When I do author events one of the most common questions I get is: “Where do you get your story ideas? I wish I could be more creative.” It’s a good question. To help answer it, I recommend looking at a great book called, The Path of Least Resistance, by Robert Fritz. It’s about creative people—not just writers. He makes several suggestions:
1. Most of us are “problem solvers.” In our personal life, family, and jobs we must constantly solve problems. People who are good at solving complex problems are rewarded and can make lots of money. That’s great, but Fritz reminds us that this is never ending—we always have more problems on Monday morning. And it’s essentially a negative process. He means that our efforts are always to “get rid of something”—rather than building something new.
2. To be creative means to put problems aside and build something. In my case, that means writing a book. But it can also mean building a sales campaign, designing a program, creating a healthy life style, or creating healthy relationships. Fritz warns that most of us spend too much time on problem solving and not enough on building what we really want. Instead of getting up in the morning and thinking of all the problems we need to fix, he recommends that we should focus on what we want to build. Sounds good, huh?
3. How can we focus on being more creative? Fritz insists we all have creative parts to us, but we don’t realize what he have. Easy for him to say. Here’s what happens to me: I get the germ of an idea for a new story, I’m excited about writing it, and then I have to sit at my computer and actually start the story . . . like, with words! Aarrgh!
Everything stops dead. I feel tension rising in me the longer I sit without any words coming out. I even hope that global warming speeds up so it gets too hot for me to sit there—and I’ll escape the difficult job of writing the story.
Being creative is not always easy. But I can tell you that if I sit at the computer long enough something wonderful happens. From somewhere (maybe the creative gods feel sorry for me!) the ideas start flowing. For a period of time, being creative is not only easy it’s also exciting and satisfying. I’m actually flying with Spiderman!
What are the steps you should take to get to this point? How do you deal with the tension all of us feel when trying to be creative? I’ll answer these in the next post. In the meantime, tell me how you’ve been creative. What are you building in your life and how do you do it?
