8 more things to remember about being creative
More wisdom from Brenda Ueland on creativity.
(1) “Imagination comes, works, when you are not trying, when you have a peculiar passive clarity.”Full text: PresentationZen(2) “The tragedy is that either they stifle their fire [creative spirit] by not believing in it and using it; or they try to prove to the world and themselves that they have it, not inwardly and greatly, but externally and egotistically, by some second-rate thing like money or power or more publicity.”
(3) “You must discover what there is in you, this bottomless fountain of imagination and knowledge.”
(4) “To have things alive and interesting, it must be personal, it must come from the ‘I’: what I know and feel.”
(5) “When the sentence was not felt by the writer, it was dead. No infection …there is no sense in writing anything I don’t feel.”
(6) On being in the moment, not over “thinking it”: “Only when you are playing in a thing do people listen and hear you and are moved.”
(7) “Enthusiasm! this is the sign that the creative fountain is in you.”
(8) “Do not try to make somebody believe you are smarter than you are. What’s the use? You can never be smarter than you are.”
