Creative Modes Creative Ways: The 11 Modes to Unlock Your Personal Creative Secrets

By Dominic Hay

How many second chances have you had in your life?
Were they given to you, did they just happen by sheer luck, or did you consciously make your own?

CREATIVE MODES CREATIVE WAYS is all about generating your own chances, opportunities, and personal growth, using the natural abilities you were born with, so you can employ them as your situations and circumstances change throughout life. Too many authority figures in our lives have judged and discouraged creative people, processes, products, and environments. We have learned to become our own worst critics, stifling our own ideas and initiatives. Take heart! Creativity is a natural, learnable human cognitive process.

Creative Modes are the sentient sources and raw material of our creative perceptions, and we are born with them. Our senses are specialized and occupy different areas of our brains. Creative Ways are the cognitive means and processes for expressing our creativity. The essential link between our personal Creative Modes and our Creative Ways is a simple and accessible three step process of Hunting, Gathering, and then Harvesting.This unique book will help you to recognize your creative ability so that you can expand on it and enjoy it to your fullest potential. You will find basic approaches, techniques, and ideas to help you find new accessible ways of seeing opportunities and doing things.

DOMINIC HAY wrote this book to help you create more chances in your life. Using several learning methods, he shows you many ways to open up your inherent creativity. There is the compelling story of our ancestor Toba adapting to a hostile environment. There are examples using the HUGH Process© (HUnting, Gathering, Harvesting), because creativity is indeed a natural process, not a destination nor a final result. There are dozens of helpful suggestions and tips to help you develop your skills.

He also divided the Creative Modes Creative Ways text into three learning methods and
cognitive approaches:
1. a fictional narrative based on the origins of creativity; a holistic approach
2. a theoretical framework employing sentient Modes for how our minds generate creativity quite naturally via our given senses; an explanatory reductionist approach
3. a set of examples he calls Ways to illustrate how creativity might be applied to different areas of interest; an instructional approach

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tellwell Talent
• Release date: May 18, 2022
• ISBN: 9780228859383

Dominic Hay

Dominic has worked as a sculptor, painter, graphic designer, and teacher. He has worked inmedical research, industrial design, and other industries. He is a graduate of the Universityof Toronto, where he studied fine art history, computer science, math, and philosophy. He heads Ingenious Chihuahua, a creativity training and publishing company. Contact himat [e-mail] don't have to wait any longer for second chances, you can generate your own when youneed them, by using the simple methods he's outlined for you in this book.

Book preview

Creative Modes Creative Ways

The 11 Modes to Unlock Your Personal Creative Secrets

Dominic Hay

Creative Modes Creative Ways

Copyright © 2022 by Dominic Hay

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Tellwell Talent

www.tellwell.ca

ISBN

978-0-2288-5937-6 (Paperback)

978-0-2288-5938-3 (eBook)

YOUR PERSONAL CREATIVE ADVENTURE

BEGINS RIGHT HERE!!!

For Shoku and Toba,

Marlin Perkins and Jim Fowler,

Lolita and Zorro

EPIGRAPH

For some, Creativity is but a means to an end.

For others, it is the journey

and not the destination that attracts.

For a few, it is a retracing back to their origins.

Table of Contents

EPIGRAPH

FOREWORD

PREFACE

PROLOGUE

Chapter 1: Toba’s Creativity Awakens

Chapter 2: Every Adventure Begins with Exploring

Chapter 3: Darwin Sees a Pattern Emerge

Chapter 4: Writer’s Block vs. Writer’s Hook: Toba’s First Invention

Chapter 5: The Joy of Telos

Chapter 6: Creative Modes

Chapter 7: Curiosity Finds the Cat

Chapter 8: Creative Modes and Creative Ways

Chapter 9: Senses and Modes

Chapter 10: Untangling Creative Modes

Chapter 11: Different Modes to Create

Chapter 12: Shoku Also Explores a New Spirit

Chapter 13: The Visual Creative Mode

Chapter 14: The Visual Mode and Art

Chapter 15: Is Creativity Born of Nature or Nurture? My Ingenious Chihuahua

Chapter 16: Can a Chihuahua Think Outside the Bonsai Dish?

Chapter 17: Toba Refines His Hook

Chapter 18: Are We Living Unconsciously in a Cage?

Chapter 19: From Tangled Roots to Free Routes

Chapter 20: Some Prose to Ponder When You Feel Boxed In

Chapter 21: The Socialization, Mythologicization and Mysticization of Creativity

Chapter 22: So Where Does Creativity Come From? About Creativity

Chapter 23: Toba and Shoku Invent a New Tool

Chapter 24: Must Something Be De Novo in Order to Be Creative?

Chapter 25: Inspirational Prose About Your Creativity

Chapter 26: Sacrifice, Greed, and Jealousy

Chapter 27: Footah Intervenes with His Own Nasty Type of Creativity

Chapter 28: HUGH: Stimulate Your Creativity About Your Creativity

Chapter 29: The HUnting Stage

Chapter 30: The Gathering Stage

Chapter 31: The Harvesting Stage

Chapter 32: Modal Pattern Recognition

Chapter 33: Intelligent Sieves

Chapter 34: The Primal Pattern: Recognizing Different Faces

Chapter 35: Daydreaming: Imaginational Reasoning

Chapter 36: The Lock-and-Key Approach

Chapter 37: A Casual Discussion of Maslow and Hierarchies

Chapter 38: Your Creativity, Your Social Status, Your Brand, and Your Business

Chapter 39: A Child Becomes Famous amongst the Hypothithecus Group

Chapter 40: A Bit More on Maslow’s Hierarchy

Chapter 41: Footah Strikes

Chapter 42: The Creative Journey Back from Loss

Chapter 43: Necessity Means HUGHing

Chapter 44: Shoku Discovers Baked Clay

Chapter 45: 25 Ways You Can Take Three Steps Forward to Stimulate Your Creativity

Chapter 46: Way 1) Creative Process

Chapter 47: Way 2) Creativity

Chapter 48: Way 3) Personal Creative Process

Chapter 49: Way 4) Artistic

Chapter 50: Way 5) Writing

Chapter 51: Way 6) Academic

Chapter 52: Way 7) Engineering

Chapter 53: Way 8) Abstraction

Chapter 54: Way 9) CHR: Collagitate, Harmonize, Reify

Chapter 55: Way 10) CHI: Collagitate, Harmonize, Insight

Chapter 56: Way 11) Belief

Chapter 57: Way 12) Critical Thinking

Chapter 58: Way 13) Fishing

Chapter 59: Way 14) Drawing

Chapter 60: Way 15) Human Activity

Chapter 61: Way 16) Loss and Recovery

Chapter 62: Way 17) Personal Renewal

Chapter 63: Way 18) Phoenix

Chapter 64: Way 19) Behavioral

Chapter 65: Way 20) Play

Chapter 66: Way 21) Innovation

Chapter 67: Way 22) Hunter-Gatherer

Chapter 68: Way 23) Process

Chapter 69: Way 24) Refraction: Turn Bad Habits into Better Habits

Chapter 70: Way 25) Pattern

Chapter 71: Crushing Creativity A Story About the Joys of Limitations

Chapter 72: Crushing Creativity A Story About Being Excluded by the Elite

Chapter 73: Crushing Creativity A Story About a Little Girl’s Yellow Flowers

Chapter 74: Your Personal Creative Model I Create Therefore I Am

EPILOGUE

FOREWORD

Dominic Hay has written one of the few distinctly original books about creativity that I have ever seen.

Most books about creativity are not very original or different; I know because I have read more than a hundred of them (yes, I keep a list). Understanding creativity has been a professional necessity. My career includes marketing research and advertising, so I have worked on dozens of new product launches for major companies. I also have a long history in theatre, on stage and behind the scenes, and have appeared on TV several times. I have enjoyed working with countless highly creative people.

Dominic has always struck me as a Renaissance Man, constantly learning and experimenting and teaching new forms and methods and media. He always thinks different and is eager to share his knowledge and ideas with others. I hope you get the chance to have lunch with him some time, to experience the wide range of his knowledge and opinions; I always head home with my head spinning (in a good way!) He has both boundless curiosity and the ability to concentrate intently on a subject for extended periods. His education and career path have been truly eclectic; his fascinating range of experiences informs the concepts in these pages.

We met in the 1990s in the arts scene in the Toronto area, Dominic coming from the visual arts side and me from theatre. We were lucky to live in a growing city that supported the arts, with municipally funded performance spaces and galleries and an arts council that supported more than a hundred community groups. Even the local chamber of commerce had a Business and Arts committee.

Dominic and I first talked about creativity training at least twenty years ago. In 2015 he started authoring this book; his concept of Creative Modes began percolating then.

Reading the original manuscript was a delightful surprise. (I learned long ago to expect the unexpected from Dominic.) Its high quality reflects his usual exacting standards of thought and artisanship, and the different approaches he offers are original and refreshing, providing you with many ways to explore your creative process.

Dive in!

Gray Hammond, March 2022

PREFACE

People in all walks of life are frustrated, at home and work. We all put aside many, many good ideas because we don’t know how to improve or develop them. Often people suffer from various versions of ‘writer’s block’ and can’t progress to a breakthrough or a ‘eureka’ moment. Businesses want innovation, but aren’t training people in creativity the way they once did. If you feel like you’re all on your own, take heart: you are NOT alone!

The CMCW process can help anyone, of any age, in every aspect of life:

•Unlock the creativity you’ve had since birth

•Unblock the ideas, inventions, and solutions teeming inside you

•Allow your natural abilities to flow freely and effectively

•Enrich your life experiences and personal legacy

•Perhaps even help you find your tribe, brand, or natural market

This book began as a primary textbook training piece for use in creativity workshops, courses and seminars, and I still see it that way. The format of the book is an unusual combination of two styles of writing format. It combines a descriptive, instructive and theoretical text with an overarching paleo-fictional narrative to illustrate the concepts.

The fictional narrative has sections of violence as seen in everyday nature, and includes some human violence, both emotional and physical. As a former sculptor, I’ve been ‘stabbed in the back’ by some very creative people; foundry owners, artists, gallery curators, municipal administrators, and so-called friends whom worked hard to put me down.

I once had a huge contract ripped up by my partners because an uninvolved third party intervened, unprovoked, to destroy the deal. You may ask ‘why?’ and I cannot tell you. The attack on my project was entirely and thoroughly dismantled, and I was unable to re-establish the rapport I had built with those multiple contacts.

Years later, an associate, who was not involved in any way with the deal, let slip some confidential information about the project during an unrelated conversation. I haven’t talked to them since. So, I’m just giving a fair head’s up to the reader that creating content is not for those who can’t afford to go broke when projects are arbitrarily cancelled by those who have pretended to be your friend and supporter.

I’ve also had the bad experience of being rejected from an important juried art show, only to find out that one juror, whom I knew only as a casual associate, actually paid off the other jurists to ensure that my work was rejected.

The sabotage of creativity happens, as there are legions of professionally jealous folks with their attendant schadenfreude, so I’m just offering a head’s up that being creative is not a guaranteed path to success, friendship, loyalty or even basic decency and morality. The world is full of creative plagiarists and naked-faced gaslighters and thieves, like Footah, whom you shall meet soon enough if you decide to continue reading. Please don’t be deterred, it is still worth learning how to deal with your personal creative path; just be wise as to how you go about it. I hope you can learn from both my positive and my negative experiences as I have tried to strike a realistic balance and want to make a healthy, accessible presentation.

Creativity is all about balance and resiliency. This book was written and published during the Covid crisis, so those who have had recent crushing experiences might find some strength in these pages as a means to help them rebound and thrive. I’ve had to struggle back from many a challenge myself. Another important point I would like to clarify is that this book was written carefully to avoid any kind of political perspective or partisanship as I believe creativity is a natural human endeavor, and anyone of any background can enjoy their own creativity.

Generally, the fictional narrative leads by a chapter, then the next chapter or two follows up with a more technical explanation. The format of the instructional text intertwined with a narrative story goes back to some of the early texts I first worked with as a young child. I always liked the illumination of the narrative combined with the instructive text. It has not been structured rigidly, just as I saw fit at the time, and my editor argued strenuously.

It is important to note that the narrative is only loosely based on the potential, but not factually established, experiences of early hominids, and is totally fictional and not to be taken or evaluated as a factually based anthropological thesis. Some chapters are simply text resources for course material and the reader may or may not find them useful.

The imaginary paleo-fictional-narrative takes a more holistic and experiential approach, and the instructional text takes a more reductionist approach. From these different perspectives one can still glean the basic concepts offered, whether one focuses on the narrative or just the instructive text.

I’ve also included some material discussing how creativity can be thwarted in order to illuminate for the reader the pitfalls and put-downs I’ve seen over my creative career. Some are personal and some are anecdotal.

I have kept the chapters fairly short to encapsulate the ideas and make it easy to review. Some who expect a standard treatment of an overall format may be disappointed with the back-and-forth of the styles; however, I hope this format serves my readers well.

Many folks see creativity as a product of spirituality, or perhaps as Michelangelo did, as a product of the Divine. Others see creativity and spirituality as mystical, maybe even magically intertwined in nature, while others see creativity as an essential element of basic humanity that in itself gave rise to the realization and discovery of spirituality, mysticism, and the Divine.

I take the path that creativity, once it appeared in those early hominids, became the essential element of humanity. I don’t propose this as an anthropological argument or debate, because I fully respect and appreciate other folks’ experience with creativity and its relationship to their spirituality and humanity. It is not my place nor purpose here to challenge nor rigorously debate anthropology nor the sound faith and deep beliefs of others as to the origins of ‘humanity.’

I have no acknowledgements nor references nor footnotes to the dozens of other authors and motivational folks who have touched on this subject; they have their ideas, and I have mine.

PROLOGUE

How Did Humanity Become

Hooked on Creativity?

Hundreds of thousands of yester years ago, somewhere on a lush grassland biome in what is perhaps northeast Africa, there was a very large troupe of pre-human hominids living a semi-nomadic life in a vast land full of lush flora, rivers, lakes, and fauna. They were pre-lithic hunter-gatherers who used fire tentatively, as well as crude but effective wooden and bone tools to survive and thrive in their prehistoric world.

These fictional characters weren’t just apes anymore, but they weren’t quite fully human either. Let’s dub these hypothetical pithecus ‘hypothithecus.’ They hadn’t yet any concepts of spirits, God(s) or spiritual life, as everything was immediate and day-to-day; if you were alive, you were eating, and if you were dead, you were being eaten in turn. Brains were getting bigger, and along with that growth came something new under the sun:

The Dawn of Creativity

One of those early hypothithecus was about to have an important encounter with his own burgeoning creativity; his name was Toba. His friend would change the way our species would see itself forever; her name was Shoku.

CHAPTER 1

Toba’s Creativity Awakens

Toba was hungry. He had been for days. This time it was different, because now there was a different type of hunger gnawing away at his insides and it wasn’t just his stomach this time, it was something else and he found the feeling to be very confusing. You see, it wasn’t just his belly that was hungry, it was his mind and his heart as well. His imagination was awakening like a birth; it was kicking and screaming for attention and he couldn’t ignore its ruckus any longer.

For years Toba had been watching things, sometimes so intently that his fellow tribesmen would mock him and laugh. The tribeswomen would tease him as well, Toba, what are you dreaming about today?

Then the giggles and laughter would start. He knew they were not being nasty, just teasing and cajoling for the most part. They all liked Toba, he often brought back game and fish, so this was a friendly acknowledgement of his unusual but humorously tolerated behavior.

Often, he would go hunting or fishing alone, a dangerous habit but to him worth the risk, just to avoid the constant teasing he received in the group. Besides, even his friends would be talking or whispering when they were hunting together, which he found distracted him from his watching with his unique sense of focus. He watched everything: the big, the small, and the tiny. His eyes took everything in. Toba felt compelled to see more and more, and observation invoked very strong feelings within him.

Sometimes as he waited for his prey, he would find himself daydreaming as he watched the herd or grass for movement. He was always thinking about how he would catch his next antelope to bring back to the group. Sometimes he would become so aware of his surroundings that he felt the world was consuming him and he was always anticipating.

Once he saw a spider descending from a branch on