Creativity Styles

Note : In this post I use music as an example. However I guess it applies to all forms of art.

In my belief there are broadly two types/styles of creativity:
1)Spontaneous
2)Deliberate

Spontaneous creativity happens, when for reasons that you cannot state, notes come in a rush into your head and are often gone, before you know it. You may not even be quick enough to note them down. A friend of mine occasionally gets tunes in his head, sometimes even when he is in a bus! If he finds a scrap of paper in his wallet, and is lucky enough to have a pen too, he quickly writes down the notes before he forgets them. Now that he has a mobile with a recording facility, he just records himself singing the notes as they come into his head! Unfortunately, it seems as if he has no control over the time when the tunes come into head. I have had pretty much the same problem a few years ago, but since I neither sing, nor know to read or write music notation, I have ever since disregarded these rushes, relying on deliberate creativity instead. I am certain I would never be able to compose an entire music piece spontaneously and be satisfied with the outcome.

To describe Deliberate creativity, here's a quote by Einstein “How do I work? I grope”. That pretty much sums it up. You have a vague picture of what you want to end up with, but have no idea how to get there. Its much like entering a dark room, with no torch in your hand! You grope your way through. You stumble upon some phrases, examine them, find them unsuitable and put them away. Occasionally you discover some gems, but since they don't fit into the big picture right now, you put them into your pocket, and hope that you will have an opportunity to use them later. And every now and then, you find things, and immediately know that they are just what you were looking for. You keep looking and as you find the phrases, you try and fit them into a jigsaw puzzle, knowing that you don't yet know how its supposed to look when the puzzle is finished. And at times, through an act of Divine Intervention, you enter the 'zone', a fairly well known term in sport. Suddenly the room is brightly lit, with infinite gems in sight, each dazzling in its own right. You feel that you have all the music in the heavens available to you( of course, everyone else might think the music has been imported from hell:), and you then pick and choose what you wish to bring down to the earth. The challenge lies in learning to enter and stay in the 'zone' on will. Indeed, the key that takes you to the zone also unlocks the doors to the wonderful playground of creativity.