Creativity questionnaire.

In 1930, Yeats received a "Questionnaire on Creative Effort," from a researcher interested in creativity, Elliot D. Hutchinson, who also sent the same questionnaire to about 250 other thinkers and writers. (Hutchinson later published a book, How to Think Creatively, and also became a professor of psychology at the University of Rochester in New York.)

The questionnaire goes a little something like this:

Do you at first experience a period of general productive inclination, a ill-defined, uneasy desire to produce something?

Always . . . . . Usually . . . . . Seldom . . . . . Never . . . . .

Is this productive inclination a permanent state of mind? . . . . . or only a mood . . . . . ?

What are your intellectual activities during this period? Are they

(a) active and definite search for material related to the topic in hand?

Always . . . . . Usually . . . . . Seldom . . . . . Never . . . . .

(b) Vague daydreaming along the lines determined by the nature of the work?

Always . . . . . Usually . . . . . Seldom . . . . . Never . . . . .

(c) Passive attitude of waiting for 'inspiration'?

Always . . . . . Usually . . . . . Seldom . . . . . Never . . . . .

(d) Absorption in other interests?

Always . . . . . Usually . . . . . Seldom . . . . . Never . . . . .

[For more of this questionnaire, look here, although you'll have to look around for "Creativity Questionnaire."] But I really just want to point out that Yeats, like me, when in the period of 'general productive inclination'--and let me just digress to point out that I am always inclined, generally, to be productive: absolutely always!--he

• usually deliberately looks for material (although it "depends on the nature of the work')
• always vaguely daydreams
• never sits around waiting passively for inspiration, and
  
• usually gets absorbed in (wait for it) detective stories.

Hey, W.B. (and you know he can hear me--he's perning in a gyre somewhere, but he can hear me, all right.): Ditto!