The thing about inspiration is that it can come from anywhere.
Earlier this year I was just beginning the idea of making some sort of creativity program. I was thinking about who it would be for, how I’m going to get people involved, and (most importantly of course) what I’m going to name it. Usually, titles come at the very end of the process for me. But in the work I’ve been doing in community art lately I’ve been pulled in by the power of a good name. As a long winded person, how succinct can I be?
My first idea was Just Add Color. I thought that the subtitle might be something like a Crash Course in Creativity. Literal, to the point, alluding to an already used phrase. Unfortunately, someone else had already thought of that. And so when I turned to Google to be reassured that I was the genius who came up with this for the first time, instead I found Tina Seelig‘s inGenius: a Crash Course in Creativity.
At first I was put out.
My happy bubble of an idea had been punctured by a woman with years of experience under her belt. She had not only stolen my idea (by thinking of it first) but had done it better than I can at this point in my life. For a few days I refused to even look at her book. But, eventually, I rallied. I watched a video of her explaining the book (look below) and became intrigued. I was still hesitant, slightly downtrodden, but now I was interested.
In the end, during my great pre-Christmas book binge, I bought her book. See, by this point I had come up with a new idea. Because the title I first thought of was already claimed I was grudgingly forced to think of something else, and that’s exactly what I did. My book is currently titled Don’t Make Art, Just Make Something. And you know what? That’s much closer to what I wanted to say in the first case anyway.
But back to Tina and her book now speeding my way.
I finally started to read it with the notion that since this woman sole my original idea, I’d just have to read hers in order to make sure that mine is better. This may seem petty, but in the artistic world, this is one of the greatest forms of respect.
In fact, from my frustration grew an incredible amount of respect. I couldn’t put her book down. I read chapters by the bunch and found myself unexpectedly at my stop after a seemingly very short bus ride. I’ve had countless ideas spawn off of the ones I read in that book, found out what the heck Twitter is actually about, and am at least one big step closer to my own book. Suffice to say, although she may have taken my original idea from me, Tina Seelig (without having any idea who I am) pushed me forward, past the initial scraps, to a deeper understandings of what I actually want to do.