Creative or imaginative?

As some of you may remember, I write an article every week for my local PATCH.

This week, it's about an eight-year old artist. I included 11 photographs of things she's made, and her comments on them: the oil painting above was done when she was 6, the story-drawing below when she was 3. I wish I could draw and paint as well as she does, and create as effortlessly!



She is, literally, almost always making something. I wonder if being creative -- wanting to, or maybe even having to make something -- is different from being imaginative -- making things UP, but not feeling the need to give them physical form. This of course is not in the article, these pieces are about the kids themselves, not my thoughts!

I do wonder about it, though....maybe both start with an idea, but creative people need to form that idea into something physical? And those of us who are merely imaginative don't?

For me, physically forming something is easy and satisfying when it's something like cooking, super-hard when it's something like a novel. When it comes to writing, I guess I'm more imaginative than creative -- THINKING of the idea is fun, writing it over and over and over to get it right is just plain hard work!