The Creative Foods: An Essay on Creative Writing

The title may have made you hungry, but only the analogy of foods as sustenance will apply to actual eating. This article is about the things we all need in order to be creative. The painter needs the right brush; the writer the perfect pen or keyboard; and the singer the right backup singers. There are many things that lead us down the road to creativity. Things that open doors in our minds. As we watch the flood of ideas, we wonder where everything came from. Or we find that we have nothing left in the well of creativity. This article will detail both the good and bad times of creativity.

A creative food is not a cigarette or a cup of coffee. Those are the things we think the creative minds needs. The fact is a cigarette just might give us an idea. The coffee may keep us awake an extra half hour or allow us to write in the morning. But neither is key to the creative mind. The real creative food is the act of looking at other peoples works and analyzing and living life.

When a writer reads a book they see into someone else's mind. They open their own door to creativity. This could be a novel; we see a sentence or idea we like and write it down. It could be a history book; we see something we had always believed to be false, and this leads us down a path of finding other things that we assumed were true. The writer is always on the lookout for these creative foods. They sustain us when the times are good and when it appears the dreaded block is approaching or here.

The painter sees a girl on the street fit for a portrait. They find a book on Jackson Pollack and his paintings and spend weeks analyzing them. And the singer only has to listen to the radio or an album to find their creative foods.

No matter our profession, when we work on our creativity we sustain not only it but us. The flood of ideas does not always come from creative foods, but it surely is crucial in many. The simple act of exercising, walking or jogging perhaps, can lead our mind on a different path. The next time you doubt your potential, or want to quit, consider finding a creative food. It will sustain you down the longest of roads.