What does it mean to be creative?

As Chris Bilton said before:

Creative thinking takes place neither inside the box nor outside the box, but at the edge of the box.

You could watch the most non-creative, linear-thinking, do-it-by-the-book investigative work to solve a crime and you would be surprised at how creative her solutions seem to be.

The investigative work will look creative for you, because you have never been in that territory before, it is all new, it is all at the edges.

Boring for her, because it is the same thing she does every time. It is not creative at all.

For me, creativity is the stuff you do at the edges.

But the edges are different for everyone, and the edges change over time.

Over time, the edges stretches out, gets looser, move away.

What was cutting edge yesterday may be normal today.

Stuff that would have been creative last year is not creative at all today, because it is not near the edges any more, because the edges always shifts.

Always test the boundaries, to find the razor’s edge between knowing and not-knowing, familiarity and strangeness, confidence and doubt.

That is what keeps things interesting, working to the limits of your ability, with that twinge in your stomach telling you you are doing a high wire act and you could fall.

Living on the edge is not something you do once in a while, it is your life.