It’s easy to get caught up in the search for the next big idea, but don’t disregard finding an improvement for an existing idea.

A simple 1% improvement to an existing project might not seem like a lot, but if you continue to find small improvements, it eventually becomes something completely different. In fact, using this attitude everywhere in your life can help you develop a constant creative outlook.

Most people only focus their energies on things that are broken, but why not focus on improving things that are working? Don’t wait for a problem, make it your attitude to always be improving.

For writers, editing and rewrites are built into the project. A hundred tiny changes can turn something mediocre into something great.

It’s just like compound interest for a bank account. These tiny improvements don’t just add to an idea, but add to the principal and earn more interest with each new improvement.

Businesses use the Japanese philosophy Kaizen as a model for improving themselves. Some people find this kind of structured gradual improvement to also be helpful in developing their personal skills.

Creativity is change. It’s the fresh and new. It’s connecting things that have never been connected before.

Every single original creative act that you undertake is a strike at the status quo of the world.

Ever wonder why being creative is sometimes such a struggle?

Most people set up their whole lives to maintain the status quo and here you come to change things.

Remember that you are a rebel. If you’re trying to sell a really fresh idea, you either have to face this opposition or go underground and release your ideas gradually or pad them in some acceptable way. Find other rebels and join with them.

Anything you do from inventing a new kind of cupcake to decorating your house with 100 preserved owls is going to challenge people. They are going to call you stupid, wasteful and a dreamer.

No matter how small, truly creative acts are rebellious. Stand strong, you are not alone.

People who see connections between events that other people don’t see are considered conspiracy theorists. This conjures up images of unkempt men in dark rooms with filing cabinets full of “evidence” that they post on their websites to prove that their view of reality is the TRUTH! Obviously the Earth is controlled by reptilian aliens that live in tunnels underground and the moon landings were faked.

Really, the human brain is a machine that looks for evidence to prove what it already believes. You take in new information and store it in relation to old information.  Creativity is making connection between unlikely bits of information where none existed before. When you are creative, you are relating previously unrelated ideas to one another.

Creative people are conspiracy theorists that are less concerned with the past and more concerned with the future.  What ideas can we, as creative people, come up with now that will cause the future we want to live in?

This can be as simple as a reality where you have a lot of money or as complex as some kind of Utopian society where everyone immortal.

What conspiracy can you put in motion now that will make the future amazing? What new connections can you make that will expand what it means to be human? What decision can you make today that someone 100 years from now will point to as a turning point in human history?

Don’t use your brilliant mind to look for evidence of alien interference in history or Nazi moon bases.

Instead, create new conspiracies, the kind that make things better.

If you are a reptilian alien and reading this, ignore the plea to create a new reality, you guys have already done enough.

There is a lot written about how to recover from writer’s block and every other kind of creative block, but very little has been written on how to prevent it. Here’s one cause of writer’s block you can be conscious of before it happens.

From the time we are very little, we are taught that art has hidden meanings and reveals things about us to clever observers. In fact, these days it’s possible to get kicked out of school for handing in a horror story for a creative writing assignment. The truth is very different. If writing a horror story indicated a tendency for violent behavior, wouldn’t the police interview Stephen King and Clive Barker every time there was a brutal killing?

Don’t judge what comes out while you create. Don’t worry about what other people will think. If you start down that path, it will be start a crippling block that will limit your creativity to creating Hallmark Cards and those terrible jokes in Reader’s Digest.

You are not what you create. What you create is not wish-fulfillment for how you feel the world should be. Better to let out the emotions you don’t want in your life in your art. Never look at what you’ve done and say, if I show this to anyone they’ll think I’m crazy or that I hate my mom or that I have huge anger issues.

There will always be people judging you based on what you create, but they all already think you’re weird for trying to create something in the first place. I find, often, that criticism reveals more about the preoccupations and fears of the critic than of the art they are criticizing.