Wired to Create: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind

What makes creative people creative? It seems creative people have a disproportionate amount of trauma in their lives. This helps with creativity, but people are creative without trauma. Mental illness and creativity also seem to go together. Again, mental illness is more common, but only a small number of creative people suffer from it. Creative people may appear to be extroverts. However, it is common for "extroverted" performers to actually be very introverted people who put on a performance. What often sets creative people apart is their willingness to take chances.

This book has an adulation of "creatives". It feels like an Apple ad. (It even quotes the apple "misfits" add.) In real life, creativity is usually shunned. Those "creators" are only respected after their creativity goes mainstream. Those most creative are typically scorned in their time. Scientists, inventors and artists often die penniless, along to have books written about them after they die. Humans prize conformity. Even in school where we claim to respect creativity, the "creativity" that is respected involves only incremental changes. Keep things as close to the standard as possible and only change a few small things and you will be ok.