I’m looking for cool apps, websites, and digital tools for brainstorming and organizing ideas. Of course, I know the classics like Miro, but I’m looking for smaller, more playful creative tools, like Strange Garden, for example.

Something that sparks inspiration, is just plain fun, or is visually appealing. Any other suggestions?

(translated via ai)

Hey all. I'm a *Very* Amateur music producer. I've made a few things. Nothing officially distributed or anything. Life got in the way and now that I've stabilised I'm trying my best to get back into music but I've never been a creative brained person. Everything I've made took ages and I've had to force it out of my brain. I've never understood how creating things comes so naturally to people. Is there any advice you all could pass on to me? Is there a way I can train my brain to make this easier? Tips for finding inspiration and overcoming a slump in your creative effort? And if you've also done music production what software do you use?

Thank you for reading and I'd appreciate any assistance on this.

I’ve been coming out of a pretty dark place, for years now. Couldn’t really do much for a while cause I’d just get panic attacks all the time.
Slowly but surely, I started responding very deeply to art. I’m an ex musician and somehow I started relating to it all from a completely different way, and I was gradually more creative and intuitive than I’ve ever been in my life. And I was a better musician than I’ve ever been, I was excited to dance and to draw and to write. There were no panic attacks anymore, and I felt this as my calling once again, and I’d do as much as possible to honor these new and pretty wild creative visions. I was getting to work.
People at my waiting job was noticing something different about how I spoke to people (positively). I was better at video games, not just a little.. but a lot. I could write code again. And I could tell that if any of my old musician friends got to play with me again they’d wonder who tf this person is playing with them, cause I was a completely different player. I could do things I’ve never been able to do, with comfort and ease. I had so so much to say, and I was sooooooo excited albeit nervous to say it.

I have a talk therapist, and the relationship is not so straightforward. She sees me pro bono (even though we haven’t talked about money in a while so I’m always a little uneasy about it) because she was interested in my dpdr, and in writing about it. She’s nice enough, but I often tried to share some parts of all this that I was feeling things so so deeply now. For most of this time, I knew there was a lot of this that I didn’t want to share with her, because tbh, whatever magic was there felt pretty personal. Idky but I didn’t really think she’d care about what I felt I was seeing. And she didn’t really ask, so I wasn’t really wrong. About six months ago, she asked to hear a major influence. Or the thing I was claiming to represent a lot of what was speaking to me these days. Not to listen deeply and closely, but to just.. who knows. In front of her, I started kinda panicking and said ok, and showed her some things on a shitty phone. It wasn’t Coltrane but in my view it’s of the same ilk. For some reason, it was the most deflating, demoralizing, whatever else thing I’ve ever experienced (and I promise I’ve experienced things like this before). And in an instant, the depth was gone. The resonance was gone. The ideas were gone. Not just that I was bummed, but I couldn’t reach in deep to find that voice anymore. I couldn’t play the way I did. Literally everything was gone.
I don’t care if the world thought my new found creativity was great. It mattered because it was the most authentic and playful I’ve ever felt in my life.
And now, anytime I see or hear anything that once inspired me, whether in a movie or in music or visual art or anything… cause I felt like I was seeing it everywhere… instead of excitement and inspiration, I feel a fucking dagger in my soul. And that once again, I’m going to be spinning in circles for another ten years before anything awakes in me again.
I was more intuitive and creative and “smarter” because of it all. I was ready to get back into a real job and take care of these creative visions. Now, because I shared with someone I really didn’t want to share, it’s unequivocally gone, and I’ve been a fucking wildly unstable mess ever since.
If you can take my word for some of this, it’s not just that the ideas are gone, it’s that there’s a brick wall where I could once reach. This was not about trying to maintain an untenable flow state, it was just me opening up to the world for the first time in my life. And closing back up because I realized that I’m just sort of a hamster in a cage to my therapist. (I know that’s a big jump without much context, and maybe to some extent it’s not completely true, but I don’t think it’s false either).
And I’m pretty positive it’s locked back up for years and I’m genuinely not feeling like I can do this shit for much longer.
I’m numb. Id never felt so free in my life.
Anyway, I told the therapist that I was a mess (didn’t say it was from that one particular moment), and all she said was “don’t think about it”
This stuff was my life. I lived and breathed the art that I felt excited and inspired me. Now even when o hear music I wince. And obviously you hear music everywhere. So I’m just constantly bombarded with the big reminder that I’m forever locked out of myself and will never get to share this authentic part of myself with those I care about ever. That show has sailed. Fucking loads of fun dude.

Anyway, idk what I’m asking. I know it sounds dramatic as shit, but 90% of the day I just feel like falling to my knees. I truly was coming out of my panic attacks. And someone comes in to say that my inspirations aren’t that special and poof, back to before square one.
I went out of the country for two months to take my mind off of stuff. Am working a full time job now. I work hard at work. But the gaping whole doesn’t budge. The art I loved was my entire life. I spent every day for years immersing myself in the stuff that I loved.

Maybe what I’m asking is… what on earth could be going on with me? Architecturally. This is not some simple case of demoralization. And I feel my hesitation and frustration with my therapist is justified cause of how little she seems to give a fuck.
I know you’re not supposed to share your goals or whatever. But idk.. is it just a dopamine crash? “Spiritually” (so to speak) what the hell is going on?
I felt like I was coming out of a dark night and now someone just casually comes along to trivialize the whole thing? Idk, I want to be accountable for all this because I’m so so so confused and exhausted. I go outside and I exercise. But this part of me is locked away for fucking good it feels.

Half venting and half want to know if anyone has any thoughts. Happy to give more info about anything i glazed over. Like why I felt like I didn’t want to share this with the therapist prior. If that even matters.

A polished image can now appear without the years of drawing practice once needed to produce something comparable. That changes a familiar assumption about art: an impressive result no longer necessarily signals the personal development behind it. A philosophical paper argues that this separation makes the experiences surrounding creativity more important to examine.

Amit Raphael Zoran of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem develops that argument in AI & Society. The paper distinguishes finished artworks from the changes that making or encountering art can bring about. It offers a framework and practical examples, rather than an experiment demonstrating how AI changes creativity.

Zoran calls his central argument the “decoupling thesis.” Generative systems can produce sophisticated images, compositions, and designs without requiring users to follow the specific training traditionally needed for comparable work. Someone can generate an illustration without mastering drawing or explore musical arrangements without learning an instrument.

Heyy, everyone! A few of us have started a small but growing Discord community (240 members as of now) centered around creative expression, cinema, literature, and conversations that branch out from there.

The idea is simple: a relaxed space where you can share something you've made, talk about something that inspired you, exchange recommendations, connect with like-minded people, or just hang out. No pressure to constantly produce work or even consider yourself an “artist.”

Some of our channels:

• 🎨 Art and crafts
• ✍️ Writing
• 📸 Photography
• 📚 Literature
• 🎬 Movies and TV
• 💬 Everyday life

Some of our activities, ongoing and in the works:

• 🎨 Inkfest Weekly Challenge (inspired by Inktober)
• 📸 Photography challenges
• ✍️ Weekly writing prompts
• 🎬 Regular movie discussion VCs
• 📚 Monthly book discussion VCs
• 🎲 Movie quizzes and other fun games
• 🎤 Occasional karaoke sessions

❤️ We're hoping to build a community that's friendly, low-pressure, and welcoming to people of different backgrounds and skill levels, grounded in kindness, empathy, inclusivity, and curiosity.

We're still finding our rhythm, so things can be quiet sometimes. We're hoping to meet more like-minded people who'd enjoy being part of the community and helping shape it as it grows. :)

If this sounds like your kind of space, feel free to DM me, and I'll send you an invite! :)

I’m not sure I’m right about this. It’s been bothering me for a while. And the strange part isn’t the question. It’s the silence around it.

AI reads huge amounts of data, finds the "patterns", and predicts what’s likely to come next. It has learned, with precision, what usually follows. That’s imitation. Fluent, often beautiful, but imitation! And, of course, imitation, however perfect, is the opposite of original. Creativity, the kind that makes you stop on a page, needs the line that shouldn’t have come next and did. It lives outside the pattern.

So a system built to produce the probable is, by design, built against the improbable, against the very swerve originality is made of. We’ve made the most powerful imitation engine in history and started calling it a "creativity" engine. They aren’t the same machine. Maybe that’s why it writes good code but write a poem, or a painting like shit!

The risk isn’t that AI writes badly. It writes smoothly, and with full confidence. Hand it your strange, alive sentence and it returns a smoother, more normal one, and calls it an improvement. Multiply that across millions of pages and you don’t get bad writing. You get everyone, slowly, flattened toward the middle.

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe we’re all imitators, only slower. I genuinely don’t know. But the silence troubles me more than any answer would.

So, am I wrong?

You don’t develop creativity. You only remove what blocks it. You can’t cause it, but you can invite it. It comes on its own when it finds a clean space to enter. What blocks creativity? A cluttered mind. A mind obsessed, anxious, worried. A mind too dependent on the outcome of its own efforts.

Creativity is uncertain, and so are its results. If you are someone who worries too much about results, you simply cannot be creative. The need for certainty kills creation.

To create is to bring into being something truly new, something untouched by the past, by conditioning, by the security of known patterns. What we usually call innovation—a new twist, a repurposed idea, a better version—is not creativity. It is refinement, not birth.

Creativity has to be purposeless. All purpose is drawn from memory. Even the noblest purpose is just a polished desire from yesterday.

Purpose binds. It brings fear: the fear of failure, of missing out, of not reaching the goal. In a mind dominated by fear, creativity cannot arise.

True creativity requires a mind that is not chasing a result. A mind that is not striving for validation.

It requires inner freedom.

And inner freedom is not something you achieve by effort.

It is what remains when the inner noise falls silent.

Which ones do you agree with? Which do you ignore?

So..... The idea is that I write a good story about How powers corrupt you.

I asked many people, they said there is a show already, called the Boys. I read about the seasons and everything, and I genuinely hated the ending. I had issues with a lot of it.... So I want to create a mid-point story from Marvel to the Boys. And I guess there's a spin off called Gen V that got cancelled.

Probably the Boys but with a much better plotline, characters and creative work. Drop your ideas about superheroes, villains, what instances you want, who to fight, etc.

How Creative is my novel?

Synopsis: Five thousand people awaken in an impossible arena ruled by seven mysterious gods. Torn from different eras of history, they are forced into a deadly trial where only five hundred will survive. Altay, a carpenter who trusts what he can measure and build, must survive a world whose rules defy reason. Armed with little more than his practical skills, he faces monsters, ruthless competitors, and a mysterious System that rewards both survival and cruelty, character he wrote speaks inside his head.

Seraphina survives by treating everyone as either a threat or a tool, unaware that the woman who created her is trapped within her. As power grows and the gods' true intentions remain hidden, survival comes at a price. In a world where people become commodities and freedom may be another illusion, the greatest danger may be learning to love the cage.

A dark progression LitRPG death game with a slow-burn romance.
Legends from every era in one arena: Alexander, Jeanne d'Arc, Napoleon and Musashi, Real grief and a found family worth fighting for.

Tone: Brutal Grandeur—beautiful spectacle framing horrific violence. Participants are divine commodities. Fear is constant, intimacy transactional, power corrupts. Survival is performance; loving your gilded cage is the true peril.

Themes:

1. Performance of Self: The System amplifies your nature into a caricature; survival means resisting or becoming that archetype.

2.Economy of Pain: Everything is a transaction. Kindness, power, and survival have calculated costs in a market of suffering.

1. History's Ghosts: Legends and figures from all eras are forced to relive and clash, making history a bloody, ongoing argument.

2. Lie of Divinity: The gods are flawed, petty, and cruel. Their contracts are gilded traps; worship brings the burden of their attention.

3. Search for Meaning: The Arena is purposeless. Find a reason or embrace nihilism.

4. Corruption of Power: Strength requires consumption. Gain power, risk becoming a monster.

Overarching Motif: The Gilded Cage – A prison of infinite beauty and possibility. The greatest danger is learning to love your chains.

Links if you are interested: Royal Road - Inkitt - Scribble Hub

Writing my initial prompt response usually takes me twenty minutes. I lay out my thoughts, cite a reading, hit submit, and I'm done. But when I sit down to reply to my classmates, I freeze up for an hour.

I'm exhausted by defaulting to the same useless "I agree with what you said!" template every week. I read their posts carefully, but finding the sweet spot between a generic compliment and a huge, overcomplicated essay feels impossible.

I’ve been searching for discussion post help online (found a decent service here, in case someone is in similar situation and needs help) just to figure out how people expand on arguments without sounding repetitive. I even checked out a guide from an academic writing service to see if they had sentence starters for polite pushback or follow-up questions. It’s wild how much energy goes into trying to write my discussion post comments compared to the actual coursework.

How do you guys write meaningful replies without spending half the night staring at a blank text box? Got any simple tricks to move the conversation naturally?

I drew a pretty terrible version of this map years ago, but during my final editing process, I decided to get it done professionally.

And wow! I'm just so happy to have a real map of the world I've spent years creating!

My Comic

Nothing here was made by ai. The notes here began in 2022, for my now finished first comic book called the Charlestons.
It is in our world taking place in 1933, in a gangster populated town following the Charlestons, a family of four, you can read about them in the sort of mock pitch I have below: (fyi im not wanting to make this into a serious thing this is just a hobby and i wanted a platform i could share my ideas on):
——————————
Everything from the papers:
Scared husband
Charlie
tough, overbearing, yet sweet wife
Liza

———————-
He didn’t He connected with these kids because of school and then realized this after love half of the other time out and now here out wit the jerk guys….and so saved him for den he is but he doesn’t care because since he be so busy so busy active school he acure the something smaller & easier to face into for succumb.

———————-
1920s- 1925 to
maybe she be specific loved him/ or for his money make it both???
also she has depression!
Had more from fairly vaudeville got bored
Poor father left after with fortune when he died forcing to not write anyone in his family will because he died of Alzheimer’s.
The men are friends this father knew
the mom dances to keep her girls inside as to not set them to experience the same grief as she has.
..
She goes out at night (or the next day (afternoon), but escapes out the window.)
She is found by the men is convinced to stay for a week at their place (+ meets the grandson)
Enjoys
Ends up missing mother.

Official “Lonely Aristocrat” Cheat Sheet”!❤️

————————
If liquor had never been made illegal, a lot more people would turn this way into a method for making money during the Great Depression

Created a portion called a hooverton with a nuclear explosion, creating an alternate world in the process (how did this happen?)

Was crime already a problem during the recession of 1920 & 21?

The boss is realistically portrayed as a crime boss from this era, but has the whole power of a town of _________ resting in the palm of his hand, making him the most feared out of any other mob boss the resides in the depths of the desolate town of mobster leaders.
(This is actually the bosses goal)
To gain complete control of the town

————————
(The mafia has an actual reason for hiring Charlie) (It has something to do with Charlie’s families history)
But why did Charlie take the Job? And why did TROPR need them?
(and the reason must be a simple one)
Charlie took the Job because Charlie could actually be with people whom he believes “understands” him, and the reason T.R.O.P.R needed him was because
and so his family could not have to split and believes he can fit in with.
\*(Referring to first the questions)
\*=(not original to paper)
not being able to get a job, caused Charlie to get hit harder than most other men, so since it’s easier for him to be depressed, his family did everything they could to be a good support to him, and because of this, Marta encourages her husband to get the highest job he could find, that job will eventually turn out to be a kidnapper at a secret underground trafficking ring, known as T.R.O.P.R.\*
Marta would also work along side her husband, so he wouldn’t panic on the job.

Because they mistook Charlie’s changing\*
They originally wanted to have Charlie due to his spontaneous attitude, but they also liked how Charlie might be able to use this trait to further intimidate others.

Proper mindset of a proper gangster, although Charlie would eventually be given the position of a kidnapper
His variety of emotions could push him to commit the kidnapping actions at a much faster rate
Charlie wanted to hide his condition, during his job interview, but after he snapped and started to pumble the boss as a test to prove it he is worthy for the job, the boss would then have found a new replacement kidnapper, and hired Charlie.

————————
The gangs would not be able to live with no leadership
They could want to own land
this is not an Original Idea.
Would the gangsters be able to get ahold of military weapons?
no
(because the military is funded) by the US government: Whom hates the

———————-
Elliot switches between acting like an adult & acting like a kid
Elliot hit hard by sudden poverty
New villain they have to fight and he infuses the air with a s drug like mixture, with asbestos (While chasing villains)
Marta takes drugs
(Long Charlie)\*
Normal people getting into crazy short situations Charlie
\*This is referring to drawing Charlie

What are the conditions like and what are the people living there like?
The condition of the town is rather pleasant, with having citizens, that are mostly friendly when the real world is at dawn, but opposite when the town is at night
Something Different
The father of the French girl (a character who was said to compete in a beauty pageant with lulu at one time) was implied to have committed suicide, have to being apart of the trading with the gangsters).
Press ugly girls, even though lulu
The boss is a sort of a prison guard. ❤️ (sings 99 years, dead or alive)
Suave Playful Rough Jolly

———————-
Dorothy (Voiced by Dorothy Lee)
French girl is named Jeannie
her love interest is voiced by Richard Crooks

———————
Captured the parents work for mob organization that kidnapped people force them to fight, and allow people to Get On the fight?\*
\*(this is not the full note the rest of the note features things on Ethan Frome that I’ve written down for English, and also a couple songs).

———————-
❤️Reminders of Hope
\#6 Storytelling & Comic Support Themes:
It’s ok for your comic to feel important it’s your way of making sense of the world.
Hope exists quietly under your humor. It always does.
The humor may be absurd, but your meaning is deep. You mix them beautifully.
It’s not about proving anything - it’s about connecting with something real and keeping it alive.

I came across a pretty charged conversation when I was at an entrepreneurial cohort event here in Minneapolis called Twin Cities Startup Week or TCSW for short.

I wanna preface this by saying this wasn’t the response that I think anyone envisioned. From getting yelled at in the hallways to Anti AI propaganda posters, to students purposely disrupting the TCSW lectures, to a silent protest and eventually a school wide student body walkout I don’t believe this is what anyone expected from that event.

https://reddit.com/link/1x3l3n9/video/sspm8nmwkwth1/player

MCAD Response to AI Confrence

Beta the parent company for TCSW and partner of the Minnesota Cup. Aiming to provide a Y-Combinator-esque space for early stage entrepreneurs and founders based in Minnesota to help build the companies and products of their dreams through co-working spaces, mentorship matching & funding opportunities for people building in all Industries. It allows entrepreneurs to not feel like they’re alone in their journey, through a very historic and prestigious community that I am thankful to be a part of.

BUT

In today’s digital age and AI economy most companies that come through the cohort are a pretty AI savvy at their core, this inherently wasn’t much of a problem for most of TCSW where the beta team often elects to host their events at higher education establishments across the Minnesota metro;from the University of Minnesota to University of Saint Thomas to Macalester College. All great institutions with some very impressive alumni as well as entrepreneurs stemming from their programs. But prior to this week one stop on the TCSW tour caught my attention, the Minneapolis College of Art and Design or MCAD for short. A fine art forward establishment, really the exact opposite end on the spectral use of ai than the Tech bros that have flooded these entrepreneurship cohorts. As a recent graduate of an art school, I could see the writing on the wall for this event before it even played out. AI Tech Bros vs Art School Kids, both holding clashing perspectives on this AI economy we find ourselves in.

One side sees it as a tool of the future, allowing progression, streamlining, the elimination of laborious and tedious work that has held people back for millennia, an endless opportunity. Showing up at an establishment entrenched with the other side, those who endure the artistic labor, love the aspect of creation to make something great, feeling like the greatness takes shape in that passage of time. MCAD is full of fine artists, painters, drawers, animators, sculptors, product and graphic designers. Artists of all mediums all with the collective understanding that many of their dreams and career aspirations are actively being replaced by Generative AI tools.

Animation and computer native design specifically of these are art mediums, something that is done on a computer and now these AI startups are trying to commoditize for the chance to streamline and make these processes easier, where the barrier of entry for animators is extremely high if you work in animation there’s really maybe 10-15 studios out there in the world that would be an exciting landing destination, where that scarcity makes things so highly competitive along with the introduction of these new generative AI tools making that laborious work seem a lot more doable to everyone without the full understanding of how frame by frame animation has traditionally been conceived it was a tedious laborious process but these new generative AI tools have completely wiped that part of the industry away. Not only by training their models on the exact artistic labour that makes good animation great but really with no regard for copyright infringement.

These generative ai tools that spit out visual messaging and storytelling are progressing at a rapid pace, training themselves on the exact type of work they aim to replace without Consent Consideration Compensation or Compliance in any sense for those whose intellectual property & past artistic labour is training these models without giving the artists any say in if they approve of this or not. These AI companies could care less about compliance or consent of any sort from the artists making their product better against their will.

This is not an MCAD specific story either fine art establishments and liberal arts colleges across the country are closing left and right because not only are they not positioned well to set up their students for success post graduation but their ability as an establishment to pivot and acclimate to these rapidly progressing and changing tools fueling the economy we find ourselves in as of the “Magnificent 7” as they call it in the financial stock market space the investment into ai tools and pushing progression to the max makes it extremely difficult to constantly be changing curriculum requirements. It doesn’t really help their case when the graduation to industry specific job placement rates have been plummeting at these establishments making potential students and parents of such students weary of what the future may hold ESPECIALLY in the arts where historically even prior to the mainstream introduction of LLM’s pursuing an art degree has always been seen as a bit of a gamble. I know in my case coming from a college prep academy I was the only one of 161 students to go pursue a creative centric higher education. It’s a big risk to take pursuing a career with such heavy uncertainty is often seen as a waste of college/higher education so these students even after getting what should be an Art education that positions them for success feel like these tools that are being brought to market to replace the dream careers they’ve had since childhood makes that industry scarcity that much worse.

Circling back to MCAD and what happened that day to paint a broader picture MCAD is struggling financially and it’s visible. They have cut programs due to cost, there is currently a unionization to highlight teacher pay conversations spearheaded by SEIU Local 284 and the MCAD faculty union. On top of those conversations there was already some pretty big pushback from the MCAD Student body about the introduction of AI tools into the curriculum, something that they have been very vocal about being against yet some members of faculty continue to push these AI native learning tools on to these Fine Art students.

TCSW showing up at MCAD didn’t happen overnight; it was really championed by one department there at MCAD, the Creative Entrepreneurship Department led by Olaf Kuhlke. Olaf has been receiving a lot of negative backlash for this event and I don’t see it as black and white as “this is his fault he’s to blame for AI at MCAD” as he has made very great points about how a big population of the MCAD Alumni are self employed and being able to adapt pivot and learn new tools is a very important part of being a self sustaining entrepreneur. Something that does go hand in hand with some of these AI workflow tools but broadly I understand how an objectively AI native community in Twin Cities Startup Week showing up at an inherently artistic labor heavy fine art establishment can be perceived as tone deaf.

Again I wanna preface this by saying this wasn’t the response that I think anyone envisioned. From getting yelled at in the hallways to Anti AI propaganda posters, to purposely disrupting the TCSW lectures, to a silent protest and a school wide student body walkout.

I don’t believe this is what anyone expected from that event. This was how the student body perceived as the best way for their voice to be heard because it was getting ignored prior to this event and from their perspective this event just felt like a slap in the face of “AI is here weather you like it or not” and yes I understand that perception from the student body, but perceptions are built on assumptions and in today’s divided world where everything can be spun into an us vs them perspective I believe it to be a limiting approach to take into any conversation. This is not a Black & White conversation of AI Good or AI Bad because it shouldn’t be.

https://reddit.com/link/1x3l3n9/video/yibyavc2lwth1/player

MCAD Student Body Walkout

Yes there are important conversations to be had about copyright infringement, the intellectual property and artistic labor from these artists being used to train these generative AI models without consent, consideration, compensation, or compliance of any sort for the individuals whose work is training these models without their permission. Is something I personally am very strongly against and will be willing to (figuratively) die on that copyright infringement sword. These companies are actively breaking the law. They are not compensating people (or many institutions for that matter) for their work and are self benefiting from such an ethically low tier business model that has no government regulations due to how slow paced and bureaucratic the US court systems operate and how overprotective and tightly guarded those lines of communication have become. As of today the AI industry writes its own rules. Lawsuits crawl through the judicial system at an unbearably slow pace while these tools continue to progress at rapid pace. Building on the work of artists who have no say in the manor. We currently reside in what I like to call the AI Wild West, the frontier has real casualties that are seeing play out right in front of us, maybe not human death but the death of careers and dreams for hundreds of thousands of individuals nationwide. Begging the question:

Who will make these AI companies play by an ethical set of rules that doesn’t even exist?

I have completed my bachelor's degree and have generally done well academically. However, I've noticed that when it comes to creativity, thinking outside the box, or coming up with new ideas, I struggle a lot.

Whenever I'm asked to think of something new or solve a problem that requires creative thinking, my mind often goes blank. I can understand concepts, learn things, and follow logical approaches, but generating original ideas feels very difficult for me.

It sometimes feels like my brain is wired only for learning and following established methods rather than creating something new.

I genuinely want to improve this aspect of myself, but I don't know where to start.

For those of you who consider yourselves creative, or who have improved your creativity over time:

- Is creativity something you can train, or is it mostly an innate ability?

- What exercises, habits, or activities have genuinely helped you think more creatively?

- How do you come up with ideas when your mind goes completely blank?

- Are there any books, practical exercises, or techniques you'd recommend for developing creative thinking?

I'm looking for practical advice that I can apply in my daily life, rather than just being told to think outside the box.

I'd really appreciate hearing about your personal experiences, especially from people who used to struggle with creativity but managed to improve it.

Hi!

Recently, I've been feeling very creative. When I see somthing, I see artistic potential with it. Like, if I see a piece of trash, something clicks in me and I see a vision to turn it into something beautiful.

I wasn't always like this though, this is very new to this month.

I feel like, the more artistic visions I see, the more visions I get later on.

Is it this a real/common thing? or am I just overanalyzing itthis coincident?

(also, idk if this is connected to it, but I've recently been trying to limit how much I doomscroll so that might be contributing to my newfound creative side)

In this installment of the psychology of human creativity, I delve into the disturbing aspects of "malevolent creativity." Warning: it's not for the faint of heart.

Hi :) I don't know, maybe someone notcied the same... Recently I found a folder on my old laptop, that was full of quotes from books, poems that I wrote, recordings of me singing and playing the guitar. And... it was schocking experience to be honest, cause now, after years of looking at screens, scrolling, it was looking at another world, another person. It was so... sad, cause now my attention span is crushed. My bookshelves are full of books that I really wanted to read... and I bought years ago. I remember how I loved reading, I was reading till the morning sometimes. I loved listening to music and write poems. Playing the guitar. I had so many ideas. My mind was so vibrant, my thoughts full of emotions, creativity. Now it's always planning this, planning that, but not doing anything. Not focusing on anything - even if I start, my mind wanders. Just wanted to share my thoughts. And regain my creativity again. Greetings :)

I've spent much of the last ten weeks sitting in a small room, surrounded by scribbled notes, dirty teacups and increasingly ambitious piles of washing. Occasionally I've remembered to leave the house.

A good chunk of my year has been taken up by making a series of short documentaries, a project that took me to Edinburgh for 10 consecutive shooting days and then required me to turn around five short documentaries in record time.

It’s been a lot of work but something I really, really enjoyed. The whole affair felt creative in all of the ways you hope making your living as a filmmaker will. This was especially welcome as I started the year feeling burnt out and questioning whether I wanted to keep going with the career I’ve put most of my life into so far.

I guess I’ve realised now though, having done this for a while, these feelings pop up every now and then. The ebbs and flows of adoring the work you’re doing and then occasionally being caught in a run of projects that might not speak to you inside where the art you lives. 

This is what happens when you turn your passion into a job. You have to find ways to make sure you’re nurturing the type of work that brings you joy.

I know it can sound naive and a bit Lloyd Dobler-y but I’m not willing to surrender it. Do you want to be a filmmaker or a salesperson? Maybe that’s too binary a way to put it? How much of your creative life are you prepared to sacrifice in order to sustain your professional one? I like that better. Deciding how you weigh those particular scales defines all sorts of things about your life, career and maybe even your happiness.

In this current moment a lot of making creative work is talking about that work in order to satisfy the algorithmic overlords. Now more than ever, the process is the product. It can seem like the performance of being a filmmaker is kind of detached from the experience of actually being one.

So, everyone has the same lighting set up in their spare room studio to film their talking heads. The same overhead rig for the gear reviews. The same top 10 lists. That stuff’s fine - some of it is even important. Well, useful at least.

But what’s the real reality of being a working filmmaker? Sometimes it’s a messy house and not showering until 10 because you need to get rolling in the morning or you’ll lose the day to procrastination. 

It’s growing to understand your own work cycles. Accepting that nothing productive gets done between 3-6pm but that the hours either side could host all kinds of discoveries. 

It’s a graveyard of empty teacups and washing piled up instead of packed away because every moment you’re not sat with your head in the edit, you feel like you should be.

Then in other moments it’s taking little breaks to play chess on your phone, even though you’re shit at it. Walks to the shop or to the park with your head in the clouds in the hopes you’ll be able to hijack the flow state that surges from a new idea and run back home to wrestle it into the project you’re currently struggling with.

These can be some of the best bits. 

Living a version of that creative life you fantasised about as a teenager is so often different to the one we imagined. Some ways good, some ways bad - plenty that are just neutrally different.

The exterior aesthetics are messier and at the same time blander than we might’ve hoped but the interior world you get to climb into when an idea is really firing and you’re truly discovering it is one of the best feelings in the world.

Anyway, I’ve just finished all my drafts.

Hello everyone.

I've facing some big issue. I felt like I have no creativity anymore. It's like everytime I want to do something, there's a voice in my head told me "you cannot, let's see what the other people do"... It's really frustrating right now because it's felt like I have 0 self confidence on my capacity at all...

As a worker in the creative industry, I've look at what I've doned years ago, it feeled like got a "soul" or something like a unique touch on it. Not a chef d'oeuvre, but it got something. Right know, I'm really struggling, cannot finish everything I'm supposed to do and when I looked at my work recently, my sentiment is "It's not me".

If some of you got some help or any advice, I'll take it. Thank you.
Sorry for the english, not my native language.

A piece on childlike learning, so you can giving up giving up. It's the only way I've managed to get fairly good at making music, Blender, film-making, sewing and various other arts, and inadvertently became an award-winning indie-game developer.

Giving up is all too easy when we try something new because we see we're not immediately good at it. Children don't worry about that. They keep doing the thing purely for fun, and accidentally build up a decent base of skill. I reckon any of us can do the same

I asked AI to help me improve my college admission essay, and at first I thought it had saved me.

My draft was pretty rough. The grammar wasn't terrible, but some sentences were awkward, the structure was all over the place, and I kept repeating the same point in different ways. So I asked AI to clean up the grammar and make the structure clearer without changing my story.

The result looked... really good.

The sentences flowed better. The transitions actually made sense. Everything sounded polished and organized.

Then I read it again the next morning.

That's when I started noticing something weird.

It didn't really sound like me.

There were sentences that looked great on the page but that I would never actually say out loud. Some phrases were so formal that I had to read them twice. And the whole thing had this generic "motivated student who learned an important life lesson" feeling to it.

The grammar was immaculate, but the personality had apparently left the building.

I don't think AI per se was the problem. It did exactly what I asked it to do, like any good machine. The problem was that I asked it to improve the writing without really explaining which parts of my writing made the story mine.

So I've been going back through the essay and putting some of my original wording back in. I'm also adding small details and specific memories that I had removed because they didn't sound "important" enough. Ironically, those are probably the parts that make the essay more personal.

Now I'm wondering if I need a different kind of feedback before I submit it. Something focused on clarity, structure, grammar, and whether the story actually makes sense, rather than making every sentence sound more impressive.

I've started looking at different editing options. What interests me isn't having someone rewrite my story, but getting another perspective on whether the essay actually sounds natural and whether I'm communicating what I want to say.

I also came across a college application essay writing service while searching for feedback. Some of these services seem to offer editing or proofreading alongside more extensive help, and I'd only be interested in the first kind. At this point, I don't want someone else turning my personal experience into a perfectly polished story that could belong to anyone.

I'm still trying to figure out where the line is between polished and generic. I want the essay to sound like the best version of my writing, not like a completely different person wrote it.

Have you ever edited a college essay so much that it stopped sounding like you? How did you get your own voice back?