Creative Writing Workshop

Lesson 3: Do You Have What It Takes?

You don’t feel creative? It might comfort you to know that some of our most creative and famous personalities were shut down as kids. There’s plenty of evidence that ordinary acting kids have overcome difficult, and imperfect childhoods to become highly creative adults. By surmounting serious obstacles children have turned a bad situation into a creative one, conquering poor teaching, physical handicaps or poor emotional adjustment. Here are two stories about the childhood of famous adults.

Smart Kids---Creative Adults?

Charles Shultz, creator of the characters in the “Peanuts” comic strip was never allowed to draw cartoons in school. “Only in the seventh grade one time . . .. The teacher for one brief period let us experiment with drawing political cartoons. Outside of that I don’t recall ever being allowed to draw cartoons,” said Shultz.

As a child Robert Louis Stevenson was tormented by nightmares that caused him to wake up screaming. Stevenson later described how his dreams “Became a stage upon which he conceived some of his best stories.”

The work of people like Shultz and Stevenson illustrate an element of creativity that needs to be considered. That is, superior intelligence is necessary for highly imaginative works, but the smart person is not always creative. A certain amount of intelligence is required for original thinking. Beyond that, being more or less intelligent doesn’t always determine the level of accomplishment.

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