> But when I knew how to express ideas, for some reason I had an easier time coming up with those ideas in the first place.
That's the rub, being creative is not worth much if you don't have the necessary skills and technique (practice practice practice!) to express yourself.
I think this is less true than you think especially after seeing documentaries inside the world of many high-profile artists.
In many real-world cases, creativity is closer to direction and composition than the nuts and bolts technique. This is especially true for works that grow in scale beyond a single practitioner. Modern artists have studios and contractors that actually do e.g. metal casting, modern musicians use engineers/producers to create the actual beats, a film score writer probably isn't a skilled trombonist etc.
IMHO creativity is about decision making - its closer to "taste" and doesn't require skill to be a unique and special talent in itself. Its a bit like the Jobs/Woz divide.
> IMHO creativity is about decision making - its closer to "taste" and doesn't require skill to be a unique and special talent in itself. Its a bit like the Jobs/Woz divide.
I think you're talking about something other than creativity. Architects are not bricklayers, that's the subject of the allographic/autographic distinction made by Nelson Goodman, but it really is orthogonal to creativity.
Creativity is generally understood to be about fluency, flexibility and originality of ideas. (The Wikipedia page is pretty extensive.) Skill and taste are different and certainly do each contribute to the value of works of art, but not necessarily in a creative way.
Like the work of a prolific artist in a busy studio full of assistants, cooking (for example) involves both skill and (literally) taste. Artists who work like that are actually precluded from certain types of creativity, by their own reputation and the expectations of their market, even if their work is selling well. Much like a chef. I think that's the problem with your notion of what creativity is. You are mistaking aesthetic productivity for originality and the other things that mark actual creativity.
That's the rub, being creative is not worth much if you don't have the necessary skills and technique (practice practice practice!) to express yourself.