One of the greatest assets of the artistic creator is…well…creativity. Whether they work in a medium of words, pencils, ink, colors, or nifty sound effects and logos, creativity is a crucial part of the process. When the creative thoughts don’t flock to them, they stumble into a block and find themselves staring at the blank page for what seems like an eternity. And many just sit there…staring…waiting for their muse to enlighten them and lead them to the promised land of creative genius. Why? You can’t just sit around waiting for inspiration–it’s too sly and evasive for that. You have to hunt it down. So, grab your orange reflective vests and your camouflage socks and get ready to track down some creativity out in the wild.

Know where to find your prey. If you’re in the middle of the wilderness starving to death, it doesn’t do any good to set a trap or spend your time hunting in an area with no animals. Is there a water hole nearby? Is there a trail leading to it with a variety of different tracks along it? Guess what you might find there? Our prey is a little different. It’s bits of fashion or culture or psychology or science or history twisted around into something fresh and exciting. It’s information and observations tossed into our brain blender and pureed into an imagination smoothie. So, where does this information come from? A blank page? Not hardly. Stop staring at it and track down the fruit you need to squeeze for those creative juices. It lurks in pictures, conversations, news articles, history, scientific advancements, nature, events, and anywhere else you can learn something or spark a response from your senses and emotions.

Follow the trail. When you find a source of information that looks promising, don’t just stop there–follow the trail. If that bit of information whets your creativity appetite, chances are good that it could lead to some bigger game. Let yourself get lost in a sea of ideas, whimsies, data, and imagery. Let yourself leap freely from one intriguing tidbit of information to the next. Explore as much of the trail as you can and gather the resources you’ll need to capture your prey.

Tag it. What about when you find something that sparks your interest or triggers some thoughts and emotions? Tag it. Write it down, clip it out, or sketch it…and then file it away. If it triggers some reaction in you now, it will do the same later on. Build a file of ideas, thoughts, and possibilities that you can snack on whenever your mind’s starving for creativity. Leave yourself a trail that allows you to wander those paths you found again…and again…and again.

Corral those ornery critters. You have all this information now that’s running around wild and free like a pack of animals. You can just browse through some of this data and try to spot the inspiring information, or you can attempt to corral those ideas and put the one you want within reach. Just take a few random bits of data from your file, and let them run wild across the plains of your mind. Now, figure out a way to logically pull them together and guide them along. Let the ideas feed off of each other until you can shape the strange or opposing ideas into a logical, cohesive pattern. Take the chaos of the world and find a way to guide it into a premise that people might think, “If things were just a tiny bit different, this could really happen.” Practice pulling these stray ideas together and train your mind to constantly look for the creative patterns in the ideas around you.

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What? You thought we were going to actually hunt creativity with rifles, shoot it and drag it back to the house on the hood of our truck to carve up into creativity chops? But that only provides you with a limited amount of ideas…if you want your creativity to grow and be easily accessible, you need to have a lot of lively ideas at your disposal. Be the smart hunter…capture and secure them in a place where they’ll grow and spawn even more ideas. Ideas that are easy to get to and will last for a long while.