The Creativity Book (Paperback)

Before you sit down with your pencil (or maybe a purple gel pen or a big crayon in your favorite color?), find yourself a quiet, comfortable spot (on your bed surrounded by stuffed animals, up in a tree in your backyard, behind the couch in the family room with a glass of chocolate milk). Then go for it.

In each list below, put a check or a star (or whatever other creative mark you want to use) next to each activity you think would be fun to try. Pretend money, time, and permission from your parents and all those other limits in your life don't count. (They do, of course, but not while you're taking this quiz!) You don't have to already know how to do any of the things you check off-they just have to sound like fun to you.

____ Planning a theme party (outer space, Hollywood, beach, St. Patrick's Day, that kind of thing)

____ Putting together a hike for a bunch of your friends, complete with picnic lunch, special hiking hats, and songs to sing along the way

____ Devising a hilarious scavenger hunt

____ Having a theme movie night (maybe everybody watches The Prince of Egypt dressed like Egyptians or Hebrew slaves; you play "Does the Movie Match the Bible"; you all eat Passover food)

____ Going all out for a sports event-like having a tailgate party before your brother's Little League game, wearing the team colors, making up a cheer to do from the stands

____ Wearing a different style of outfit every day for a week (cowgirl one day, feminine and roman- tic the next, '70s flower child the next, etc.) with hairdo to match

____ Putting together a scrapbook of all your friends and the stuff you've done together

____ Redecorating your bedroom

____ Making a different journal (with decorated cover, of course) for each different part of your life (one for your God experiences, one about friends, one about things you like in nature, one to complain in, etc.)

____ Experimenting in the kitchen until you come up with perfect nachos

____ Making a tribute to each member of your family-maybe by painting each person's portrait or writing a poem about each one or making up a song with a verse for each person

____ Being part of a theatrical production-either as the playwright, the set designer, the lighting designer, the costumer, the musical director, the dance choreographer, an actor, or the director

____ Going to an arts camp where you can learn about and play with music, visual arts (like painting, sculpture, drawing), acting, dance, writing-or any combination of those

____ Helping to put together a creative worship service, using any or all of your musical, visual arts, acting, dancing, and writing talent

____ Going on a trip to a foreign country where you would learn about that culture's music, visual arts, acting, dance, literature- some combination of those or even all of them

Let's find out where you shine. Count how many items you chose in each list and write the numbers below:

List 1 _____

List 2 _____

List 3 _____

If your highest number is in List 1, you shine most brightly in creative activities. You love-or would love-to plan unique parties and outings, and dream up cool ways to bring people together to do things besides sitting around playing video games and watching TV. You may never have thought about doing things like those on the list but noticed yourself getting jazzed when you read them. That means you're a "creative activities" person. If you pay attention to that part of yourself-which was put there by God-you're going to live a rich life, full of adventure and love and meaningful stuff done for God's glory. Pretty exciting, huh?

If your highest number is in List 2, you shine most brightly in personal creativity. You love-or would love-to design, make, dream up things that are fun for a person to do alone. Maybe you love clothes, cooking, decorating, and memorabilia (things like scrapbooks and photo albums and journals and autograph books). Perhaps you love to fix your friends' hair, explore your mother's jewelry box and get ideas for jewelry you'd like to make, or just snip pictures of things you like out of magazines. If you pay attention to that part of yourself-which was put there by God-not only are you going to be quietly happy with your lifestyle, but you're going to be a model for other people who may not be enjoying their lives so much. It's all about finding creative ways to express the "you" that God made you to be. Imagine how much fun that would be.

If your highest number is in List 3, you shine most brightly as an artist. You're interested in the things we usually think of when we say the word "art." These are areas like music, the visual arts (painting, drawing, sculpting, crafts, those kinds of things), dance, writing, and acting. You don't have to have tons of talent or be famous to enjoy those things. You just have to want to experience the fun of it-and you obviously do. Living an artist's life, even as an amateur dabbler who paints murals on the bathroom walls or makes up bedtime stories for her kids, can be a satisfying way to connect you with God and help you feel his pleasure in each small, artistic thing you do. What a great life that would be!

If you had almost the same highest number in two of the lists or high numbers in all of them, you've discovered more than one shining light in yourself. That doesn't mean you're more creative than other people-it just means you've already figured out that there are oodles of ways to express the "you" God made. It's possible for anybody to do that-or for people to simply shine WAY brightly in just one area. What matters is that you do the creative things you love to do. That pleases God.

If you had very few or no items marked, that does not mean you weren't created to be creative. Maybe your special thing just wasn't mentioned in the quiz. Or perhaps you should get somebody who knows you well to go through the quiz with you. That person may see things in you that you didn't even realize were there. In any case, keep reading! As you read, it's an almost certain guess that a light will go on in your head and you'll say, "Oh, yeah! I am creative after all!" That's why this book was written-to give you fun ways to get to know yourself better and discover that shining light of creativity God has placed in you. Get ready to be amazed!

GIRLZ want to know

You're sure to have some questions before we start. The Girlz definitely did. The answers to their questions could help to clear the way for you to explore your own creative self.

* LILY: My mom says I'm a perfectionist about creative stuff, and it's true that I do like to get things right and fix things that turned out lame before I go any further on a project. I think I just have high standards. She says I'm missing out on the fun that way. Is she right?

She is. (Don't you hate it when that happens?) You think you just want to make things perfect, but what's really happening is that you're not letting yourself keep going with a creative project. You get stuck fixing all the little details and pretty soon it isn't a creative project anymore. It's just doing something right. You can do math problems right, but that isn't creative (have you noticed?).

When you try to make everything perfect as you go, whatever you're doing loses what we call "spontaneity." It ends up being stiff and not very natural-definitely not an expression of you. It's kind of like erasing an answer on a test so many times that you rub a hole in the paper. Being a perfectionist doesn't make things perfect. It just makes you think it can never be good enough, that there's always something more you could do to make it perfect, and that takes all the fun out of it.

Try just finishing a project all the way through before you stop to fix things, and see what happens. Ask yourself, "If I didn't have to do them perfectly, what kind of things would I try?" Then just go for it!

* SUZY: I'd like to make up my own gymnastics routine, but what if it isn't any good? I mean, what if it's dumb and everybody laughs at it? Should I just let the choreographer do it, since she's, like, this professional?

The first thing you should do is decide to make up your routine just for yourself, for your own pleasure. Don't think of it as something you have to perform for other people. You might decide to do that later, but for right now, just play around with it by yourself.

Remember as you go that what you come up with might actually be "dumb"-at first. Every work of art needs time to grow, change, and develop. You should try lots of things. Some of it won't work and you'll end up tossing it and trying something else. But eventually, it will all come together and you'll have something you really love (you-not anybody else yet). It may sound weird, but to create something really good you have to be willing to create something that's really bad in the beginning.

(Continues...)