Whether you find creative people in remote little mountain kingdoms accessible only by mule or in big, modern, cosmopolitan cities, you will discover that they are surprisingly alike. The many traits they share are not all favorable; some are obstacles. Yet those traits–the worst and the best together–prepare creative people for fascinating lives other people look at with admiration and envy.
Creative people:
Feel deeply and are gifted. They are people whose ecstasies and traumas will be the raw material for their creations–never to be forgotten, but reflected again and again many times in the works they contribute to the world.
May be “overlooked” as school children. Their talents unrecognized, they may have undistinguished elementary and high school careers, only to be recognized for their significant achievements later in life to the surprise of everyone.
Are self-absorbed, concerned first and foremost with themselves, their own wellbeing and state of mind, their projects and their cherished and most private desires, needs, hopes. Their self-absorption can make them overly emotional, temperamental, and difficult. But self-absorption is a necessary feature of a creative personality.
Proud, may react defensively, angrily, bitterly to criticism.
Sadly, at times may be too emotionally ill to work, particularly poets and writers who may be victims of the high and inexplicable incidence of debilitating mood disorders affecting them.
Have a strong belief in, respect, and enthusiasm for their art.
Need confidence. Confidence grows exponentially with each success. The most accurate predictor of future success is past success, as “Since I have written a best seller before, I can do it again.”
Are often “seduced” by their art. There is no shortcut to the tremendous amount of experience necessary to become highly skilled in an art. It is hard for someone in the arts not to see their art taking over more and more of their time and possibly becoming their most important activity, finding themselves doing everything for their art.
Are rebellious, bold, and open to new experiences. More daring than the majority of people. Have no fear of risks.
Have an insatiable need to establish rapport with and hold an audience–followers, fans to applaud them. And yet, deprived of an audience, they will still work just as conscientiously.
May not seem to be but are competitive, ambitious, prone to envy and jealousy.
Will of necessity bloom late due to the difficulties of becoming established, overcoming a sequence of hurdles, and mastering their chosen art. Late developing, being “behind,” they needn’t despair because they often accelerate and “catch up” quickly after their first successes, often surpassing those who bloomed sooner.
Tend to “live in their heads.”
Consider themselves the best judge of their work, its “foremost authority.”
Are lucky to have the particular creative talents esteemed by society that make them ideal writers, artists, actors, dancers, composers, etc. as if they are people who have been ordered from a catalogue.
“Know who they are.” Are marked by a clear, unambiguous sense of identity, as “I am an historical novelist specializing in women’s roles in England during the Victorian era.”
Can be characterized as having heightened perceptions of the drama in the world and the beauty and importance of their art. In time they develop a “novelist’s mind,” or a ”painter’s mind,” or an architect’s, or dramatist’s mind, etc.
Can be perfectionists who are extremely hard on themselves and others (loved ones, associates, subordinates).
Abhor pretense.
Are not driven by the same needs as even the people dearest to them. (That causes conflicts).
Hold sacred their independence (Will fight for it, don’t want to lose it) Hate having their freedom interfered with or restrained.
Are far more self-disciplined in their work than most people in other fields.
Can be playful, child-like, humorous, silly, fun to be with, and seem younger than their age.
Are committed to the development and refinement of their talents; motivated by “an urge to improve.”
Are exuberant, often boastful, about their achievements.
Love to work, work hard, sometimes harder than seems humanly possible.
Possess extraordinary energy and are excitable.
Must be patient and longsuffering because if they reach high-level mastery and become famous they will have persisted doggedly through thick and thin for years; many “rough spots on the road” appear in a creative person’s career.
Are strengthened by powerful needs to be competent and to be respected.
Benefit from a rare ability to focus on one object, problem, or task for extended periods without being bored or losing interest. (Facilitates completing “big jobs” like writing novels and painting murals.)
Strive to find “the one true voice” that expresses them vividly and accurately. (Doesn’t happen overnight.)
Generally find more pleasure working alone than working in groups; do not avoid, but relish, solitude.
Must quickly develop a capacity for mature self-criticism, objectivity, and judgment about their work and their abilities
Highly value authenticity, integrity, and sincerity.
For survival must become skilled at overcoming obstacles, of which there are many in the arts.
Have a practical problem-solving intelligence; prefer difficult to easy problems.
May show minimal interest in current events, gossip, and politics–not interested in discussing them, “tune them out.”
Creative people possess many gifts, many strengths, and many imperfections. As imperfect as anyone else, they nevertheless benefit the world in innumerable ways.
© 2022 David J. Rogers
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painter. The storm buffeting the windows and pelting them with hail and snow made impossible even the thought of digging cars out and driving home. But everyone was in a good mood, and the house was warm. We were happy being together again after being separated so long by COVID.
accomplished people in the arts have wondered what they have that makes their creative work possible. The main quality anyone must possess if they are trying to be successful in anything, not just the arts, but certainly the arts, I feel, is energy. 
“Painters, writers, actors, and dancers enter the world talented. From the beginning of their lives they can draw better than other children or write more interesting compositions, act out scenes more skillfully, dance more gracefully. Just look at the lovely paintings some little children can paint and the poems they can write. Some children are too young to have learned to paint, yet they paint wonderfully and have technique. No one has taught them. They can paint superbly before being taught. When they are being taught they absorb information so quickly, it’s astonishing. That’s the definition of talent.
“I think that 
The storm still didn’t look so good, so they stayed the night. In the morning Paul insisted on making breakfast. I made coffee. We vowed to get together again soon. Then in early afternoon a bright sun came out, the winds died, and they left for home where work and many challenges were waiting.
I think of the famous Michael Jordan “flu game” when he had to be carried off the floor after the game with the flu by a teammate, yet scored 38 points and led the Bulls to victory. “Probably the most difficult thing I have ever done,” said Jordan.
would prefer to be cheerful and happy, but as far as creative work is concerned, how you feel is secondary. What matters most are the requirements of the craft you have committed yourself to, and one requirement is day after day to put out effort to achieve your creative goals. It seems to me that one constant goal that is shared by most people in the arts is to develop your in-born talents to the fullest and that another requirement is to 
corresponded about. Nurturing depression in and out of psychiatric hospitals, some of them committed suicide including John Berryman and Randall Jarrell. Poets Sylvia Plath and Ann Sexton were friends and felt the same. They talked to each other often, and also committed suicide.
Whatever has been said about the relationship between creatives’ state of mind and their performance, writers and painters I know or have read or heard about have found writing or painting the most fulfilling and blissful thing they do.
had the same view of the function of writers and artists. Ruskin: “The whole function of the artist in the world is to be a seeing and feeling creature.”
Painter Edouard Manet thought the urge to create is a simple reflex that doesn’t require thought: “There is only one true thing: instantly paint what you see. When you’ve got it, you’ve got it. When you haven’t, you begin again.”
Creatives have complex memories from which their art derives: “The essential factor of development of expertise is the accumulation of increasingly complex patterns in memory” (Andreas Lehmann).
Since the earliest civilizations people have been theorizing about creatives among them and the creative process. The first question was: is creative ability a gift from the gods?
The best writing resists critical explanation: “In truly good writing no matter how many times you read it you do not know how it is done. That is because there is a mystery in all great writing and the mystery does not dissect out” (Ernest Hemingway).
had, but doesn’t. It is a highly-regarded journal and would enhance any serious writer’s reputation to appear in it. That journal had published other pieces of Kathy’s in the past during her particularly prolific period when work poured out of her and was in demand by editors and readers. Some of her books were being published at the time, and many of her articles appearing in magazines were achieving record readership scores.
I am talking about the difference between writers whose overriding goal is to see their work in print–a Publication Focus–contrasted with writers whose overriding goal stops short of publication in which they are not interested. They are concerned solely with generating what is in their judgment the highest possible quality text–a Production Focus. The latter are more than contented to produce works they are proud of without seeing them published.
matters to them is that the works they produce be the best they have the skills to produce. They believe that because they are not interested in publishing but in producing the highest quality work they can, they are more creative and do better work than they would were they competing with others to see their work in print, and there are grounds for that belief.
produced was then graded by professionals–seasoned painters grading the paintings, experienced writers the writing, etc. The results were significant in that no matter what the reward was or when it was given, if the subjects thought they were working for external rewards, even a little trinket, and not for fun and pleasure, they became less creative. But when they were light-hearted and fooling around and no external reward was involved, they were more creative and their work was better.
a clear, informative, and entertaining way concepts that were unfamiliar to western thinking. It was a challenge because the concept of the book was totally new and original. Every day’s work of many hours was fulfilling, I didn’t spend a second thinking about how my book would do in the stores, only about the book’s clarity and how useful I could make it and how inviting it would be for readers. It was a highly successful and profitable book and my ambitions for the next book I began were high. But I found my thoughts losing focus. They often wandered away from the book’s content and style and how to satisfy the reader to where I would build the new house the new book’s royalties would bring me and the kind of cars I would buy. Both books received many accolades and made best seller lists. But whereas I wouldn’t change a single word of the first book, I live with the knowledge that the second book could have been better.
“One day I seemed to shut a door between me and all publishers. I said to myself, ‘Now I can write.” He started working on The Sound and the Fury, “thinking of books, publication, only in the sense in saying to myself, I wont (sic) have to worry about publishers liking or not liking this at all.”
writing every day. Most of them quit because of the heavy, depressing weight of too many failures and too few–if any–successes and the toll of failures on one’s 
bored. Just as children do that, writers can do something remarkable. As fully absorbed as children, they can work on perfecting a single paragraph forty or fifty times without experiencing a moment of boredom while people who are not writers and think that one draft is sufficient are astonished that such a feat is possible. The conclusion of Amabile’s experiments was that a playful approach like that of children increases the likelihood of producing creative results, and that pursuing external rewards diminishes the person’s creativity.
themselves) which Production Writers experience has been shown to improve the quality of the work that is produced. That is why so many famous writers think that they, and no one else, are the best judge of their work and why so many of them ignore or don’t ask for the advice of editors. Who enjoys being evaluated? Writers often dread evaluations, and evaluations negatively affect the writer’s mood and thus the quality of work that is produced. A Production Writer may ask for editorial assistance–to be helped–but not to be evaluated.
fix. I was writing what should be an easy section on planning what you are about to write or paint. Now planning is something I know a lot about. For years I was a trainer for a consulting company I founded. I trained thousands of people to use the best techniques of planning so they might effectively plan whatever business or career project they had in mind.
Even as children girls and boys who will become writers and painters when they grow up have been told and taught by teachers to plan the work before they begin to execute it. They are taught that in grade school, and in graduate school professors or experienced visiting artists and writers stipulate that every work should have a plan. Planning becomes a habit that isn’t questioned because “everyone knows you have to have a plan before you begin. How else will you know how to proceed?”
Some creatives meticulously plan and think the work to be produced through to the last detail. But some non-planner creatives begin to paint or write without a subject in mind, preferring to permit the work to grow organically and emerge. Some writers, like me, begin without any conscious concept of how to proceed other than, at best, a notion not at all well-developed of what the work should probably be about.
Non-planning Virginia Woolf said that her idea for Mrs. Dalloway started without any conscious direction. She thought of making a plan but soon abandoned the idea. She said, “The Book grew day by day, by week, without any plan at all, except that which was dictated each morning in the act of writing.” Had someone asked her what exactly she was trying to accomplish other than to follow a woman throughout a day she would have replied, “I’m not sure.” The planner- writers are sure of where they are going. Their plan tells them.
The more spontaneous process which non-planning creatives like greats Woolf and Mark Twain (possibly America’s greatest writer) and Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci use to complete a work is contrary to the rational goal-setting, plan-making processes. Following a plan inhibits certain creatives for whom a more spontaneous approach results in better work.
Galenson describes two significantly different types of artists. The “everything must be planned” artists are called Conceptualizers: they must have a full-blown concept of the work they wish to create in all its detail before they begin writing or painting the work. Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, James Joyce, Herman Melville, and F. Scott Fitzgerald were Conceptual writers. Pablo Picasso was a Conceptual painter. Conceptualizers state their carefully- wrought goals for a particular work precisely 
Once Conceptualizers find the crucial problem they advance slowly with a plan, but Experimentalists move fast without a plan. Experimentalist’s goals are imprecise. They have ideas about what the work will be like when it is finished, but are unclear about everything else until the piece is written, the painting mounted on a wall. That imprecision is how Experimentalists like to work, but it creates problems. Not clear as to what they want the final work to look like, they have trouble finishing works.
Conceptualizers tend to bloom early, often with a striking new style or innovation or great success at the start of their career. They mature quickly, starting very early, not gradually through years of trial and error as Experimentalist painters like Jackson Pollock and Claude Monet did, but rapidly. A young Ernest 
People in every walk of life and in every hemisphere on earth–in cities, on deserts, in towns and villages–long to create something. My nine year old grandson is a talented artist and cellist studying architecture. His six year old sister takes dance and will begin taking piano lessons in the fall. Their forty two year old father was an excellent cellist in his youth and was inspired by the performance of a famous cellist to return to it last year. My wife, is a former cellist, and has taken up water colors and has returned to the piano. I write every day. I have for many years, and when I am not writing I am thinking about it and planning what I will write. We are representative people no different from millions of others with whom we share the globe because the current era is an Age of Heightened Creativity. Little children and women and men of all ages are bent on having creative experiences. They will not let their creative instincts be stifled.
It became a permanent part of your entire being–an idea, a theme, or an image that became a guiding force in your life. You may not be conscious of it, but it starts you out in a creative direction, and gives you a sense of moving steadily in that direction, of heading straight toward something concrete and specific. Making a living in art is difficult and so most artists must find financial security other than in art. But whatever your occupation if you are to be an artist you will define yourself first as an artist, an accountant, HR manger, or English teacher second.
Noted composers and performing artists in musical fields–so sensitive to sound and tone—possess what the Germans call Horlust–“hearing passion.” Writers–particularly poets and lyrical writers–have a word passion (they adore words), and painters adore colors and shapes, often from the cradle.
What is inside the shut door is the artist’s rich inner life from which creative products pour–without stopping if the artists explore themselves more and more deeply. Transformation of what is inside the artist into what is outside is the 
Poet W.H. Auden wrote, “Speaking for myself, the questions which interest me most when reading a poem are two. The first is technical: ‘Here is the verbal contraption. How does it work?’ The second is, in the broadest sense moral. What kind of guy inhabits this poem? What is his notion of the good life or the good place? His notion of the Evil One. What does he conceal from the reader? What does he conceal even from himself?” William James said it is the amount of life in the act of creation which artists feel that makes you value their mind.
Artists must be people of action because their main goal is production of works over which they think and 
Children and adults may drop out, but those who turn to art may well be playing the cello or dancing or painting, only getting better and enjoying their art perpetually–all their lives– with fond 
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