Creativity, in essence, is the beginning of all things in existence. For example, Michelangelo used creativity to design and paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. In today’s era, people like JK Rowling use creativity to dream up fantasy worlds that are visited by many adoring fans through books, movies, and now a theme park. Even Mark Zuckerberg relied on creativity to develop a website that connects people from all over the world.
What does each one of these creative people have in common? They were all influenced by their predecessors. Michelangelo was influenced by early Renaissance masters such as Ghiberti, Ghilandaio, and Giovianni. Mark Zuckerberg had surely heard of Myspace prior to inventing Facebook. And I often argue with people that it’s no coincidence that the horcruxes in the Harry Potter series are tangible items that keep the story’s antagonist alive, just like Sauron’s one ring in The Lord of the Rings. My next blog post, by the way, will be on how to offend any die-hard Harry Potter fan in one sentence.
The visionary artist Pablo Picaso said, “Art is theft.” The New York Times Bestselling author Austin Kleon added to that declaration by saying, “All creative work comes from what came before. Nothing is completely original.” In his book, STEAL LIKE AN ARTIST, Kleon discusses 10 tips for being creative. Number one on the list is: steal like an artist. Kleon says that every artist gets asked, “Where do you get your ideas from?” The honest artist answers, “I steal them.”
The writer Johnathan Lethem once said that when people call something “original,” nine times out of ten they simply just don’t know the reference or original source involved. Think of the last time you created something. It could have been a piece of artwork, a meal for your family, or even a new marketing strategy for your company. Now that you have something in mind, think of how it was created. Did you magically create something entirely “original” out of thin air, or did you take little pieces and ideas of what you saw others do before you and produce something new? If I had to guess, I would assume the latter.
So how do we steal properly without being considered a plagiarist, a copycat, or a knockoff? Simply put, we seek influences and then we imitate. Salvador DalÍ said, “Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.” Copying a book word for word, chapter for chapter is plagiarism. Gaining ideas from authors you idealize and then writing your own story is art. Kleon put it this way, “Nobody is born with a style or a voice. We don’t come out of the womb knowing who we are. In the beginning, we learn by pretending to be our heroes.” We tend do that our whole lives. We constantly think of who we want to be like, and we try to emulate them. In this way we aren’t really “stealing,” rather we are learning to be like them, think like them, and create like them. Kleon said, “A wonderful flaw about human beings is that we’re incapable of making perfect copies. Our failure to copy our heroes is where we discover where our own thing lives. That is how we evolve.”
When you feel a lack of creativity in your life, stop and think of one of your heroes. It can be an author, a musician, an athlete, an entrepreneur, a connoisseur, a saboteur, so on and so forth. Find out what makes them who they are. How do they view the world through their eyes? How do they create? What have they created? Once you have that figured out, steal from them. Don’t plagiarize, but research, absorb, and then emulate. By doing this enough, we take existing matter and create our own world, hoping that one day someone might steal from us.