| What
is the difference between a "creative" person and an "uncreative"
person?
Creative
persons
- are ceaselessly
observant,
- are receptive
to ideas from every source, &
- enjoy combining
and recombining ideas in novel and logical ways.
Creative persons are
willing to discipline their minds in order to
generate ideas and to work logically and methodically.
The creative
process includes both logic and inspiration — as well as close
attention to detail. The
creative process in making art, in making literature, and in composing
reports for this course is basically the same sort of process.
Here is a short
review of the creative process:
[1] Generate
ideas
Collect ideas from
various sources
- logic and imagination
— ask "what if?"
- library research
— ask the reference librarian for help
- internet research
— caution: some sources are better than others
- public documents
— archives such as found in the county building and local historical
societies
- fieldwork (interviewing)
— go out and talk to people who know about what you are researching
- fieldwork (observation)
— go out and look, take measurements of buildings, make sketches
[2] Organize
your information
To be perfectly
frank: organizing takes a lot of mental effort.
Organizing is the
most difficult step. Don't
skip this step!
If you do not put
adequate effort into organizing your information, your composition will
be disorganized .
Remember:
Organized
is good.
Disorganized
is bad. |
Read the examplars
provided in the syllabus to see how to organize a formal analysis.
If you are having trouble, email me and I will help you.
[3] Draft
your composition (formal analysis, report, term paper, etc)
If you have done a good job of organizing your information,
writing your report will be easy — just turn each point in your
organization chart into a sentence
[4]
Revise your composition
- Set your composition
aside and come back to it the next day.
- Read your composition.
- You will find
that you have new ideas which you will want to include in your report.
- You will find
that some parts of your report don't flow and are not clear.
- You will have
to reorganize your composition in order to include your new ideas
and clarify any parts that don't present your ideas clearly.
Generating
new ideas + Re-organizing +Re-writing = Revising
You see that
the fourth step, revising, "loops back" and
includes the first three steps (generating, organizing, drafting).
Repeat the
first four steps until you are satisfied that you have covered
the topic adequately. |
[5] Proofreading
- Set your revised
composition aside and come back to it the next day.
- Read your revised
composition.
- Look for typos
and other small errors.
- Fix them. (White-out
is okay.)
- You're done.
- Congratulate
yourself — through exercising discipline, you have grown as
a creative person.
Note:
An hour or a day or a month after you are done with the report, you
will think of new ideas you would like to include. That's because you
are a creative person and every day you are constantly going through
the steps of the creative process. |