffee brand has been advertising with this sort of commercial short movies, which showcase craftsmanship, since before I was born. In these ads, professionals of different fields are shown to make anything from a skateboard to jewellery, fr...

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Creative processes

My creative process usually includes lots of thinking and procrastinating. I create, especially at first, with my mind. I imagine the drawing or the blog post, or perhaps the website before anything. For example I "wrote" this article in my head before the actual writing process. In the same way I imagine my drawings before I actualise them. If I instead get straight to the creation, take the piece of paper and a pencil to draw, or sit down with my laptop, I end up staring at the empty paper or the screen mindlessly. When I am creating I also take breaks. I may step away from the writing or th...

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Defining creativity

Creativity has many meanings, depending on who you ask. In the more strict definition creativity is forming something new or original, which has value. That something can be abstract, as an idea, or a physical object, such as a book. Wider definitions include using imagination for creating, or transforming traditional ideas and creations to unconventional ideas and creations. In Finnish the word for creativity is luovuus, which in its spirit is rather poetic. Though these two words basically mean the same, and even have the same biblical linkage, they have a slight tonal difference. Whil...

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