Your Elusive Creative Genius

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Creative Spark Talk Analysis Elizabeth Gilbert: Your elusive creative genius TED2009 - Filmed Feb 2009 Elizabeth Gilbert is best known for her memoir “Eat, Pray, Love” which chronicles her life after her divorce. “Eat, Pray, Love” was made into a movie starring Julia Roberts as Elizabeth Gilbert. Gilbert has also achieved success from other creative writing efforts. This paper illuminate's some of the stages of creativity that are highlighted and relate the concepts of imagination and curiosity. Gilbert begins her talk by identifying the problem stating too much is expected from artists. Artist are set up to fail because once they have experienced recognition from their stellar work of art, book etc., expectation will be too enormous ever to reach that level again. With her greatest work probably behind her she is faced with how she will manage the inherent emotional risk of creativity and be able to continue to work. She mentions that the creative process does not always behave rationally and can be paranormal. Gilbert challenges herself to find a way to put a safe distance between her writing and the reactions of others. In the search of a model to follow she looked across time, which led her to identify that in Greek and Roman time’s artists and creative minds relied on an outside source for their inspiration. The Greeks and Romans believed that there exists a mysterious force or energy that enabled them to create. The Greeks had their Daemon, and the Romans had their Genius, this was a way of shifting accountability off of oneself for failures and onto their guiding genius. As time went on, the genius became internalized and became part of the artist’s creative mind. The artists of today are 100% accountable for both failures and success. Some may imagine or are driven by a force that might whisper an inspirational thought or idea into their

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