Received wisdom has it that humanity is divided into two types, those woebegone glass-half-empty folks and the gleeful ones with the glass half-full. This always makes me question in which camp I belong, and the answer is I don’t relate to either one; I’m a person who is just glad to have a glass with anything in it at all. 
 
Since I was 15 I’ve had the feeling, every day, that life might be snatched away from me suddenly. This is not pessimistic on my part, just realistic; I almost did die from cancer at 15, so I guess I might say I know whereof I speak.  This feeling of the tenuousness of life has lent some urgency to my creative output.  My studio is decorated with replicas of happy skeletons (bought over years while visiting Mexico,) as a memento mori, a reminder that I should not waste a moment of the time I’ve got. 

To anyone who finds worth in this attitude and hopes to adopt it for themselves I can’t in good conscience recommend a near-death experience. I’m sure there are other, safer and just as convincing routes to a productive life, but that is what befell me and all I can talk about is my own experience, warped as, perhaps, it was. 
 
As an author and illustrator of children’s picture books I’m frequently asked by parents and teachers how to encourage creativity in their children. There, again, my experience has been unique and somewhat bent, but that hasn’t prevented me from being free with my advice. I once recommended to a mother who thought she had a creative son and wanted to cultivate that side of him that he should be locked in a dark closet several times a week.  I told her I had five very good reasons for this:

1.  It would engender fear, always a great motivator.
2.  It will make him sit still for long periods, laying ground for self-discipline.
3.  It will cause him to focus on his own thoughts, introspection being a prime ingredient in creative production.
4.  It will spark his imagination. (Darkness tends to do this.)
5.  Lastly, the unfairness of his imprisonment should develop his tendency to rebel against  authority, non-conformity being the goal. Most good artists and writers are notoriously independent thinkers.
 
I laughed as I said this, though the young mother did not join in my merriment. Perhaps she could tell that, on some level, I really meant what I was telling her.

I would never lock up a child, of course, but I do think some adversity is necessary for artists to develop into adults with something meaningful to say. But here again, I can only go by the empirical evidence from the lab in which I, as a young rat, was raised.
 
Really, I have no worries about the perpetuation of creativity in our culture. Life itself –especially in these times—will provide all the adversity needed. What parents and teachers need to provide is the love, support and encouragement to our young people to go out there and face it.