What is Creativity Anyway?

I started Creating Brains.com because I needed to read it.  I have always thought of myself as creative but through years of having little children underfoot and family-size to-do lists my creative energy shrunk.  Still I read widely and went to graduate school. Then one sunny afternoon in May my oldest daughter died suddenly and cosmic entropy [...]

Twelve Great Literary Ladies, Twelve Valuable Lessons for the Writing Life– Guest Post by Nava Atlas

This wonderful piece first appeared a few days ago on SheWrites.com.  Nava Atlas has kindly agreed to this re-post on Creating Brains. Enjoy! Learning how to stay disciplined, grappling with doubt, failure, and rejection, finding one’s voice, struggling to stay solvent—we’ve all dealt with these issues. It’s comforting to know that Charlotte Brontë, George Sand, [...]

Hee! Hee!–Freud Slipped With Piaget

One of the best things about having young children is that they think your jokes are funny. This morning, my two-year-old needed help getting out of the bathtub. I held out a clean towel for her to step into, wrapped her up and set her on the bath-rug. I watched her dress–undershirt first, then flowery cotton dress. [...]

Creativity Thrives with Live Connections

My 6th month old often lays still, as dawn comes, gazing out the window or studying the woven wicker patterns of her bassinet.  I leave her in peace until the moment her eyes begin searching, darting around like a pinball in slow motion. Then, I appear to catch her sparkling eyes.  We look at each [...]

Marketing for Creatives

My 8 yr. old is writing a letter to some yet unidentified, very important, person at the Lego Company in Denmark. He seeks a specific position as a research and development kid intern.  He knows he would be a fabulously creative Lego designer.  He knows the Lego Co. needs child designers to press full-forward to [...]

Creativity’s Terrain, Part 7: Write to Express Ideas & Find Your Place in the World

You have less control over your environment and the environment in which your children grow than you think. The variables are infinite. For two weeks I’m writing about Creativity’s Terrain and the variables you can control. Yesterday I wrote about the value of Reading, a lot. If you would not be forgotten as soon as [...]

Creativity’s Terrain, Part 6: Read, alot.

You have less control over your environment and the environment in which your children grow than you think. The variables are infinite. For two weeks I’m writing about Creativity’s Terrain and the variables you can control. Yesterday I wrote about the Value of Solitude for Children. My car swerved, ever-so-slightly, towards The Neurosciences Institute as [...]

Lifting to Disturb

At the bottom of every syllabus for the undergraduate History courses I teach is the small print. The gist of it: Plagiarism will get you booted out of college in disgrace scraping you off the bottom of an intellectual world that will never-more be yours.  Do not copy, ever. I include the small print, because [...]

Planning for August

This morning I’m working with three of my children, individually, to determine their schedule for the rest of the summer.  I will ask each the following three questions to start: What would you like to learn to do? What would you like to see? Or visit? What do you want to get better at? The [...]

Idea-Sharing is Good

Highly creative people work alone to master a domain. But, not all the time.  Some of the time they hang-out with key people and in key communities. Creators don’t hoard ideas. They know ideas fertilize in the rich soil of human exchange. Less productive creative-types often fear throwing an idea out to the wind.  But, [...]