How to Strengthen Your Creative Muscle

As someone who is currently working to improve my craft in all aspects of the word, I thought it would be beneficial to share how I do this in the hopes of helping others who might not be sure where to start. I have likened creating to a muscle because it is exactly that; if you do not regularly train a muscle, atrophy occurs just like if you do not consistently create you start to lose that muscle memory or creative memory. This article will cover three subjects; imitation, practise, and innovation.

Imitation

During this first phase, I have found that you are only really emulating what you have already experienced. Speaking from personal experience, I found that, at first, you are only really attempting to emulate what you have already experienced. Although copying may fundamentally seem like a bad thing, it is probably one of the most important steps in creating, as it acts as a point of reference you can use in your future creations. Austin Kleon, in his book Steal like an Artist, states that there is good and bad theft. Good theft takes from many sources all whilst honouring, studying, crediting, transforming, and remixing each of the original works to create something completely new; whereas bad theft only takes from one source and degrades, skims over, plagiarizes, imitates, and rips off the original. This is supported by the words of Mark Twain who claimed that "There is no such thing as a new idea. It is simply impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope." The human brain is built to learn by imitation, so it is only natural that this step is a must in developing that creative muscle.

Practise

During this phase, the main objective is to learn and create intentionally, and as a result, make what you want, not just what you can. What is the main distinction here? Making what you want is creating what you imagine in your head, whereas making what you can is only doing what you know, which may not be enough to create what's actually in your head. For example, let's say you wanted to use the colour green, but you didn't know how to make it; so instead, you just use another colour that you already knew how to make. Can you see how limiting that is? Although practice is good, just practising for the sake of practising is no good. In his presentation, titled "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Artists," Andrew Price states that for practice to be completely useful, we need to find our weaknesses and attack them.

Innovation

The final stage of this three step process is innovation, this is where you can try different things and break the rules once you've understood the basics or fundamentals of the creative decline you are pursuing. Innovating gives you the opportunity to truly figure out what your creativity means to you and discover which aspects of your human experience that make you unique. You can add to your work and take things to a whole level.

Final thoughts

When all is said and done, the creative journey each of us take is our own, so "you can take your time and still be productive. Success is not a race; it is a practise." Even the advice I have given is what I believe to have been helpful in my own journey, but it may not be to yours. I encourage you to keep on learning more about yourself and the experience of others to find your own truth. Thank you for taking the time to read this and have a great day.