Kismet Arts Tangent

Your Creative Brain .Seven Steps to Maximize Imagination, Productivity, and Innovation in your Life By Carson, Shelley (Book – 2010)

Summary: Shelly Carson, PhD, goes through her acronym, CREATES, as she describes neuroscience behind creativity and the mildly surprising lack thereof. Connect, Reason, Envision, Absorb, Transform, Evaluate, and Stream are the steps to creative output. Some tips for a better creative environment, listen to music, though any noisy place will do. Milk those times you feel angst or just pathetic.

Review: I wasn’t completely inspired by this book. Too many exercises and quizlets to really feel like the author was invested in something transformative as art, but rather that you feel that you are getting something out of the book. I really appreciated her sentiment about how art and creative endeavors take a while to get good at. I also liked how she mentioned one of my favorite people Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, and the delightful concept of flow.

Rating: 4 exercises where you are writing down everything you hear

Favorite part: “Scientific research is remarkably consistent in finding that expertise in most fields takes about 10 years to develop.” p.328. I thought this was comforting and it should be a relief to those who took on a project that they didn’t have much experience in and found that they were disappointed that they weren’t pros by the end.

Wine-pairing: 50 First Dates (2004) Directed by Peter Segal. With Adam Sandler, Drew Barrymore. I really enjoyed Lucy’s character because when she paints, she’s really into it and it seems to come from a very happy sweet place. Art is about tapping into your mental landscape and finding the right motivation to inspire you to soar higher than you think you can.