The Creative Instinct

As I sit here writing this I’m in my back garden, naked. It’s January – and although the sun is shining beautifully today, it’s freezing. My chair is icy cold and my todger has shrunk to the size of a peanut.

A neighbour peers over the garden fence. Would I like a sock to keep it warm? She smiles and tells me the sunshine makes her feel like singing the Hallelujah Chorus. Is it okay if she sings out here in her garden? She’s normally so shy. To my surprise I find she has a wonderful singing voice…

I got stuck trying to start this post, so it being about creative inhibitions I put down the first thing that came to mind, knowing that I wouldn’t publish it. Now that would have been a cop-out, wouldn’t it?

From time to time I work with clients who tell me they have no creativity at all. Most probably, they say, they are the single most unimaginative person on the planet. People in this state of mind find it incredibly difficult to generate new ideas. Much of their problem is to do with a sort of new-idea self-censorship – writing off embryonic thoughts almost before they’ve had them.

Recently I’ve come to realise that it’s also very much to do with inhibitions. In terms of creativity these people are simply too inhibited to use their imagination. Inhibitions on this scale limit your imaginative options to next to none, which is obviously not the case for those of us with creativity at our core. Yet even for people practicing their creativity on a daily basis, inhibitions can play a big part in limiting our creative range.

Just as I can’t actually bring myself to sit naked in my garden, not even on a warm summers day, there are ways of writing, ways of creative thinking that are beyond my comfort zone. That means that like it or not, my creative options are limited.

Creative inhibitions can come from a variety of sources – from our natural reserve to the ‘schooling’ we’ve had in our particular art form (the received wisdom of what works and what doesn’t, for instance). The apparent boundaries created by genre also play a part. It is true that the strictures of genre and form can bring about the most exquisite creative excellence: Shakespeare’s sonnets for example, or the Latin rhythms of The Beuna Vista Social Club, which I’m listening to as I write.

But they can also form false horizons for us. That is, a point we do not look past, even though we are aware of the interesting and fertile ground beyond.

I guess that unfettered creativity would probably not produce the best or most coherent artistic or musical output. But if you are looking to add an extra charge to your work then exploring the breadth of your creative inhibition could pay big dividends.

Here are three questions to get you thinking about the self imposed boundaries that creative inhibition brings

1. If you knew it was only for experiment and fun, what single aspect of your creative medium would you like to play around with?
2. What does it mean to you, to do things the ‘right’ way?
3. What’s ‘wrong’ for me but okay for others?

Spend a little time thinking about these questions and see what you could add to your creative repertoire.

And please add a comment on this post and about your own creative inhibitions.

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My thanks to Luke Chueh for permission to use ‘Inhibition’.

See also:

Stop Worrying About Talent And Be Your Best Creative Self
Dare to be Disliked