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The example of Edison and the light bulb is listed above. He is said to have remarked that all his earlier trials were useful because they showed him ways in which the filament would not work! (See Chapter 10 for this process of reworking ideas in engineering.)

Albert Rothenberg defines creative thinking another way: the ability to hold tensions of opposites together as true.⁴⁹ Einstein had this “ability to hold two thoughts in his mind simultaneously, to be puzzled when they conflicted, and to marvel when he could smell an underlying unity.”⁵⁰ This sort of thinking, common in the East, is expressed in the famous saying, “Truth is one; many are the names.” There is a truth of literary representation, a truth of scientific experimentation, and a truth of spiritual experience; we need not say either-or because we can say both-and. This sort of thinking creates powerful literary effects like irony and complexity: Luke Skywalker in Star Wars is both disciple of Yoda and son of Darth Vader; Frodo in Lord of the Rings sets out to destroy the ring but also succumbs at times to its seductions. In their use of arresting metaphors, poets draw upon this sort of thinking: the moon or the rose can convey many meanings, all simultaneously true. Arieti termed this kind of metaphorical thinking the ability to find “the similar in the dissimilar.”⁵¹ (For more examples, see Chapters 9 and 11.)

Amabile’s Componential Model identifies a set of “dispositional, cognitive, and social factors” interacting to produce various degrees of creativity: “Domain-Relevant Skills,” “Creativity-Relevant Skills,” and “Task Motivation.”⁵² A “dispositional” factor would have to do with your temperament, as defined above: for example, your degree of flexibility, persistence, curiosity, playfulness, and perspicacity. A “cognitive” factor has to do with your thinking (such as unorthodox, convergent, divergent, synthetic, or integrative). A “social” factor might connote how well you are supported by a network or system (See Chapters 12 and 13, also “Creativity is dependent on the environment,” above.) If you are in a band, you may well be able to play better than artists who are famous, but the social environment controls, to some extent, whether you get the breaks. (See the Conclusion to read how getting around gatekeepers may be easier now than it was a few decades ago.)

You must also be knowledgeable in your domain. A “domain,” as defined by Csikszentmihalyi, is “a set of symbolic rules and procedures” such as “number theory”⁵³ or the rules of composition in painting. “Creativity-Relevant Skills” would entail effectiveness in the process, such as immersing yourself in the task and allowing time for incubation. “Task Motivation” refers to the drive or will to create: Sternberg’s “decision to be creative.” While all of these factors may not be present in all creators, there is a positive correlation between them and creative success in general. (See the Exercises for applications of these ideas.)

Creativity results from inspiration. We usually think of creativity as the Stage 4 “Aha” or Illumination: the “Eureka! I’ve got it!” of Archimedes in the bathtub. What he got, allegedly, was how to use water displacement in determining whether a gold crown had been adulterated with baser metal.

The British Romantic poets conceived inspiration as a divine wind, coming and going of its own will. In his poem “Dejection” Coleridge, who had an Aeolian harp set in his hallway to catch the drafts, yearns to be set quivering like his harp. In “The Eolian Harp” (1795-1817), Coleridge wonders whether there is a cosmic principle of creativity blowing through all of us like the wind:

. . . what if all of animated nature

Be but organic harps diversely framed,

That tremble into thought, as o’er them sweeps

Plastic and vast, one intellectual breeze,

At once the Soul of each, and God of all? (ll. 44-48)

The problem with the “Wind Theory of Creativity” is the same as the problem with wind turbines as a source of alternative energy. The winds don’t always blow. When they don’t, you need another form of energy!

Creativity results from hard work. In contrast to the “Wind Theory” is the “Sweat Theory.” Edison said that creativity is “one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.” The artists and thinkers before the Romantics would have agreed with him. The great painter Sir Joshua Reynolds (1769-1790) instructed his pupils at the Academy of Art to work not on inspiration but on technique.⁵⁴ Similarly, the great artists of the Italian Renaissance worked for commissions and learned their craft through guild apprenticeships. While building the great dome in Florence, Brunelleschi engaged in hard work. He created an ox-driven cogwheel with a reverse gear to hoist 1,700-pound stones “several hundred feet” to the “cupola.” He invented sandstone-embedded chains to hold the gigantic structure in place without “centering” devices.⁵⁵ He was not waiting for the winds of inspiration to blow. (For more on the geniuses of the Florentine Renaissance, see Chapters 11 and 13.) Sweat Theorists focus on Stage 1, Preparation, and Stage 2, Concentration.

There is something to be said for both wind and sweat in the exercise of creativity. I received many mini-inspirations while writing this book, but I found that they came from daily writing and thinking about the project. I also found that the more often I wrote, the more easily the words would flow.

Creativity is mysterious. Many artists feel that their products are a gift from something greater than themselves. The ancients spoke of the Daimon, the creator’s genius or Muse, the supernatural entity that allowed him to access higher realms and translate their eternal truths into reality.⁵⁶ Harold Bloom calls this “genius” “the god within.”⁵⁷ Director Federico Fellini reports,

From the moment I begin to work . . . someone takes over, a mysterious invader, an invader that I don’t know, takes over the whole show. He directs everything for me. I just put my voice at his disposal, and my know-how, my attempts at being seductive, or borrowing ideas, or being authoritarian. But it’s someone else, not me, with whom I co-exist, but who I don’t know, or know only by hearsay.⁵⁸

Bloom cites a passage from Emerson’s Journals about the shock of recognition we find in a creative work that echoes our deepest feelings: “‘It is a God in you that responds to God without, or affirms his own words trembling on the lips of another.’”⁵⁹ This view focuses on Stage 4, Illumination.

Creativity has been studied and defined. In a 1950 address to the American Psychological Association, John Guildford recommended more study of creativity. Since then the books, articles, and studies have proliferated. Between 1920 and 1950, “out of the 121,000 titles listed in Psychological Abstracts . . . only 186 dealt with creativity . . . From the late 1960s until 1991, almost 9,000 references have been added to the creativity literature.”⁶⁰

If you’re interested in a summary of how major psychologists have studied creativity, a thorough overview is provided in Amabile.⁶¹ From an initial focus on mechanical tasks, such as listing the uses of a brick or solving a problem with only one correct answer, psychologists have fanned out in many directions, doing experiments and studying famous creators.