When a studied music my specialist subject was composition. This entailed a lot of copying: copying out initial ideas into sketchbooks, copying more developed ideas onto musical scores, copying instrumental parts from scores. When I composed, the act of copying invariably took far longer than the act of inspiration.

Unsurprisingly, copying quickly became an important part of my compositional process. Seeing the notes forming and intertwining as I copied them provided me with a very strong sense, almost as strong as hearing them performed, of how each note and phrase rubbed along and interacted with another.

And the more I copied out my ideas the clearer became my thoughts about developing and enhancing them. It was as if the physical act of copying provided the space for my intuitions and feelings about the music to incubate, develop and rise to the surface of my thinking, so enhancing my compositional ability.

Repetitive and mundane activities are as intrinsic to effective creativity as are the sudden insights and original thinking more usually associated with it. Indeed, the sudden insights or ‘eureka moments’ associated with creativity are only the visible tips of the creative iceberg, their heights unachievable without the hard and unexciting graft that takes place out of sight below the water line.

Do not assume that being creative is about having to be continuously original in your thoughts and deeds. Do not discount the repetitive activities that will help you fully appreciate how the intricate details of your task rub along, interrelate and occasionally combine to create more than the sum of their parts. You will then, slowly but surely, be building towards those all-important moments of insight that can provide the footholds that will carry you upwards towards your peak of innovation.

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