When you’re out there, struggling to create, staring at the blank page, the blank canvas, or the blank MS Paint window, you might be thinking “I have nothing to say”, and you might be right.1 Yet that is not the problem, is it?
The problem is how to have great idea. Having something say, a message to the world, can be a great source of creativity, but it’s not the only one. What else is out there?
I challenge you to consider art. When you look at it, listen to it, experience it, what do you see, hear, feel? Is there a message? Did the author want to say something? Or was there something else driving them?2
Those without a message, I bet they were playing.3 Maybe they looked at the materials and went hmm or tried out a new technique and went I wonder. Maybe they saw a constraint or a challenge and went I can overcome that. Maybe they felt something and went now that’s delightful. Maybe they saw something and went but nobody else has ever seen this. Maybe they just had good time playing or painting or writing or dancing.
Play and messages: did I cover the sources of creativity exhaustively?