Priming the Creative Pump

  

Sometimes the well runs a little dry when it comes to ideas, and I find that's usually when I haven't been working much.  Because when I'm working, there always seems to be no shortage of ideas that I can't get to because I'm too busy . . . well, working.

Wouldn't it be wonderful to have a continual fountain of ideas --

a library of sketchbooks to mine for gold, for instance, or a gigantic rolodex with an index card containing every great idea we've ever thought of but didn't take time to write down and therefore forgot?

I'd like to come up with a way to record those fleeting ideas that wouldn't result in piles of paper scraps bearing unintelligible scribbles in a shorthand so abbreviated that even I have absolutely no idea what it was originally intended to represent.

I think it's helpful to do a little something creative every day.  Because even when I'm not actively working on a project, if I flip the "creative switch" for a second or two I notice it's like throwing a drop of oil on the gears, keeping them ready to move should I provide them the opportunity.

And when I can't bring myself to actually DO something creative, it seems to be equally effective for me to look at other people's creative efforts.

The more art I absorb, of any kind,
the more my mind

seems willing to produce.

Charles Horton Cooley said,

"The mind is not a hermit's cell, 

but a place of hospitality and intercourse."

And yes, there is plenty of coming and going in my head . . . 

I guess I just need to up my hospitality a little

in hopes that my ideas will be tempted to 

sit down, relax awhile and maybe talk to each other.  

Susan M. Hinckley

Small Works in Wool