At 2 a.m. on June 16, 1816, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin awoke with a fright.

Mary was 18 years old and spending her summer at the Villa Diodati at Lake Geneva with her
stepsister Claire Clairmont and the writers Lord Byron and John William Polidori. Her future husband,
Percy Shelley, was staying nearby. They had intended to spend the summer swimming and sunbathing,
but a year earlier, Mount Tambora, a massive volcano in Indonesia, had erupted, dispersing nearly 1.5
million metric tons of dust into the atmosphere, blocking the sun, and sharply decreasing temperatures
worldwide. It had such devastating effects on global weather patterns that 1816 came to be known as
The Year Without a Summer. Although the inclement weather foiled the groups outdoor plans, the
four of them contented themselves with indoor activities and took to reading scary stories, most notably
from Fantasmagoriana, a French anthology of German ghost stories.
It proved a wet, ungenial summer, and incessant rain often confined us for days to the house, Mary
Shelley wrote, in her introduction to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein; Or the Modern Prometheus.
But, she added, Some volumes of ghost stories, translated from the German into French, fell into
our hands. On the suggestion of Lord Byron a few days later, the four of them decided to try their
hand at writing their own scary stories.
Throughout the summer, while trying to write her tale, Shelley spent many evenings listening to Lord
Byron and Percy Shelley discussing the spine-tingling findings of Erasmus Darwin (Charles
grandfather). The elder Darwin had been experimenting with galvanism, and had shown that with the
right use of electrical currents, a frogs legs could be contracted at will. Rumors spread that electricity,
which was widely not understood in 1816 (it wouldnt be until 1882 that Thomas Edison harnessed
electricity to create the first light bulb), could even be used to control and potentially reanimate
humans.
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With all the ghost stories and discussions of electrical reanimation swirling in her mind, Mary awoke
on the 16th of June having had a nightmare, later writing, I sawwith shut eyes, but acute mental
visionI saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together.
It was a perfect storm of events: Shelley had lots of time to write due to the bad weather, she had
inspiration from Fantasmagoriana and the talk of Erasmus Darwins electrical experiments, and she
had great writersLord Byron and Percy (who she married in 1816)by her side to bounce ideas off
of. Two years later, Shelley published Frankenstein, launching the genre of science fiction. She was
20. As far as how to best access ones creativity, Shelley appears to be a case study.
Shelley didnt have much practice writing before that. So the fact that her masterpiece came so early in
her life would imply that her skill was not something learned but an attribute she had always possessed.
By this example, it would seem that youre either creative or youre not.
As Nobel-prize-winning author Doris Lessing noted on creativity when she was 89, Don't imagine
you'll have it forever. Use it while you've got it because it'll go; it's sliding away like water down a plug
hole.
But Paul Czanne, who didnt complete his famous Les Grandes Baigneuses until age 66, would beg
to differ. So too would Raymond Chandler, who didnt begin writing seriously until 44. Not to mention
Toyo Shibata, who had her first poetry collection published (to best-selling results) at the age of 99.
In Old Masters and Young Geniuses, David Galenson, a professor of economics at the University of
Chicago, proposed one of the most compelling theories on creativity of the modern age, a theory that
explains the age discrepancy in successful creatives. He found that an artists success and how old she
is when she attains it is a function not of the artists skill but of methodology.
Experimental artists have ambitious but imprecise aesthetic goals; conceptual artists tend to make
many drafts of a work with a singular vision in mind.
There are, according to Galenson, two types of artists. There are experimental artists, who create
their masterpieces at much older ages. Epitomized by Czanne, the experimentalists have ambitious
but imprecise aesthetic goals, for they aim to present accurate accounts of the world as they see and
experience it. They often see their work as unfinished and thus tend not to create their masterpieces
until much older.
Then there are the conceptual artists. Pablo Picasso, who launched the Cubism movement with Les
Demoiselles d'Avignon as a 25-year-old, is the archetype. The purpose of these conceptual artists can
usually be stated precisely in advance of its production. They tend to make many drafts of a single
worka painting, a novelin their youth with a singular vision in mind. Because of this specific
vision early on, successful conceptual artists are able to execute their chef doeuvres when they are so
young that the rest of us are usually finishing up school or getting our first jobs.
But another widespread theory of creativity seems to push up against Galensons research, claiming
that age or method doesnt matter as much as the amount of time one practices a creative task (e.g.
musicianship, writing). Popularly outlined in Malcolm Gladwells Outliers, the idea is that the most
notable creative individuals practice for at least 10,000 hours before becoming experts. Thats to say,
creativity can be learned, but unless you are exclusively practicing your artistic skill full-time, eight
hours a day, five days a week, for at least five years, you wont become a successful artist.
Obviously if one looks at Shelley (who had not written a single short story until she was 18), or F.
Scott Fitzgerald (whose time at Princeton and in the Army meant he couldnt write full-time until going
home to complete This Side of Paradise at 23) or Jonathan Safran Foer (who wrote Everything is
Illuminated part-time while an undergraduate, also at Princeton), it is clear that the 10,000-hour rule is
not ironclad.
In an Ask Me Anything interview hosted by Reddit, Gladwell clarified his theory saying, Practice
isn't a sufficient condition for success. I could play chess for 100 years and I'll never be a grandmaster.
The point is simply that natural ability requires a huge investment of time in order to be made
manifest. Yet his root idea remains the same: Even if one has talent, it must be cultivated.
With these widely accepted theories of creativity in mind, it is rather jarring to see two brand studies,
both of which suggest that creativity is closely linked with inherent neurological and personality traits
rather than methodology or practice. The implication is that creativity can be learned, but only to a
certain extent. To truly be an artistic great, the makeup of your brain is more important than the number
of hours spent in your atelier.
The first study, published in a recent issue of Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, found that
highly creative individuals have more activity in the part of the brain containing the ability to make
original associations, to blend information from various scenarios and experiences (known as
conceptual integration), and to understand complex metaphors and comparisons.
Wenfu Li, a professor in the school of psychology at Southwest University, and a group of researchers
first administered the Williams Scale creativity aptitude test to 246 participants. (Designed by Frank
Williams in 1993, the Williams Scale looks at an individuals curiosity, imagination, complexity of
ideas, and risk-taking behaviors in order to assess the participants level of creativity.) What they found
is that compared to those who score low on creativity, the participants who scored highest tended to
have a greater volume of grey matter in the right posterior middle temporal gyrus (pMTG), an area of
the brain related to the aforementioned creative traits.
Naturally, a chicken-or-the-egg dilemma arises: Is there a high volume of grey matter in the pMTG of
creative peoples brains because they were born with it and are therefore creative or have they
accumulated it by doing creative things?
Scientists know that creativity can be lost. But can it be learned?
Attempting to answer this question, Lis team also looked at personality traits that contribute to
creativity and found that openness to experience is by far the most salient characteristic, as it
matched up with both high grey matter in the pMTG and with high creativity as tested by the Williams
Scale.
Openness to experience is generally a trait one can willfully improve.
Although it may sound vague, the term openness to experience is in fact one of the widely
recognized Big Five Personality Traits, a concept theorized by Paul T. Costa, Jr., and Robert R
McCrae in The Revised NEO Personality Inventory, along with conscientiousness, extraversion,
agreeableness, and neuroticism. Someone who has high openness has an active imagination,
aesthetic sensitivity, attentiveness to inner feelings, preference for variety, and intellectual curiosity.
The trait also closely correlates with intelligence as measured by IQ, according to a study in Learning
and Individual Differences.
Most importantly though, openness to experience is generally a trait one can willfully improve.
Trying new foods, learning foreign languages, meeting new people, giving the Times Sunday
crossword a go, pondering complex issues and varying viewpoints are all ways one can work to
increase their openness.
It seems then from this study that creativity, although deeply affected by ones neurology, can at least
be partially learned and improved upon vis--vis openness to experience. Yet the other new study is not
so optimistic.
Similar to Gladwells clarification that practice is necessary but not sufficient for creative success,
Frederick Travis, a researcher at Maharishi University, said, Some people put in long hours and do not
excel. He added, It's a simple fact that some people stand out, and we're trying to tease out why. We
hypothesized that something must be different about the way their brains work, and that's what we're
finding.
Along with coauthor Yvonne Lagrosen, Travis published a study in the June 2014 edition of Creativity
Research Journal, which found that people who have brains that process information faster can also
make more diverse connections and original associations, a hallmark of creativity. Because theres not
an obviously confounding relationship between information processing speed and creativity as there is
in Lis study, Travis and Lagrosen seem to have shown that creativityor at least the ability to quickly
condense disparate experiences and memories into original ideasis based on the brains processing
speed.
But neural processing speed, according to the study, is not something that can willfully be improved
upon.
Both of the neurological studies find that creativity is linked to the ability to quickly process and
reorganize varied information. What we can discern from this is that the most creative individuals have
a variety of experiences from which to draw (as Shelley did between her upbringing in intellectual
circles, the ghost stories she read, and the discussions of galvanism she heard). The studies also find
that one must be open to new ideas as well in order to transform these experiences into an original
product.
Dreams and remembered language afford one the ability to build memories and thoughts even while
sleeping.
If someone is not inherently open to new experiences, he can make an effort to try that new Thai
restaurant or read a book from a different genre than his favorite. He can actively build his tolerance to
new ideas. Simply living a life of complexity and of tolerance can, according to the Li study, aid
creativity.
Additionally, those with a dearth of experience can also tap into their subconscious to discover new
experiences. In Robin MacKenzies book, The Unconscious in Prousts la recherche du temps perdu,
the senior lecturer in French at the University of Swansea explores the theme of the unconscious in
Prousts touchstone novel. He finds that dreams and remembered language are key sites of unconscious
brain activity, which afford one the ability to build memories and thoughts even while sleeping. The
idea is a neurological twist on Gladwells 10,000-hour-rule, that the ceaselessly working mind is in fact
able to practice creativity by gaining new experiences even as it sleeps.
Before drafting Frankenstein Mary Shelley had already undergone a great deal of tragedy and had the
life experience of a woman twice her age. Her mother died when she was 11. Her prematurely born
baby died when she was 17. She married Percy at 19 after his former wife, Harriet, killed herself. Then,
two years later, Shelley moved to England with him where her second and third children also perished
before she gave birth to them.
Shelley had both a bundle of deeply affecting experiences and openness to new ideas (she internalized
the ghost stories and understood how they might relate to the contemporary science of Erasmus
Darwin). Yet, perhaps most importantly, she also had the ability to bring together all of these
experiences together into a tight, hauntingly original story.
We cant know the details of her neurology, obviously, but what is clear is that she had time (not
10,000 hours, but time nonetheless), she had a surprising amount of experience for her age, she had
raw talent, and she was open to new ideas.
Its difficult to pinpoint exactly what makes a great artist creative. Like Victor Frankenstein, who
raided charnel houses and graveyards to get human remains for his creation, there are almost too many
parts that go into creating something great. And although Frankensteins monster didnt end up too
happily, his true creator, Shelley, shows that when experience, openness, and the right neurology come
together, the final product is nothing short of incredible. It may be possible to learn creativity, but only
to a certain extent, and we still dont know how all these traits can coalesce so perfectly, so that what
the greats end up with is not a demented monster, but a genius creation.