Re: Creativity

["Virginia L. Krenn" <asdxvlk -at- OKWAY -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU>]

     I do not consider myself to be a real creative person. I am more of a
     left-brain type. I play the piano quite well. But, only insofar as I
     read and memorize music written by someone else. I cannot just sit
     down and start playing innovatively as my son does. I can also paint
     and draw very well. But, again, it is something that I have to have
     seen. And, again, I can't make up pictures from my mind the way that
     my daughter does.

     I am an extremely logically oriented person and very literal minded.
     (Perhaps that is why I love puns and enjoy the Dennis Miller show.)

     However, I am insightful which I consider to be different from creative.
     Solutions to problems seem to pop into my head sometimes. A lot of my
     friends and relative think that I have ESP. And to a certain degree, so do
     I. But, mostly, I think that it is what used to be called women's
     intuition. This has more recently been shown to be a result of the fact
     that women tend to have a larger corpus collosum. This results in better
     and quicker transfer of information between the two hemispheres of the
     brain.

______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
     Author:  Ed Hoornaert <Ed -dot- Hoornaert -at- ventana -dot- com> at SMTP

In my time lurking on the list I've seen music mentioned numerous times,
and several people have admitted to being musicians, such as Mike Keene
and the woman -- name forgotten; apologies, but my computer has more
memory than I do -- who supports life 2, madrigals, with life 1, tech
writing.

In a similar vein, Kayla Westra (Equipment needs) mentioned writing
fiction on her 286, and Virginia Krenn talked about writing when she
retires. Probably there are a lot of other creative pursuits followed by
tech writers on the list.

All of which matches a personal observation of mine: that there is a
tremendous amount of creativity in the technical writing community.

So, what is the role of all this creativity in the tech writing process?
Does it help, hinder, and if so, under what circumstances?  Is creativity
a way of thinking that helps when faced with a process or page layout
problem?  Do you consider yourself creative, or a technician?