Does anyone else seriously lack creativity?

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The word "creativity" has been abused far too much to hold any weight any longer. Look at popular music: you have the clone-drones who copied every other talent show winner and then you have the weird ones who basically copied off of Madonna (namely GaGa and Minaj) and all the anime shows where characters conjure up creatures using cards. Even in niche sectors, you have sci-fi minatures games. Ever have a peek at Scibor Miniatures and the sci-fi models Hi-Tech makes? The figures bear a striking resemblance to the power armor-clad Space Marines in Warhammer 40,000. Look at all the RPGs that run off of the D20 system and have all the same basic races as D&D or TCGs that use "resource cards" (lands for Magic and energy for Pokémon). Let's not forget all the vampire romance garbage floating down the stream.

In today's society, merely making slight alterations to a concept that already exists is viewed as being creative. Go figure...

All I do is copy other peoples ideas and make them better.

I'm creative on my own, but I get anxious working in groups, so I've never found that I could be creative in collaboration with others, or when under pressure to produce or perform creatively.

On my own, at home, I do lots of creative stuff, needlework, writing, artwork, coming up with recipes, etc. If it's just for me, I'm creative as anything.

Last edited by BlueAbyss on 19 Dec 2012, 7:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I consider them creative.

While I don't consider myself uncreative, it is very hard for me to visualize things I have not already seen before, so I was never one of those children who had imaginary friends or made up lands or anything. Usually I take what I know and have seen and alter it until I like the results.

Well, creativity is not a single idea. It has many different facets and you can be very creative in one way and uncreative in another. For example, mathematics involves problem solving, which requires creativity and I suck at maths. However, if you gave me a brief to design a book sleeve or characters for a TV show, I could do that. I think my autism most definitely affects how I manage my time, how I organize myself, how I deal with the unexpected and how to cooperate with others. I would love to have more creativity in those areas because it is very detrimental to, not only my life in general, but to my studies (though my grades have been quite good, thank goodness).

As an art student, I would like to point out that creativity is all about taking ideas and modifying them. Obviously that doesn't mean that you should, say, take a copyrighted character like Sonic the Hedgehog, recolour him and call that an original character. However, it does mean that you can take certain aspects of him and apply that to your original character. All art is influenced by something - art can never exist in a vacuum. In any case of creative thinking, you are often trying to solve a problem with the tools that are available to you, whether that means working on a commission, trying to solve a maths puzzle or trying to escape from certain death. Basically, you have to be MacGyver.

I think creativity is a skill, not an inherent trait. While some people are more cognitively equipped for creative thinking in one way or another, it doesn't mean that you can't ever improve from that starting point. Every great mathematician, scientist, writer, leader, filmmaker, journalist, magician, etc doesn't get that way through sheer inherent talent. They need to work hard to get to that level and it's not just to learn the craft, either. It also means rewiring your brain so that it can think creatively about it as well.

I hope my rambling was insightful to you.

I loved playing with Lego as a kid, but mostly I just followed the instructions that came with the kit. I think I just prefer playing with someone else's idea than coming up with my own. If I was a movie director, I would only make adaptations of books.

Thanks for this. A very edifying post.

The only time I feel dull and not creative are when I took anti-psychotic medicine. Doctors keep pushing those to control my anxiety and I really don't like them. Most of the time my brain is busy and thinking a million things.

The same thing happened to me when I took Zoloft to help control my migraines. It had an extremely dulling effect on my creativity - actually made it disappear - and it caused me to gain weight, which I still am struggling with, it's as if it permanently affected my metabolism. At least I got my creativity back after stopping it.

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Back to the main topic, for me, creativity has always required some uninterrupted time, in which I appear to others to be dawdling, playing, or just being lazy or daydreaming. And there are pursuits that can eat away at my creative energies, such as spending too much time on the Internet (on forums esp.), paying too much attention to news and politics, or letting other people eat up my attention. I have to be kind of selfish in order to get my creative time to myself.

Some of my creative efforts also require accessing my weaker functions. For instance, designing a knitted item requires math, mechanical thinking, and technical skills in addition to my stronger imaginative abilities. I have to be able to get those skills to all come together. It can take a lot of effort, and will power to keep at it and actually finish something - not just finish one thing, but finish a few efforts that get tossed aside while I continue to work at what I really want. It's easy for me to get discouraged in the midst of the process, or to lose sight of my initial vision for the project. Creativity isn't just play and imagination, it's also focused effort, failure, and perseverance.

The same thing happens to me, but I have a lot of creativity, so much, that I imagine an object around me turn into a monsters and rampage around with people running in terror. Kind of gory, but it's funny that I can't do this conversationally.