Do you have the characteristics of the creative personality?

In his classic book Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention, author and creativity researcher Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi outlines the characteristics of creative individuals. He wrote, “If there is one word that makes creative people different from others, it is the word complexity. Instead of being an individual, they are a multitude.”

Some of the creative characteristics to look for, which he discusses in his book:  
1. A great deal of physical energy alternating with a great need for quiet and rest.
2. Highly sexual, yet often celibate, especially when working.
3. Both extravagant and spartan.
4. Smart and naïve at the same time. A mix of wisdom and childishness. Emotional immaturity along with the deepest insights.
5. Convergent (rational, left brain, sound judgment) and divergent (intuitive, right brain, visionary) thinking. Divergence is the ability to generate a great quantity of ideas, to switch from one perspective to another, and to pick unusual associations of ideas. Convergence involves evaluation and choice. Creative people have the capacity to think both ways.
6. Both extroverted and introverted, needing people and solitude equally.
7. Humble and proud, both painfully self-doubting and wildly self-confident.
8. May defy gender stereotypes, and are likely to have not only the strengths of their own gender but those of the other as well. A kind of psychic androgyny.
9. Can be rebellious and independent on one hand, and traditional and conservative on the other. 
10. A natural openness and sensitivity that often exposes them to extreme suffering and pain, yet also to a great deal of enjoyment. Despair alternates with bliss, despair when they aren’t working, and bliss when they are.

Does this sound like you or someone you might know? If so, keep up the creativity!

Learn more about creativity and the creative process in my book Frugal Poets' Guide to Life: How to Live a Poetic Life, Even If You Aren't a Poet.

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Do you have the characteristics of the creative personality?

What is wabi-sabi? How might it define the life of a frugal poet?

First in a series
Smiley-face note: Wabi-sabi is not to be confused with wasabi, a hot green horseradish paste commonly served next to Japanese sushi.

Japan, one of the most refined, thoughtful and poetic societies of the world has gone through unfathomable disasters in modern history. More recently is the profound earthquake, tsunami and nuclear catastrophe at Fukushima. Nevertheless, the Japanese people continue to push forward in quiet strength, dedicated to and motivated by their culture, history, sense of humility and connection with one another.

Wabi-sabi is a philosophy based in Japan that embraces a sense of flawed beauty, the profundity in nature, and of things impermanent, humble, primitive, transient and incomplete. It celebrates the modest, rustic and unconventional. It is the organic versus synthetic, the rough-hewn and uneven over the measured and laser-edged. Loosely explained, wabi means a philosophy of imperfect, natural beauty, and sabi means the artistic expression of what’s asymmetrical, aged or unpretentious.

Daisetz Suzuki, one of the first scholars to interpret Japanese culture for Westerners, considered wabi-sabi “an active aesthetical appreciation of poverty.” Rather than a poverty of pain and a sense of desperation, it instead gives the relief of removing the weight of material concerns from our lives.

Wabi-sabi suggests the notions that nothing lasts, nothing is finished, nothing is perfect. The Persians are known for a proverb about the true beauty of rugs, “A Persian rug is perfectly imperfect, and precisely imprecise.” Although spoken from a culture different than Japan’s, such a sentiment is truly a wabi-sabi one.

Remarkably, wabi-sabi has everything to do with the spirit of the frugal poet. We exist. We go with the flow. We focus on the beautiful. We have strength in light of hardship or snags in our lives. And our poems reflect this attitude. The concept of wabi-sabi reminds me of the lyrics in Leonard Cohen’s song “Anthem,” “Ring the bells that still can ring/Forget your perfect offering/There’s a crack in everything/That’s how the light gets in.”

It is the poets and those with a frugal poet’s spirit who can see both implicit meaning and opportunity in any situation, and can find voice, or at least search for it, to express compassion and humanity even amid injustice or when in mourning. Such is wabi-sabi.

One summer, I signed up for a multi-evening workshop in the craft of handmade bookbinding at Chicago’s Hull House. Our upper floor studio itself was a wabi-sabi environment of lovingly worn benches, nicked but well-used work surfaces and natural lighting pouring in from screenless windows. We used handcrafted papers, linen thread, monster-sized needles, scads of glue, bone folders, thick slices of cardboard and stiff oilcloth in an array of colors. There, I crafted and sewed a number of hardcover blank books, Japanese side-stitched bindings and cloth-covered boxes. The best part, we all helped one another try to get the techniques down as well as share our ideas.

I openly admired one fellow student’s finished handmade book, even though the pages were a bit uneven and wavy. “The only thing perfect is God,” she said, and matter of factly continued her work. I often remember her words in the midst of struggles. I am imperfect and every act of creation carries human imperfection along with it. In the bookbinder’s imperfection lay the beauty of her handmade book.

Flawed fictional characters, for example, are more interesting, textured, memorable and beautiful than perfect, static ones. What would Cyrano de Bergerac be without his big nose, The Little Match Girl without her poverty, or even Star Trek’s Mr. Spock without his lack of emotions?

Below, I attempt to pin down concrete examples of what wabi-sabi may be and what wabi-sabi may not be. You may disagree with some of the entries. You might like to try the same exercise and see where your own concepts surrounding wabi-sabi may lie.

Musings as to what wabi-sabi can stand for:

·      ~ The haunted mansion versus the McMansion.

·     ~  The vase off to one side instead of the center of the table.

·      ~ A piece of driftwood carved by water instead of a diamond faceted by human hands.

·      ~ A simple one-pot, home-cooked meal versus a block-long Las Vegas table buffet.

·      ~ A weekend of solitude versus a month of whirlwind travel with a dozen destinations.

·      ~ The hand-polished wood floor, simple room-divider screen and rolled-up futon versus a football-field-sized bedroom with wall-to-wall carpeting, big screen TV and thick brocade drapes.

·      ~ Browns, greens, grays and off-whites of nature versus neon, day-glow bright pinks and electric blues.

·      ~ Rock, leather, wood, candles and copper instead of steel, LED lights, vinyl, mirrors and glass.

·      ~ A coffee-stained, hand-illustrated journal filled with random thoughts instead of the word-perfect, crisply printed scholarly treatise.

·      ~ A wind-blown scattering of fall leaves on a neatly raked Zen garden.

·      ~ The changing nature of paper and cloth as they fade, fray and tear.

·      ~ Floors cleanly swept, laundry folded and beds made without regard to the type of flooring, price of clothing and thread count of bed sheets.

·      ~ A few handpicked flowers in a bud vase versus a formal English garden.

·      ~ The patina versus the polish.

·      ~ The flea market filled with surprises versus the big box store of generic goods.

·      ~ The used and cared for versus the new, flimsy and garish.

·      ~ Living happily in simplicity instead of sadly in luxury.

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The above is an excerpt from my reference, memoir and creativity guide Frugal Poets' Guide to Life: How to Live a Poetic Life, Even If You Aren't a Poet.

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What is wabi-sabi? How might it define the life of a frugal poet?

Theater games at Chicago's St. Nicholas Theater Company

In addition to poetry, I have a fascination with the stage and theater, at least from a writer’s perspective. At the urging of friend Terry Soto, who also was an avid playgoer, I volunteered evenings (circa 1975?) at the small St. Nicholas Theater Company in Chicago on Halsted Street, north of Diversey. The theater space occupied what was once an auto repair shop. 

William H. Macy (right) in "American Buffalo"

It was founded by the then little known Chicago-based playwright David Mamet and actor William H. Macy. Many of Mamet’s early plays were launched at this little Chicago theater, such as “The Water Engine” and “American Buffalo,” in which Macy appeared. As a volunteer, I answered the phone, helped with the mailings, sat in rehearsals and attended as many performances as I wanted.

People who worked in the theater kept asking me what I was doing there, what I wanted to get out of volunteering. Did I want to become an actress? I wasn’t sure at that stage of my life if I wanted to write plays. I did love the plays of Arthur Miller and Eugene O’Neill, which oozed with poetry as well as edge-of-your-seat drama. At that moment, I merely reveled in just being around a theater and seeing what evolved to bring a play to life. I had no personal goals beyond enjoying my experiences there.

At St. Nicholas, I met lots of actors, took voice lessons (mainly with the goal of improving the way I read my poetry aloud) and knew if I wanted to, I might likely meet someone to go out with. No one, however, particularly attracted me.

As an equity actor, William H. Macy had to take on a longer and more formal name to distinguish him from Bill Macy, who played the husband to Bea Arthur of “Maude,” a popular show on TV at the time. Today, nobody remembers Bill Macy but everyone knows William H. Macy. Back at St. Nicholas Theater, I took one look at Macy and thought, not very charitably, “That little shrimp isn’t going anywhere.” How totally and utterly wrong I was!

Romance may not always be in the air during your extracurricular activities, but you are never wasting time if you are doing something you enjoy and stimulates you.  Getting involved in the theater showed me how the element of poetry woven in seamlessly within truly expert dramatic dialogue could be applied to my own poetry.
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The previous piece appears in my nonfiction memoir, reference and creativity guide Frugal Poets' Guide to Life: How to Live a Poetic Life, Even If You Aren't a Poet. ◦

Theater games at Chicago's St. Nicholas Theater Company

How poetry launched my copywriting day job

The recession was still raging after two years of my pushing around a book cart [at Chicago's Marshall Field's department store], wearing a smock. There were no openings in the store’s art gallery as I had hoped. My thoughts of becoming a gallery or museum curator were quickly evaporating.

One of the exciting aspects of working in the book department was its regular public book signings, hosting such luminaries as novelist Gore Vidal, hairstylist Vidal Sassoon, conductor Sir Georg Solti, thinker and inventor Buckminster “Bucky” Fuller, baseball great Yogi Berra, former NYC Mayor John Lindsay, actor Bob Hope, chef Julia Child and many others. All arrived because they had just written a new book, be it fiction, a cookbook, autobiography or philosophy, giving my then callow self a chance to meet and interact with these successful writers from varied professions.

In addition to customers, certain employees from different departments would often gather around to purchase books and get them signed by the visiting authors. Among the regulars was Mary Ann, the copy chief from Marshall Field’s advertising department, who I also greeted and chatted up while she waited in line to get her books signed.

“Marshall Field’s has an advertising department?” I later asked one of my coworkers. “Where do you think all the newspaper ads come from?” one answered. “You mean all the ads in the Chicago Tribune and Sun-Times come out of here?” I said. “Yeah, they don’t use an agency, the advertising department is in-house,” she answered. A light went on for me.

Before long, I found myself taking the escalators up to the advertising department on the 9^th floor, holding a small sheaf of my poems. I asked the advertising department receptionist if I could see Mary Ann. When she came up to small waiting area, I stood and explained how I was interested in working in the advertising department as a copywriter if they had an opening.

“We don’t have any openings now,” Mary Ann said. “In fact, we just hired a new person.” I suppose I looked a little downcast, but mostly embarrassed. Was I out of my league here? “Do you have an advertising degree?” she asked.

“I don’t,” I said. “I have a degree, but it’s in art history.”

“No degree in English?” she asked.

That smarted. What did I think I was doing up here! “I don’t have an English degree, but I’m a writer,” I said.

“You’re a writer,” she asked, dubiously. “Do you have a portfolio?”

“I have written these poems,” I said. “Maybe you can read them.”

“Poems?!” she said, looking incredulous, but trying not to be rude at the same time. She let me hand them off to her as I extended the sheaf sheepishly her way.

“I appreciate you coming up here, and I know you’ve been working in the store for awhile, but I’m not sure poetry quite matches up with what we’re trying to accomplish with our advertising copy,” she said.

I thanked her for her time, took the escalators back down to the book department and felt totally humiliated from making a fool of myself. I later avoided sitting anywhere near her if I saw her in the employee lunchroom, as I was embarrassed by any of my earlier suppositions that I’d be at least qualified to work in advertising. If I saw her getting onto an escalator, I waited until she was far enough away for me to get on, too, without her seeing me. And when she visited the book department on occasion, I gently tried to sashay the other way or find a reason to duck into the stock room.

One day, someone told me I had a call waiting on our interdepartmental phone. I walked over and picked up the receiver. It was Mary Ann. “Cynthia, can you come up to the advertising department sometime today,” she said. “I’d like to talk with you.”

“Sure,” I said. “I have a break in another half hour. I’ll stop up.” I hung up and tried to catch my breath. What did she want to tell me? I didn’t know what to expect.

When I arrived up by the advertising reception desk, Mary Ann again came out to greet me. “We have an opening in the copy department,” she said. “Someone just left. She took a new job at an advertising agency.”

“She did?” I said, not knowing what else to say.

“I read your poems,” she said.

“You did?” I said, not ever feeling she would even glance at them after I had handed the sheaf off to her several weeks before.

“They’re actually quite good,” she said.

“They are?” I said.

“I think you have potential,” she said. “And because you already know the store so well after working here a couple of years, I’d like to give you a chance if you’re still interested.”

A chance? Yes. As a copywriter? Yes. Yes, I was still interested! I started a couple of weeks later, sitting at a desk and typewriter in a room among 10 other copywriters, an all-women staff from whom I learned so much, hung out with after work and formed friendships with. I wrote newspaper ads about shoes, jewelry, cosmetics, purses, lingerie, even books. What a thrill to see my copy in print in Chicago’s newspapers. Almost as exciting as seeing my poems in print (but not quite!).

The break I received at Marshall Field’s was the start of my career as an advertising writer. This chance has continually fueled my livelihood over the decades. It’s still hard for me to believe even today that a small sheaf of poems, but mostly a generous woman willing to take a chance on me, has made such a huge difference in my life. Thank you, Mary Ann!

If there’s anything I have to share with others about this experience is this: When breaks come, be there for them. When the desire of your heart fires up, follow it. When opportunities and meetings of people arise, follow through. As the songwriter Steve Winwood wrote, “While you see a chance, take it!” Not everyone or even anyone will have the same experience I did, but you will most definitely have your own experiences, your own chances, your own opportunities. Be humble but upfront in pursuing them. Make the most of them.

The excerpt above is from my reference, memoir and creativity guide Frugal Poets' Guide to Life: How to Live a Poetic Life, Even If You Aren't a Poet. 

Note: Looking back, I sometimes feel like my experience was similar to the character Peggy Olson on the Mad Men TV show, ie. someone drawn from the office pool to dive into advertising copywriting. Four years and two jobs after Marshall Field's, I finally did land a job in an actual advertising agency. 

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How poetry launched my copywriting day job