Sage Bray Varon

When was the last time you planned an excursion specifically to fill your creative well? It’s true that we can, and often do, find ideas and inspiration in our everyday life—while walking the dog, running errands, talking to friends, or just glancing out a window. Ideas are everywhere. However, we are often blind to the possibilities in everyday occurrences and probably run around on automatic, not even noticing all the crazy, amazing, awe-inspiring, things around us. We need to get away from the everyday to see things clearly.

The familiarity of our everyday life tends to turn us inward—being we know what to expect in our outside and routine world—where we worry about the bills that need to get paid, what needs to get fixed on the house, or how to deal with the frustrating people in our lives. Those things don’t make us overly creative. So, what does?

You may have heard the scientifically established statement that the brain craves novelty. In general, humans like new and exciting things and go in search of them. Did you also know that your creativity is a major consumer of that novelty? Novelty is one of the primary fuels for creativity as it encourages what is known as divergent thinking—that form of problem solving that produces original, unusual, or surprising ideas. Sounds like important stuff for us creatives, right? It is, and yet, we often deny our creativity the kind of novelty it really needs.

The truth is we tend to move towards the type of novelty we find passive and entertaining rather than doing something active that will grow or feed our creativity because, well, creating and looking for inspiration takes work. So, we might choose a TV show instead of writing or attending a writer’s group. Or we go down a rabbit hole with social media instead of sketching or taking a hike.

When we do this, we essentially choose the novelty of someone else’s creativity over cultivating our own creativity.  This is not to say that ideas don’t come from watching a show or reading an interesting social media post. They certainly do. But ask yourself … would you expect to feel more inspired by a show or by a discussion with other creatives?  By a post online or a hike out in nature? If you know you get more charged by the active options, then be sure they are a priority in your creative life.

Right now, I am immersed in novelty. I am out in Utah exploring the amazing natural places out here. I hiked through surreal landscapes of figure-like hoodoos, pure white monoliths, and red plateaus. I waded 4 miles down a river while canyon walls grew ever taller and closer around me. I hiked a gorge to a sheer overlook accompanied by deer, bluebirds, and a rarely seen herd of big horn sheep.

Do you know what happened after each of those excursions? My brain went nuts with ideas. I wrote a prose poem for the first time in forever, came up with ideas for a mixed media wall piece, and outlined most of a new short story just today!

All this novelty put my brain into a very creative mode largely because it was getting so much new input. Plus, all the time away from digital devices and the many forms of entertainment they entice us with didn’t hurt either! I was actively out in the world doing things while my brain processed it all. And the deluge of ideas was the result.

And now I can’t wait to get home to get to work! That’s the other thing novelty does for you … it provides motivation and energizes you nothing else can.

You can’t create in a vacuum. You also can’t create unique work born of your own distinctive voice by just looking at things online. You know this, right? So, get out there. What “out there” means will be different for each of creative, but you probably already know what places, people, and experiences get your juices flowing. The question is, have you made those novel experiences a priority in your creative life?

I apologize now for any missed typos or odd sentences. I’ve only had the time to proof this once so forgive me if it’s a tad shoddy. I’ll be back and on my regular routine next weekend although I may very well be planning my next outing. This novelty thing can be a bit addictive but in a good way.

 

Photo by Sage Bray Varon