Creativity?

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I've always considered myself fairly creative; I can draw pretty well, and I write fairly well too. I have noticed, however, that I have trouble inventing stories completely uninfluenced by real-world events (from my life or the news or history or whatever). I can "fictify" events from my life for a story, but I have a much harder time inventing a completely new scenario. (This is the major thing that has me stuck on two of my novels; the third is basically a humorized account of my life when my two youngest children were babies, and I have that one nearly done.)

So while I feel creative in the sense of "able to create," I also recognize that my inspiration doesn't come from within, but from my environment.

I seem to agree with you on that grayson. I feel like I'm creative, but I don't feel like I can create something totally new. I sort of mimic other people's creativity. I used to write lots of stories when I was younger, 8-14 or so. But reflecting on those stories, while I may have thought they were creative at the time, more accurately it seems like I copied a lot of the idea from elsewhere.

I think I read somewhere that a sign of AS could be a dislike of Fiction novels. I personally love to read fiction novels, but I don't like very fictional stories. I like books that a very literal and take place in modern settings and the real world. (Namely Crichton and Clancy)

Anyone who visits my blog or website will see that I enjoy mixing electronica tracks. I don't actually have the motor skills to learn how to play any instruments, but I thoroughly enjoy that type of music, which is why I can mimic other people's style it.

So for me whether or not I'm truly creative is a toss up, because it depends on the definition of creativity.

I think all this depends on how you define creativity. I think very few people are genuinely creative. Some people have a skill for an art, like painting, or composing but while what they seems to be new, it is nothing of the sort. It is simply a rearrangement of their influences.

May be to an extent a different thought process allows some people to be come up with ideas that no one has though up before.

I work in the creative industries and from my time training I would estimate that only about a quarter of the people were creative coming up with genuinely new ideas. The rest rearrange influences to come up with something superficially new.

Having said that there are many historical examples of ASD people who are very creative.

I can't do imaginative play when it involves - guess what? - empathy. I don't care to be like this or that person. I created my own heroes as a child. They were based on comic book heroes. I didn't want to be the outlaw kid, but I did want to be a cowboy. Actually I just wanted to dress like one. Superman actually is a character I can empathize with. But I don't want to be him either. Men weren't meant to fly...

I am astoundingly creative - this is a bad trait of mine that I don't know how to talk about myself without seeming to boast.
I am my family's tinker, inventor, poet, writer of stories, creator of rituals, decorations and other art. Once I was visiting someone and they gave me a stick of gum and later started staring at me - I had fashioned the gum into a goblet.
I also have a green thumb and created a garden out of a blackberry jungle in one month. I invented a basement flood alarm at age ten - a similar model exists today. I do graphic design and silly things like experiment with programming my computer to hypnotize me.
I invent new dishes all the time in my kitchen and also make some of my utentils.
I wrote and performed music in my 20s.
I can put up a shelf almost anywhere.
I have created two cosmologies.
I wrote and illustrated a book about Kwanzaa for my family, and for the next few years while nieces and nephews were growing up I played the main character in the book at family celebrations. LOL, they thought I was magic or could read minds because what I pulled out of my sack was exactly suited to them (I could tell the gifts apart by the texture of the paper). Before that I made politically oriented pinatas for them to smash.
I am a think tank.

I don't know how much of that qualifies as creativity. Still can't imagine I'm someone (or something) else to save my life. I guess this inability to mess with the truth has something to do with aspergers. If I could mess with the truth then I could lie and make people think I'm something I'm not so they would like me. Not sure I think that's at all creative...

it qualifies as awesome.
i am a little jealous.

In my younger years, what I lacked in talent I made up for with creative drive. Free-writing exercises in elementary school were always my favorite, since I could pull these hugely complex fictional stories out of nowhere instead of just throwing some cookie-cutter crap on the page like with all other assignments. And when I'd receive Lego sets, I never built the models they told you to make -- it was much more fulfilling to make something original.

I'm not as prolific in anything creative now, but I still like writing the occasional short story. Most have at least a tenuous base in real life, but I think this is how most creative people work. It takes a special kind of mind to make something totally new, like J.R.R. Tolkien's work. I have to say, though, that I don't enjoy reading pure fantasy stories as much as ones that are based in the real world. It's probably my logical side that can only see plot copouts in those kinds of stories.

I have and always had a strong desire to be creative. Sadly I have what I feel is a poor imagination. I'm hopeless at drawing organic structures (but good at inorganic) but my real disappointment is with music. I'd love to be able to create music but I cannot because whatever I do seems to fall into two categories:

- It's already been done

- It sounds crap

The odd thing is, if I hear something that I have previously dismissed as crap due to my own efforts, done by someone else, it sounds good.
A complication here is that I have an uncanny ability to retain musical sequences subconciously so that I always associate new music with something done previously.

Indeed. Creativity is highly subjective. If one does not like the subject or individual they may accuse the individual of not being creative because it does not correspond to the personal impression of creativity.

I still do not understand how AS folk can write creative fiction, as it is all about people and characters and their interaction. I would love to learn to write fiction, but I just have a complete mental blank when trying to do this.

I can be quite creative with technical things, though this is mostly by an exhautive search of all possibilities rather than any magical inspiration!

I wish I could play the piano. But, alas, I have small hands and would never be able to do classical.