The art of thoughts by Graham Wallace

The art of thoughts by Graham Wallace

[One of the first models of the creative process based on his knowledge of the accounts written by artistic and scientific luminaries].


As per Walls, creativity has following steps - preparation (gathering background information and exploring and focusing on the problem to be solved), incubation (internalizing the problem and then taking a break from actively thinking about it), illumination (a moment of insight in which a creative solution to the problem pops into conscious awareness) and verification (judging the appropriateness of the solution or idea, elaborating on it and actually applying it to the original problem).



Following are in fact taken from ‘Your creative Brain by Shelley Carson who abstracted the book - Art of thoughts in the following way.

Preparation:
Your brain is home to an immense repository of information, including semantic knowledge (gleaned from school, books and other source of information), auto biographical memories (you. The moment to moment experience of the world) and physical skills (how to ride a bike etc). This collection of information is unique to you. No one else has this particular mental library. That is why there is no doubt that you can create novel and original ideas, because none has your unique database.

The second part of the preparation process consists of acquiring the skills and information that are specific to your particular area of desired creative endeavor (Needs to be a domain expert to create new idea in that domain).

Incubation:
There are two routes in this phase. Deliberate pathway & spontaneous way.

Deliberate pathway steps in the following order::
Gather General Knowledge and specific skills, problem finding, problem solving (iterative), Evaluations, Elaboration, & Implementation.
You will resist the incubation period and continue to consciously searching for a solution to the problem.

Spontaneous way steps:
Gather General Knowledge and specific skills, problem finding & immersion, incubation, Evaluations, Elaboration, & Implementation.
You will be taking break from your creative problem can allow several beneficial things to happen in brain. The incubation period allows you to attend to other matters while you continue to work on the problem at a level below conscious awareness.

Illumination:
This stage is called ‘insight or inspiration (from Greek notion that the gods breathed into). All describe feeling as though the creative idea were coming from somewhere outside themselves because they did not consciously think up the idea: it was just suddenly there. many people believe that illumination is the province of so-called creative geniuses. Illumination is a skill that can be learned.

Verification:
Not all creative ideas are good solutions to your problem. You need to select the best out of the whole choices/options. this is the evaluation stage. The final phase of this process is called implementation. Your work is no good until it reaches the intended audience.