We have been talking here at the Library quite a bit about creativity and how best to encourage and support it. You would think that creativity is either there or not - it isn't something to be learned. Perhaps creativity on the Steve Jobs scale is something inborn, but it does have to be nurtured. If the tools, time, and encouragement isn't provided, it is like planting a seed and not watering it and keeping it in the dark.
The challenge is how to encourage original or creative thought without providing so much direction that creativity is smothered. Of course, the other end of the challenge is providing enough boundaries that will encourage yet contain the creative impulses of a child so that you don't end up with a painting in lipstick on the living room walls (I toured a house years ago while house-hunting where that had been done, and left on the wall . . . and trust me it wasn't a budding Michelangelo). But that child certainly was being encouraged in his/her creativity.
Stephen King's Danse Macabre is an interesting peek into the influences on King's creativity, and also a peek at what a master of horror finds scary. All creativity and originality inevitably builds on the creative and original thought of predecessors. And over time, what seemed life alteringly original now is thought to be ho-hum. I think of that whenever I see the opening sequence of the original Star Wars movie. I still remember sitting in the movie theater and being awestruck by the imagery. Yet I know my nephew doesn't see anything remarkable in it as his point of reference is far different. Thus the drive for ever more unimaginable imagining - and the importance of supporting creativity in yourself, your family, your community.
