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Exploring the Intersection Between the Organised Mind and the Creative Mind
These are notes about a personal project called Better Creativity.
While studying for an MA in Poetry Writing with the Poetry School and Newcastle University I was required to submit essays at the end of each semester, demonstrating how my poetry writing practice was developing. The teachers of the MA were amazing guides to the craft of writing poetry and I learnt so much from them.
Craft is what poets learn to use to make their poetry function. I am interested in craft, the tools and techniques that help make language memorable. I also want to be as creative as possible.
I am exploring if there are ways to connect the two sides of my brain together. The intuitive, idea-based part and the logical, organised part.
I do have a lot of ideas, but often they slip from my grasp, passing out of my awareness before I’ve had time to grab them.
It’s as if I need a net to catch them.
The mechanism my brain uses for having an idea seems very different from what is required to build a system to catch them. Is it possible for these two different states of mind to combine to enhance my overall creativity?
I am exploring the intersection between the Creative Mind and the Organised Mind. My aim is to get better at capturing my ideas and then making them available whenever I am in the creative mode.
Why Not Just Use A Notebook?
Many people keep notebooks or journals and jot down their ideas whenever they arrive. Although I have used this method with some success, it is somewhat passive. I call this Passive Idea Collection (PIC). Good ideas linger in old notebooks. After turning several pages, the ideas do fade from sight, and can easily be forgetten. It requires effort to uncover them again.
I also lost a notebook once, and with it all the ideas I had collected — (see Physical Notebooks).
So, I am building a more active process — Active Idea Collection (AIC). It’s a system for holding onto and working with my ideas.
Working with Ideas
Ideas come from anywhere:
A picture or photo
An article
A film or TV programme
The view from a window
An article
An email
And so on
Ideas arrive spontaneously: I call these moments — when a flash of insight or new idea emerges — a Fleeting Thought.
What I am trying to do with Better Creativity is to create a net to catch every Fleeting Thought. I want them to be avialable to me when I'm ready to be creative. Building the catch net is what my Organised Mind can help with. Using what I catch is what my Creative Mind does next.
I am hopefully of achieving two objectives:
Having a greater number of ideas to pull on whenever I am being creative.
By systematically catching my ideas — and looking for links between them — I might be to amplify their reach.
Everyone is different and the ideas I'm developing may suit no one else. There is no right way or wrong about this — but I'm sharing what I do as a reference for anyone else who might want to build their own version.
How to use my Digital Garden
1. You're reading this, so that's a good place to start.
2. I’ll pin the Map of Content to each post as an index to what is here.
Digital Gardens
This blog is a type of Digital Garden . It is a place for thinking out loud in public. Maggie Appleton's A Brief History & Ethos of the Digital Garden explains the history and ethos of the digital garden idea.
Disclaimer and 'Rules'
I wrote these notes for me — so they may or not make sense to you or even be useful. That's okay. I've written some Terms of Service for the Better Creativity Digital Garden. These explain the nature of a Digital Garden and the behaviours one should expect by the owner of the site and its visitors. If you have comments to make or suggestions about how this site could be improved, please email me at adam@adamcairns.co.uk.