I found our latest guest through her amazingly inspirational blog Creativity as a Way of Life.

Diane D.M. Solis is a scientific and creative writer/editor who designs interactive self-discovery projects, workshops, and retreats for individuals and groups to enhance personal development and creativity. Diane’s formal titles have included: teacher (English, ethics, social justice, and art); organizational development and training specialist with an emphasis on work team and leadership development; senior corporate editor (technical publications, public communications, and proposal writing/editing); and spiritual director.

Over the years she has written two monthly columns in local, national, and international publications, as well as articles, stories and poetry. Diane also creates works of music and art in a variety of media and genres, and has practiced contemplative meditation for over twenty years.

1. What does creativity mean to you?
Creativity is like breathing. It’s how I look at the world, and how I see it. It’s how I love the people in my life, and life itself. I realized some years ago that for me, as a creative individual, whatever I’m working on, creating is as critical to how I move through life as breathing. Creativity is as fundamental to my identity as faith, culture, my relationships, and my sexual identity. This is probably true for all serious artists to a significant degree, whatever their genre.

Not creating, we are living a kind of half-life. Creating, we’re more fully here. Let me try to explain: Just like everyone else, artists can go about our chores and meet many of our obligations. Beyond that, creative individuals (they don’t have to be artists, they may be creative teachers, lovers, even workers) also reside on what I’ve come to call “the gifted plane.” Merging these realms, the day to day and the gifted plane, through acts of creativity, artists get to “live more,” if that makes sense. They live more because they are living more fully as who they truly are.

2. What is your creative process, and what tools do you use to stimulate it?
I have many creative processes. For anyone who has read my blog, journaling is a critical aspect and a great tool. I’ve also adapted a 9-square brainstorming technique that was created by Mandel, the father of genetics. Someday I hope to outline it at the blog. It’s a way of going wide and deep to capture important details as part of a whole landscape that lives and breathes and evolves.

Contemplation is key to my process. I’ve practiced contemplative meditation for more than twenty years. Many of my ideas for stories, songs, poems or paintings are notions that actually began as distractions during meditation. I don’t stop to write them down then. The important ideas return to me later. Meditation is a key for helping me to know deeply who I am, to understand more deeply and fully my spirituality, and for freeing me to connect with my creative muse.

My process also involves writing-walks in the early morning with my little notebook. You’d be amazed how a reflection, poem, or more can begin and unfold as one walks by some unusual or mundane thing. Beyond that, I take artist field-trips (Corita used to teach art using these field trips) at least twice a month to unusual, artistic or beautiful places–not that the “beautiful” is always pretty–and often outside. The ecology of the world around us if chockfull of metaphors that can speak (that beg to) through our art.

Finally, on the question of process: a half day of every weekend I shut down to retreat and be mindful of where I am on an “Art Spirit” level, so I can rest and just “Be” there. Often this will give way at some point to discerning where art and life are moving for me. Eventually I will use this time to explore what I like to call creative “serious play” with any of a variety of media. Before long, I get into a certain rhythm. Then it’s like magic, with poetry all around me, within and beyond the place where I may be sipping a glass of water, paddling a kayak, or oiling the moving parts of an old sewing machine.

3. What is your most creative time of day?
I don’t know if I have a most creative time. I don’t subscribe to the notion of writer’s block—I know that much. Every idea stimulates ten more. Ten is just an arbitrary number for “many,” or even “infinite.” I like to say, “Behind every door, ten more doors.” So any time I have available to me is most productive, creative time.

4. How do you infuse creativity into your daily life and tasks?
There’s always art, color, music, something creative going on, something to see, rest with, ponder, discuss, contemplate…all of it stimulating creativity. Because I believe in an infinitely generous creative all-knowingness–I doubt the Infinite Omniscience minds what name we use–and because this generosity is around and within me all the time, I am amazed and creatively stimulated by everything, from the variety of leaf-shapes and shades of green on a given stroll through my neighborhood, to the shapes, shadows and hues of light in the clouds, to the sounds and voices in a café, to the multitude of worlds there are, with a world in every mind within every car I see on the freeway.

Opening that door, did you ever stop to wonder about the conversations, perceptions, hopes, nightmares, dreams, of people you see in cars going by? And, opening another door, why are we all driving so fast, anyway? Where are we all really going? The same place, eventually. What’s the hurry?

5. What creative tip or resource would you like to share with our readers?
I write about this from time to time at the blog. Beyond journaling and meditating, artist field trips (to artful, strange or unusual places) and formal or informal retreats, I always suggest reading Robert Henri’s The Art Spirit and Peter Senge’s Fifth Discipline. One was a painter and mentor to many artists, the other is one of the brilliant M.I.T. think-tank business shamans. His concepts of creative problem-solving in learning organizations apply to creative artists in every milieu.

But the most important tip I could share is simply not to let anything go to waste. Create from the rough times, the difficulties, the times we fall short of our vision, when things seem to fall apart, every sad moment, without clinging to the sadness or letting it define us–because we are so much more than our sorrows, and heartache is not less and not more valuable than anything else, than the beautiful, passionate, joyful or sublime for making art. Create from all of it, because it’s all important for connecting with others, and communicating what’s truly meaningful and wonder-full, as we are all in some way, hopefully, learning and growing throughout this precious amazing life.

• THANKS Diane!

For this round of Five {5} Creative Questions we welcome Leah Piken Kolidas.

Leah is a mixed-media artist living near Boston, MA with her husband and their four fuzzy meows. She sells her art at Blue Tree Art Gallery and blogs and runs creative challenges at Creative Every Day.

1. What does creativity mean to you?
I think a lot of people relate creativity to some kind of art-making, and then think because they can’t draw that they aren’t creative. But the truth is, everyone is creative. We are already creative every day in the way we live our lives, the way we dress, the way we make that fantastic potato salad, and the way we doodle on our junk mail. I think creativity can be found everywhere and it only expands when we focus our energy on it.

2. What is your creative process and what tools do you use to stimulate it?
I especially like to create intuitively, allowing myself to choose colors and materials that I’m drawn to in the moment, and letting images flow out spontaneously. Sometimes I’ll use sparks like inkblots to get me going. I also love working with collage and acrylic and seeing what happy surprises come during the process.

It varies. In the colder months, I especially like to work at night. In the warmer months, in the late morning or afternoon.

By focusing on creativity on a daily basis, I find that opportunities to be creative spring up everywhere!

I think having community is really important in maintaining a creative life, which is a big part of why I started the Creative Every Day Challenge on my blog, Creative Every Day. The Creative Every Day Challenge is a year-long, low-pressure challenge that you can join in anytime. It’s a great, supportive community and place to share what you’re creating that helps keep me and many others motivated and inspired through the year.

• THANKS Leah!

I am honored to introduce our Five {5} Creative Questions guest this month, creative extraordinaire Liz Massey.

Liz Massey is a writer, editor, media producer and a creative agent provocateur. Experienced in artistic disciplines as diverse as music, photography, filmmaking and journalism, Liz has a deep hunger to understand how the creative process works. She began Creative Liberty in 2007 as a way to share what she’d learned about developing and maintaining creative momentum.

Liz holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism and has worked as a magazine editor, a training content developer, a video producer and a publicist for a county library system, not to mention such “character-building” jobs as veterinary assistant, call center operator and bank correspondence proofreader. She lives in Peoria, Arizona, with her partner, thousands of books and a small, independent-minded dog.

1. What does creativity mean to you?
At its root, creativity is all about utilizing the present moment to bring something new into being — whether that is a work of art, a poem, a delicious lunch made with 3 ingredients or a new way home from work.

I mention the “present moment” part because every person must start from where they are, with the tools around them. We can certainly plan to purchase new tools, take classes to improve our technique, etc. – but in the end, getting into the habit of plunging in and making an attempt to create something NOW is more important than planning to “get it right” in some far off future that never arrives.

At my blog, Creative Liberty, I try to include news and tips from the art world, business innovators, inventors and social entrepreneurs who are trying to better our world, because all those fields demonstrate the creative process in action.

2. What is your creative process, and what tools do you use to stimulate it?
I try to make the most of my creative strengths – I know that I like to spend time planning a creative project before plunging in (hence my advice around the “present moment” in question 1 is for myself as well!) and that I must let my ideas “simmer” for a while before bringing them to life. I’ve often joked that what looks like laziness or procrastination to the outside world is actually “incubation,” a recognized part of the creative cycle and an afternoon spent at the coffee shop may be just the trick for jarring great ideas loose!

I am a dedicated idea harvester, and I carry a small notebook with me most of the time to capture thoughts about current or upcoming projects. When I go for long walks, I’ve also used the audio-note recording function on my cell phone to dictate an emerging idea before it dissipates.

Another significant tool I use to stimulate creative thought is the process of cross-pollination. I have created an RSS feed system on My Yahoo that contains incoming links from dozens of blogs and websites, on topics ranging from world travel and website usability to instructional design, endurance sports, cognitive psychology and filmmaking. I visit this feed system regularly to expose myself to information from outside my range of expertise, as well as fresh ideas from other industries.

3. What is your most creative time of day?
I am typically at my creative peak in the late morning. But by paying attention to diet and exercise, and generally just giving my body and mind what it says it needs throughout the day, I find I can work productively on creative projects during most of my waking hours.

4. How do you infuse creativity into your daily life and tasks?
By questioning assumptions and playing with what appear to be limiting conditions.

As I said earlier, I tend to be a planner and orchestrator, and it helps me break out of my rut to occasionally turn all my plans on their head and do things in the reverse order of what I originally planned to do, or pick one thing off my to-do list (hopefully the one that’s truly the most significant) and pour ALL my creative energies into that. I find that when I get clear about which creative projects and household/family tasks create the most happiness, I get more done and it feels good to accomplish all these things in ways that I had previously not considered.

As far as limits go, much has been written about limits actually spurring creativity, rather than restricting it. There is a French term, bricolage, which refers the process of creating something out of whatever is at hand. One who practices this is a bricoleur. Bricoleurs instinctively understand the old saying, “Necessity is the mother of invention.” By accepting limits as challenges, rather than judgments, it’s possible to create something that surpasses what might have been made if one had everything in the world at their disposal.

5. What creative tip or resource would you like to share with our readers?
Never underestimate the power of putting creativity first on your daily agenda and getting into the habit of practicing your favorite forms of creativity.

Most of us experience some awkwardness when we begin or return to a creative discipline, and it’s hard, with all the other modern-day demands on our attention, to stay focused on our projects, which may take a while to take shape or demand that we refine our technique to more completely execute our vision. But deciding that, each day, we will do certain things in service to our art (or to our ideas) can go a long way toward ensuring that we will remain connected to our creative endeavors.

Julia Cameron, author of “The Artist’s Way” and many other books on creativity, calls this building one’s grid. The habits that form our grid help make creativity inevitable, instead of something that happens all too rarely. Whether you have 10 minutes on your bus ride in which to dash off a sketch, or a month of vacation in which to film your documentary, working on building up your “grid” will ensure you’re able to use the time you have available to move your beloved project along.

• THANKS Liz!