Everyday Creative: Love

Last month found me delving into all that is love. Ok, well not all of the ideas covered in the "Be Love" chapter of The Creativity Book, but most of them anyway.

Love is such a strong emotion and one that I feel should be part of the creative process. I mean if you are creating something that you don't love then, really why bother. With that said, these last couple of months in design school, I have embraced how much I love creating.

Because I already realized this, I bypassed the first section on renewing your vows with your art and the act of creating, since I think I've pretty well lived this for the last several months. Everyday it seems when I start a new project or complete one, I am renewing the vow to create.

The next exercise to love logic AND intuition was one of my favorites. So often, we (me included) get caught up in being too logical or too intuitive when creating. This exercise asked you to love and embrace both of them, because creativity is about whole-brained thinking and equally relying on both of those skills. To create a balance, Maisel suggests the following :

Spend about a half an hour completing the sentence, "I love logic because...." and then the sentence "I love intuition because..."

The section that I reacted the most strongly discussed helping others. I took up this challenge and reached out to someone and offered my assistance but was rebuffed. I realized from this that I should have asked if they needed help before offering it. Just because I love helping others doesn't mean everyone will willingly accept it.

For the next few weeks, Maisel talked about loving another person and becoming intimate with your work. It seemed a little too weird for a book on creativity, so I skipped those exercises.

I concluded the month with an exercise on rewards. It was enlightening to come up with both big and small ideas to reward myself and to celebrate my achievements. It's been a busy month of creating for me. I finished a 10 page typographic story book, surrealistic Photoshop composite and multiple small design exercises. So an earl grey tea latte and walk by the lake seemed like good rewards.

• Next month, I'll "be working"