This postI’ve been thinking lately about creativity and motivation. (Much of this springs from reading Uncommon Genius, but a lot of it is innate in the things I tend to think about anyway.) More particularly, in my History of Civilization class I’ve noticed that when we discuss art, I feel driven to create art. When we listen to Palestrina’s music or Gregorian chant, I feel compelled to write music. When we read Hamlet or the Canterbury Tales, I feel urged to write.
There’s something going on here. Creativity spawns creativity? It doesn’t always happen, of course, but it does occur often enough to be important. And the trick is to figure out how to coax it to appear more often. Motivation isn’t absolutely necessary, granted, but it sure helps.
With Beyond, I find that reading about user interface design or talking with people about their genealogy (potential users) fills me with passion to work on it. It’s almost guaranteed. Likewise, if I read about typography or printing, I’m driven to work on my various Riverglen Press projects. Just looking at my Plan of Salvation cards will often be enough of a catalyst to inspire me to press on with them, adding more languages. Seeing traffic rise or comments posted on these blogs makes me want to write more.
This warrants an experiment. When I know I need to work on a certain project, I’ll try creating the motivation (based on these observations) and see if it works. I’m slightly skeptical, since it seems like an artificial reproduction of something that perhaps cannot be forced, but maybe that’s not the case at all. Maybe it is something I can recreate when needed. That would be really handy.
So now I just need to find a good motivation that makes me excited to do homework… ;)
