Readernaut

The wonderful and scary thing about solving creative problems is that there isn't one right answer. There are a thousand possible answers, but the valuable and practical thing to do is fix the things you know how to fix. That's why a failure of skill is unforgivable: If you don't have a broad base of skills, you're limiting the number of problems you can solve when trouble hits.

There's so many opportunities for creativity to fail so it needs the skills to fix it up along the way.

Prima ballerinas work as diligently and carefully at the barre as any novice. (Actually they work more diligently on basics that lesser dancers might consider beneath them.) The great ones never take fundamentals for granted.

I think getting more elegant with fundamentals is more effective then getting better at the new trends.

You're only kidding yourself if you put creativity before craft. Craft is where our best efforts begin. You should never worry that rote exercises aimed at developing skills will suffocate creativity. At the same time, it's important to recognize that demonstrating great technique is not the same as being creative.

The more able you are in a certain area, the quicker and more effectively you can turn your ideas into reality. Creativity requires mad skills.

You only need one good reason to commit to an idea, not four hundred. But if you have four hundred reasons to say yes and one reason to say no, the answer is probably no.

Ha! Great advice. I wouldn't take it too seriously, though. Then you would never do anything.

While the accident could have happened to anyone at any time, it took a person with an open mind to recognize the importance of what took place ... and it took knowledge and skill to analyze it and repeat it.

This is how I think of luck. When people become more open to their circumstances and better at taking advantage of them, things that seem lucky happen more often.

In order to be habitually creative, you have to know how to prepare to be creative, but good planning alone won't make your efforts successful; it's only after you let go of your plans that you can breath life into your efforts.

I think it's hard to set time for thinking about something, then actually use that time to think... I end up just planning out how I should use my time more. You really need to let go of the plans once you're in them.

You can't just dance or paint or sculpt. Those are just verbs. You need a tangible idea to get you going. The idea, however minuscule, is what turns the verb into a noun--paint into a painting, sculpt into a sculpture, write into writing, dance into a dance.

A good idea is what makes everything else solid and meaningful. Otherwise it's just flailing around.

Traveling the paths of greatness, even in someone else's footprints, is a vital means to acquire skill.

Mimicking is a great way to learn... Just don't say you thought of it, that's not cool!

It takes skill to bring something you've imagined into the world: to use words to create believable lives, to select the colors and textures of paint to represent a haystack at sunset, to combine ingredients to make a flavorful dish. No on is born with that skill. It is developed through exercise, through repetition, through a blend of learning and reflection that's both painstaking and rewarding.

This is a great explanation for separating creativity and skill. From this perspective, the creative part is very similar to how people think of "vision" with business. No matter how creative you are or how much vision you have, actually doing it is still hard.

Creativity is a habit, and the best creative activity is a result of good work habits. That's it in a nutshell.

Love it. Being creative is something you can learn and get better at... It just takes work and discipline.