Creativity is the foundation of artistic expression. Before you can create anything you have to generate new and novel ideas about what you want to say and how to go about saying it. Jack Foster’s book How to Get Ideas is an amazing guide to the idea generation process. Creative inspiration isn’t a mystical mystery but a learnable skill.
Jack Foster’s book breaks down the steps of generating ideas into practical lessons. He talks about having the right mindset for ideas to flow (including how to become more idea prone, developing a playful mindset, being courageous, and seeking out new knowledge and experience). He also give practical tips on generating ideas, such as combining different concepts into something new, learning to clearly define the problem you’re trying to answer, and how gathering new information about the problem leads to creative answers.
To Jack Foster, creativity is a combination of having the right mindset and doing the work of problem solving. These skills aren’t just important to being an artist but also have value in the rest of your life. Creative problem solving is a useful skill by everyone and How to Get Ideas is a great book that really delivers on its title.
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