trey taylor

Our baby girl is finally here, and she’s a teeny tiny little thing! Norah Elyce was born on Friday and weighed 5 lbs & 15 oz and was 20 inches long. I’ve put a bunch more pics up on my Google+. Check it here.

The Creative Collective recently released an e-book called Creative Matters. I’ve started it, but with my long list of current reads I just haven’t quite finished it. But I will say that what I’ve read is fantastic. It’s a field guide for creatives that create week to week with a firm deadline of Sunday morning looming over them at any given time. It’s written by tons of guys & gals that I follow and admire. If you are a part of church creative team or are creative in any way, you’ve got to download this and soak it up.

Oh and btw, it’s free. Get it here.

Last week I got to go to Seeds Conference at Church on the Move and learn from one of the best Creative Teams on the planet. So I wanted to share some of my notes and thoughts from one of the breakout sessions that Whit George did on improving your creativity now. It was practical and really good. So here ya go…

1 / Thinking about what your going to say more than how your going to say it.

That is huge. Our primary role is communication, so we’ve got to know what it is we are communicating before we figure out how to communicate it.

2 / Be habitual about creativity.

If you don’t make time to be creative on purpose you will never be on accident.

Whit talked about one of my all time favorite books, The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp, which is a must read for all creative professionals… I highly recommend it.

3 / Learn to serve your audience.

How can you and your team best serve them?

4 / Focus on the details.

God is in the details. Learn to focus on the tiny stuff that typically gets overlooked.

5 / Steal Things.

Ed Young Jr. said something similar in the first session by saying “you got eyes, so plagiarize.” I love the quote by Jean-Luc Godard that Whit used even better: ”It’s not where you take things from,  it’s where you take them to.”

Dissect the things that move you, figure out why they move you and use them in the church. Take things you see and put your spin on them and make them fit you.

6 / Creativity is a muscle. Work it out.

Working out once a week or month is not going to get your fit. Work it out daily. Always be creating even if it sucks.

7 / Read books on creativity.

Here are some of his suggestions:

• ‘Outliers’, ‘Tipping Point’ & ‘Blink’ by Malcolm Gladwell
• ‘The Creative Habit’ & ‘The Collaborative Habit’ by Twyla Tharp
• ‘MTIV: Process, Inspiration and Practice for the New Media Designer’ by Hillman Curtis

Here’s another that I’ll add in:

• ‘Addicted to Mediocrity’ by Franky Schaeffer

You can read more of Whit’s thoughts on creativity and that of his team here.

I ran across this in some old notes on a talk I gave about character, it messed me up a little this morning:

We choose our character.

In fact, we create it every time we make choices. Whether to cop out or dig out of a hard situation. Whether to bend truth or stand under the weight of it. Whether to take the easy money or pay the price.

+ Your character determines who you are.

+ Who you are determines what you see.

+ What you see determines what you do.

I always seem to have a lot of creative irons in the fire (as most of us creative’s do), tons of projects, ideas, dreams and aspirations floating around. Some get created, some don’t. Most get shoved under the rug until time presents itself or it burns a hole through your soul to the point that you can’t not create. Some just never happen because the idea is killed before it ever had a chance to survive.

I ran across an article in Create Magazine awhile back and its haunted me. In it, author Bob Kodzis lays out our struggle to overcome fear in creative endeavors.

Fear is the Adolf Hitler of creativity killers. It is responsible for supressing and destroying more brilliant ideas than all of the other creativity killers combined. It is a core ingredient of the most potent creative poisons. Fear limits the volume and dilutes the quality of the ideas we generate. It radically constricts the judgement of creative directors, bosses and clients.”

There’s no doubt that fear is paralyzing, it’s the single most destructive element in our minds. It can and will stop you from creating. Maybe it’s the fear of failure, or of being laughed at, or maybe just having someone think it was a stupid idea. But if you allow that to stop you from creating then you’re short changing yourself and ultimately God. These are irrational fears. We create first off for an audience of One. He matters most. But what he sees is the intent of the heart.

Secondly its a matter of faith. Faith that the gifts and talents you and I have been given are from God, and that he has a design in mind for you and your talents. God is bigger than us. He truly is a know it all… and I’ve got to have faith in that. I’ve got to have faith in the fact that God trust me with His creativity and in that I should never be fearful. I should create.

You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.  – Eleanor Roosevelt

What are creativity killers in your life?