Creativity: The Conflicts in a Writer’s Head
Creative people have messy minds, which is one of the reasons I include posts about helping you get organized. My mind is a mess; if you’re creative, I’m pretty sure yours is, too. We need all the organizing help we can get.
Messy minds are desired. That means we have much to work with. It also means that we have contradictions going on inside. Contradictions are conflicts. Like Plato’s idea of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, conflicts produce new and exciting things. This milieu is the essence of creativity. So, love your messy mind. As Whitman said, “I am large, I contain multitudes.” So do you. If you want to be more creative, then entertain extremes. Contradictions give rise to the need to create. We are trying to understand. We are trying to synthesize all the things that are at odds within our heads. It’s all those crazy conflicts that lead you to new ideas.
Don’t think super-smarts are required to be creative (IQ doesn’t factor in much). You must be conflicted, and you must be curious. You must get access to your thinking, your emotions, your ethics, and your motivations. You must be willing to be honest with yourself. You also must be willing to admit that the world is not black-and-white; it is mainly gray, and you’re okay with that other than your desire to try to order something together that will never have any proper order. You must be willing to keep your mind a mess and learn to agree with everyone, even when you don’t, and then figure out why they think the way they do (because if you were in their head, you would see that they have a solid reason for thinking so).
Want to see how messy and off you are? Look at studies by Donald MacKinnon and Frank X. Barron, and you’ll see writers as a collective group score in the top fifteen percent of the general population for psychopathological issues. Seriously. (But at the same time, they score extremely high on all criteria of psychological health, as well.) So, that’s the good news and the bad. You’re messed up; you may be crazy, but your mental health, despite that, is good. Keep using your conflicts and keep writing. Keep that creativity flowing! Because your brain is such a vast mixing pot, that is why you write so well. Embrace the chaos with relish.
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