More Memory = More Creativity

Scientific American has a post, “If we remember more, can we read deeper–and create better?”

Creativity is, at some level, about linking disparate facts and ideas and drawing connections between notions that previously didn’t go together. For that to happen, a human mind has to have raw material to work with.
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memory isn’t just for remembering; it is also—and centrally—for creating.
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At the end, you need that base, those building blocks that memory offers, even if alone, the blocks are not of much use. … It’s up to us to understand how to apply what we’ve memorized, what we’ve learned, all the knowledge we’ve stored, up to us to know what to make with the disparate blocks of memory.

So, one thing we can do for our creative writing students, is give them more to remember, more experiences, more memories.