Creativity is definitely a muscle. And I am truly starting to believe that the internet is the cause of atrophy.
When I was a teenager, I used to stay up until 2 in the morning finishing art projects. I would use magazine pictures as source materials to draw pictures, or I would paint pictures with acrylic on cardboard that was stapled to the wall of my bedroom. Part of the point was to paint outside of the edges so that eventually my whole wall would be a work of art. My mother is cool, she's a stoner and a flower child and she was okay with my writing all over the walls.
In my early twenties, I would stay up until 2 or 3 in the morning writing stories with one of my best friends. I would play a character and she would take another and we would play them off one another. Once of use would start a scenario and we would just see where it would take them.
One character was a transsexual heroin addict, another a schizophrenic rock star.
I has a pair of albino twins, the brother a voodoo psychic vampire, the sister his zombie. He drained life from his victims in order to keep her alive and used glamours to keep her from knowing that she had died 8 years ago, and it was his will alone that allowed her to live.
I took figure drawing classes. I look back at art or stories from that time and I'm impressed by the skill of the person who made them.
I couldn't pinpoint when I stopped being creative. But now I still stay up until 2 in the morning. I lurk on Facebook, I spend hours Pinning on Pinterest, even have a board called "Art Inspiration" I look through all the beautiful photo sets here on SG.
But I don't often produce. I draw from time to time, but I don't like what I draw. I play Dungeons and Dragons, but I don't really flesh out my characters.
So anyway, this isn't meant to be a sad post. I plan to start drawing, writing and creating again. Find my voice. I'll put some of what I do here. Maybe I'll use some referance from the boards. Who knows. Maybe it will just be doodles. But that's a start :D
Stay tooned.