Entries Tagged 'Creativity' ↓

I spent the majority of my life trying to be a realist. It seemed like the thing to be. Realists are self-aware. They don’t get disappointed very often. They’re right more often than not. They usually get the girl.

Idealists are bright-eyed and bushy tailed. They’re naive. They spend their time in their own little world. They’re often disappointed. They’re not particularly cool.

Is it any wonder I spent so long trying to be a realist? It seemed a hell of a lot easier. Here’s the thing, though: It was really tough for me. It was tough for me because I’m an idealist at heart. I think all creative people are idealists at heart. And since I believe that everyone has the capacity to be creative, I think everyone is really an idealist. The problem is that being an idealist is rough, so we try to change ourselves into being realists. That’s a mistake.

Realists are rarely disappointed because they set their expectations low. They’re often right because they always make the safe bet. They usually get the girl (or guy) because they’re settling for the convenient one, and not the love of their lives.

Idealists on the other hand set themselves up for failure because they reach for the stars. They take crazy risks. They chase their soulmates. And, sure enough, more often than not, they fail. But, I’ve already said repeatedly on this blog that failing isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s a learning experience. It’s okay that idealists fail a lot, because every once in a while they succeed. And when an idealist succeeds, he knows he’s done something special.

What’s the point of going through life playing it safe? Sure, you might not fail as often, but you definitely won’t get the great rewards, either. Instead, do something crazy, take a risk, try to change the world. Fail enough times and eventually you’ll succeed, and when you do, it will all have been worth it.

If you’re not trying to change the world, then what’s the point?

Starting right now, become an idealist. Go start working on something that will change the world. If it doesn’t work out right away, don’t worry about it, just keep plugging away. At the very least, you’ll know that you’re working towards something worthwhile.

Finish that novel. Start that sculpture. Get to work on that business plan. Find your soulmate. Embark on the journey of a lifetime. Change the world.

I just finished reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy. I am currently reading Bright Shiny Morning by James Frey. I recently read The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz. These books were all bestsellers. The Road and Oscar Wao both won Pulitzers. Bright Shiny Morning may have partially rebuilt James Frey’s reputation as a writer (the jury’s still out on that). I’m not saying this to show how well read I am. There is a pattern in all these books aside from their bestseller status or their prizes. They all throw good grammar out the window.

I never used to read contemporary short fiction, but lately I’ve started reading literary journals to see what is getting published right now. Overwhelmingly, there is a lot of fiction with bad grammar.

Obviously, the authors of the three novels and all the fiction I’ve read KNOW how to write properly. They’re all great writers (except for Frey – still waiting on that jury). This means that they’re intentionally neglecting to use quotation marks. Purposely writing run-on sentences spliced with fragments. Mixing verb tenses for a purpose. What’s the purpose?

I never learned English grammar in school, but every book or article I’ve read has said that when you’re going to break the rules of grammar or style, there should be a really strong reason that compensates for it. McCarthy is writing about a post-apocalyptic world. Rules of grammar, constructs of society, they don’t apply in his world. I get it. Diaz’s novel is narrated in the first person. The grammar slips make it seem more authentic? Maybe. Frey’s writing a series of interconnecting stories with a loose common thread. He’s just trying to be edgy.

What about all the other short stories I’ve read recently? Do they all have excuses too? I’m not convinced that The Road would have been lessened by the use of quotation marks and punctuation. I’m not convinced that their absence makes the book better. So what is with this trend of throwing basic rules out the window?

I’m concerned that young writers, like me, are going to read this and begin to think that the rules of grammar and style are optional. Or worse, that to get published today you need to do something different to stand out, and that means writing convoluted prose or chucking the basic rules out a window.

Sitting, staring at my fiftieth anniversary edition of The Elements of Style, I wonder if this gem of a book is becoming obsolete. If that’s the case, I’m scared, because these rules exist for a purpose. They show the path to clear writing, not just in literature, but in all its forms. Without clear writing, you’re losing the ability to communicate. Without that, they’re just words on a page.

So, when someone asks me who my writing influences are, I have no problem saying, “Hemmingway.” I don’t need anything more modern because clear writing is timeless.

This post could also be entitled, “where the hell have you been?”

In a classic case of an experiment taking an unexpected turn, my low information diet had some unintended consequences. In my last post, I mentioned how reducing my information intake freed up my time, but didn’t affect my creativity. It appears that I need to add a caveat to that. While cutting out information consumption didn’t reduce inspiration for writing, it did remove motivation to post to the blog.

I didn’t take into account that posting on the internet is a largely social exercise. I post to my blog, I read others’ blogs, it becomes a disjointed and dysfunctional dialog, but a dialog nonetheless. Remove the reading of others’ blogs and my own blog becomes me talking into space, and there simply isn’t a whole lot of motivation for me to talk into space. The end result was an extended period of time without a post.

This becomes a vicious circle, though, because the blog was my method of accountability for my writing. I updated my progress on the stories, by posting to the blog. Remove the blog, and you remove the accountability. Remove the accountability, and the whole experiment falls apart.

And so it did.

This extended hiatus has obviously hurt the end goal of making it to 52 short stories in a single year, but I’m going to keep plugging away and see just how far I get. Maybe I’ll extend the experiment at the end of the year, maybe I’ll just see how far I got. Either way, the writing won’t stop, and the low information diet has taught me a few things that I’m going to take away from it.

In no particular order, here are the lessons I’ve learned:

1) I don’t miss a lot of the content I used to read daily
2) Despite no longer subscribing to multiple news feeds, and not having cable TV, I’m still capable of feeling well-informed about the world around me. Yes, information is just that prevalent
3) People read this blog, and they complain when I don’t update. It’s touching, really.
4) A blog’s traffic will not die even if you neglect to post for a while.

Also, based on some of those learnings, and on some realizations I came to during the hiatus, there are a few things that will be changing on this blog. Again, in no particular order, here they are:

a) Less time spent on formatting. Pictures might be pretty, and bolded words might draw the eye, but I want people to read this for the content, not for the imagery, and the effort involved in finding those pictures isn’t worth the return, and I think my readers are smart enough to pick out the important bits without me highlighting them for them.
b) I need to be less preachy. I re-read some of my previous posts and realized that they were coming off stiff and preachy. I don’t talk like that in real life, so why am I writing like that? Going forward, I need to figure out how to start writing in my own voice.
c) This is going to get ecclectic. There are a lot of topics that are tangentially related to writing and creating. In fact, just about everything is. I need to take advantage of that fact more.

Overall, the low information diet was a great learning experience, and I’d recommend it to anyone who wants to simply his/her life. At worst, you end up with too much spare time on your hands. At best, you end up re-evaluating and prioritizing.

It has now been a full week since I started the low information diet, and so far I have only cheated a little bit.

My first piece of advice to any sports fan who wants to go on a low information diet is: Do not do it during the playoffs.  As it turns out, I’ve stuck to my vow not to watch any television, other than in social settings, but checking playoff scores has been the one area where I have fallen off the wagon.

In all other areas, however, I’ve stuck to the plan I set out.  I have not checked my RSS reader or any other news sites.  The only times I’ve logged in to a social network has been to respond to a direct message.  I’ve checked personal e-mail only once per day.  I have not read anything new since the beginning of the diet.

And what has the result been so far?

A lot of extra time.  I always knew that I spent a significant amount of time consuming information, but I never realized just how much otherwise productive time that actually represented. 

So, that must mean that I’ve been super-productive since this started, right?  Well, not quite.  I do believe that I’ve managed to write a bit more, but the increase in productivity has not been proportional to the increase in free time.  I have a theory that people only have a certain number of productive hours in them per day, and no matter how much free time they are given, they can not exceed that number.  That certainly has seemed to be the case for me.  Despite having more time, I have simply found new ways to procrastinate.  For example, I never knew how easy it was to waste time staring out one’s window.

My other theory is that perhaps one can increase the number of productive hours in a day through practice, like marathon training.  I suppose this is what the remainder of the experiment will focus on.

In terms of creativity, I have not noticed an impact
since I stopped consuming other creative works.  Perhaps it is too early. However, what I have found is that while creativity is often inspired by other works, inspiration can also be drawn from my own work.  If, for instance, I am working on a story, I can immerse myself in that story and draw on the setting of the story I have laid out to move it forward without drawing on outside sources.  Obviously, outside sources influence the direction, but the direct inspiration is the world that I have already created.  Partly for this reason, the lack of other materials has not negatively impacted my creativity.

Also, there is a side effect to a low information diet that I had not realized going in.  When one is consuming less information, one has to make up for this loss by consuming inspiration from other sources.  Without the fiction of other writers to fall back on, I have needed to find inspiration in everyday life. This does seem to make perfect sense because when you can not simply revert to old crutches for either gaining inspiration or getting information, you need to be far more present in all other interactions.  Because of a fear that the inspiration well will run out, I find myself looking for inspiration in every conversation, interaction and event.  This can only be a good thing, because these catalysts are unique to me and can not be said to be drawn from another author or artist.

Next week, I will report back on whether my productivity has increased any further, as well as any additional unexpected benefits or setbacks.

I looked at the calendar recently and noticed that over a quarter of the year has passed. If I were on schedule with 52 Short Stories, that would mean that I would have completed at least 13 short stories, and probably should be closer to 15 right now. As I write these words, I have just completed the eleventh. I believe that is what they call being behind schedule.

I could carry on about how things have been very hectic with traveling, professional and personal obligations, but that would be disingenuous. When I set out to write 52 short stories in a year, I knew that these kinds of situations would arise, so to act blindsided by them now would be whining. Instead, I looked for ways to rectify the situation by increasing my productivity.

I like working with goals that have fixed time limits and are either easily measurable, or are absolutes (either you did it, or you didn’t). However, most goals, as laudable as they may be, require more time or resources. Run for an hour twice a week for two months. Spend one hour per week practicing Spanish. Read fifty pages per day for a month. Etc. All of these take time, and while they can definitely produce results, taking up more time is the last thing I need to be doing right now. So, I looked for a productivity goal that would actually increase my time, and settled on a technique that I’ve been wanting to try for well over a year now: a low-information diet.

Tim Ferriss’ best-selling book, The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich, opened up a whole new world to a lot of people in terms of productivity, world travel, working philosophies, mini-retirements, investment strategies and much more. At best, it’s a guide to achieving a rich lifestyle free of traditional constraints. At worst, it’s an entertaining read. One of the many things that Tim advocates in the book is a low information diet. Rather than go into great detail about what it is, I will allow you to read Tim’s explanation or simply say that it’s basically the practice of eliminating a large number of inputs.

I am an information junkie. A few years ago I used to read four different newspapers. Now, it’s worse. I’m subscribed to the RSS feeds of more than four newspapers, in addition to a number of other sites and blogs. Also, at any given time I am reading between one and four books. I no longer have cable, but when I did, either CNN or Sports Center was always chattering away in the background – now I just get my fix when I’m visiting someone who does have cable. All this is to say, I have always spent large amounts of time consuming information.

The idea of a low information diet is that all of this is cut out, and that information that is truly important will eventually find its way back to you.

One of my biggest concerns in implementing a low information diet is not that I won’t know what’s going on in the world – although that might happen – but rather that I have always found inspiration in the information I consume. I have said before that I think inspiration can be drawn from any source, even one as mundane as a newspaper article. So, my biggest concern is, if I go on a low information diet, with the express purpose of creating more time to work on creative pursuits, will the well of creativity go dry making the extra time useless?

I don’t know the answer to that question, but I figure that there is only one way to find out. For the rest of the month, I will be on a low information diet. I will not read my RSS reader. I will not read any new books. I will not check Twitter, Facebook or any other social network except if I’m alerted of a direct message. I will not watch any television unless it is in a social setting. I will check personal email only once per day.

In May I will report back on how this mini-experiment goes. If it’s going well, I may extend it. If it’s not, then I will chuck it and look for another way to create time.

Have you ever tried something similar? If so, how did it go? If not, have you ever considered it and decided against it?

    There are times in life when it’s all just too much.  You’ll know these  times because they’re usually accompanied by tightness in the chest or another manifestation of anxiety.  When this happens, you have two choices.  You can kill yourself trying to do everything, and in the process you’ll probably end up screwing up a couple of things. Or, you can cut a few things out of your hectic life and focus on those that are really important.
    The same can be said in writing.  Chances are if you’re a writer, you have a million great ideas, and if you’re like me, you try to cram them all into the same page.  Unfortunately, you end up doing none of them justice, and your piece ends up reading like a schizophrenic’s flow of consciousness.  That’s when you edit, and as hard as it may be, you cut some things out.  It may have been your favourite part of the piece before you put it to paper, but once it got there, it just didn’t fit.  It feels like leaving your child behind, but for the sake of the piece, you know it has to get cut.
    In life and in writing, you need to make decisions to cut things out and focus on what’s most important.  There will always be those that seem to manage to do it all, but they are either superhuman, or they’ve cut things out that you just haven’t noticed, like family, friends or sleep.
    So, take an inventory of all the things in your life, or take a look at whatever piece you’re working on, and see if there aren’t a couple of things that you can’t cut out.  The end result will be better for it.

Photo courtesy of DG Jones.

Anyone who keeps track of the progress of 52 Short Stories will have noticed that it appears to be taking me far longer to finish a story these days than it did at the beginning of the year.  Similarly, anyone who follows me on Twitter will have noticed that just about every time I tweet, I’m in a different city (for what it’s worth, I’m the world’s worst Twitter user, and don’t tweet very often to begin with).  There is definitely a correlation there.

Over the past couple of months, I have been in Toronto twice, Vancouver twice, Boston several times, and in Montreal in between. Next week, I will be in San Francisco.  I enjoy traveling, whether it be for work or for pleasure, but it has definitely affected my writing output. 

Why Writing is Affected by Travel

It is my belief that in order to be able to produce consistently, you need to write consistently.  As such, I advocate writing every single day.  In order to write consistently, you need to make it part of your routine.  You need to make it habitual.  I do not go as far as saying that writing needs to become ritualistic.  You don’t have to do it at the same time every day, in the same chair, with the same tools. I believe that this can help, but I also don’t think that it’s realistic in any kind of normal lifestyle.

The problem is that the further you stray from the ritualistic, the more difficult creating that writing habit becomes.  In other words, the easiest way to create a habit is to write at the same time, in the same place, with the same tools, enjoying the same ambiance, every single day.  The more of those factors change, the more difficult it becomes to stick to the habit.

Traveling inherently screws up all of the above factors.  Writing at the same time becomes impossible, to the point where some days you simply cannot write at all.  You are not in the same place by definition.  While traveling, it becomes difficult to control your environment and your ambiance. Finally, not everyone uses writing tools that are portable.

You lose your habits and your routine, and in many cases your concentration and your focus.  This makes writing that much more difficult, and you start to experience something that feels vaguely similar to writer’s block. This can lead to a vicious circle of self-recrimination and despair.

How to Fight Traveling Writer Syndrome

In the past few weeks, I’ve come up with a few ways to deal with the perils of writing while traveling.  At this point, call them experimental.

1. Retain as many habits as possible

If you write in the evening before going to bed, continue to do so, even while traveling.  If you write in a notebook (longhand), or on a laptop, bring it with you while you’re traveling, so that you’re using tools that are familiar to you.  If you usually write in a cafe when in your hometown, write in a cafe while traveling.  The idea is to mimic your existing habits so as not to disrupt them.

2. Adopt new travel-friendly habits

As much as I dislike ritualizing writing, I find that I do my best fiction writing in my favourite chair. Non-fiction I can write at any desk, but fiction, for some reason I feel the need to write in my chair. As you can imagine, traveling with a chair is impractical, so I’m trying to get used to writing in other spots – beds, floors, desks, cafes.

Similarly, if you’re used to writing on typewriter or a desktop computer, consider moving to a more portable medium if you foresee doing a lot of traveling. 

3. Get used to writing in loud places

The hardest thing to find is often peace and quiet. As such, you should train yourself to be able to create while in a noisy environment. There is never a shortage of noisy environments, no matter where you go.

4. Take what you can get

Sometimes, no matter how much you’d like to, you just can’t get the circumstances right to write.  In cases such as that, instead of giving up altogether, see if you might not be able to do something else related to your writing.  Perhaps you do have the necessary focus to edit some of your writing.  Or perhaps, with just a pen and a few scraps of paper you can begin to outline your next piece, or brainstorm ideas for your next several pieces.

5. Whenever possible sit in an exit row

Frequent flyers know that the emergency exit row of a plane comes with a tad more responsibility, but a lot more leg room.  Aside from the additional comfort, the extra space is just what’s needed to comfortably type on a laptop.  Sitting in most regular economy seats, you’re often too crowded, and if the guy in front of you leans back, forget it, you probably won’t even be able to get the lid of your laptop all the way up.

6. Accept that you simply might not be as productive as you could be

No matter what I do, I know that I can write more over the course of a week in my home than I can bouncing back and forth across the continent. However, if I use the time while traveling to lay the groundwork for some future writing, I can often return home with enough ideas to start furiously typing away. Perhaps with enough momentum, I can even make up for my lessened productivity while traveling, but maybe not.

Sometimes, you just need to accept that there are things that will negatively impact your productivity and travel might be one of them.  Once you’ve accepted that, adjust your expectations accordingly, and you’ll see, it’s not the end of the world if you’re producing a few less words.

Photo courtesy of caribb.

Earlier this week, Lateral Action – one of my favourite blogs about creativity and making a living off of it – had a post that discussed Elizabeth Gilbert’s recent talk at the TED conference.

Elizabeth Gilbert is the bestselling author of Eat, Pray, Love.  Her talk was about the enormous pressure put on creative types to produce good work, and her suggested method of dealing with this.  Gilbert takes the audience back to before the Enlightenment when people believed that artists had a daemon, or a genius, that lived inside their studios and gave their work a creative flair.  The result of this thinking was that all creative works were a collaborative effort between the artist and his external genius.  At some point, the idea of the genius was internalized, and artists started being referred to as geniuses, and the work was no longer a collaborative effort, but a solitary undertaking.

Gilbert argues that this puts an inordinate amount of pressure on artists and creatives to produce good work, and that by returning to the idea of an external genius, artists can relieve some of that pressure.  The artist’s role becomes to simply produce.  How good the end result is largely the role of the genius.  All the artist can do is create, and if a piece does not turn out, it is simply because the genius did not show up that day.

I have to admit, the idea appealed to me for about a split second after I finished watching the clip.  No more agonizing over bad work?  I’m sold!  Unfortunately, once I started to mull it over, I decided that the idea of an external genius was wholly unsatisfactory to me.

First off, buying into this idea does require a certain extent of belief in divine intervention.  Even if the genius is not strictly a deity, or a spirit, there is something mystical about it.  If you believe in that kind of mysticism, then that idea is fine. However, if you don’t generally believe that sort of thing, then choosing to project all your creativity onto an external genius is simply an act of self-delusion. It becomes a conscious choice to create something apart from yourself that will carry all of this responsibility. The moment you make that conscious choice, you are defeating the whole purpose of the genius. The responsibility of a thing that you have created is ultimately your responsibility, therefore bringing you back to square one.

The second issue I have with Gilbert’s idea is that the whole notion of putting less pressure on the artist feels like a cop out.  Creating something is not an easy task, and no one expects it to be.  However, that doesn’t mean that the person who tries and fails to create something good should not take responsibility for that failure. I have often said that failure is part of the process, and in order to take advantage of it, you need to own up to it and accept it.  Blaming your external genius for your bad work is too easy, and creating isn’t supposed to be easy. 

Tied to that point, is the opposite perspective.  Gilbert also says that accepting an external genius is a good way to prevent an artist from getting arrogant, because he can’t take full responsibility for his success.  While that may be true, I think the better way to prevent an artist from getting arrogant is to remind him of all the failures it took before he achieved success.  Besides, creating something good and having success with it is possibly one of the best feelings in the world.  Why would anyone want to give that up? 

If we take away the responsibility for the quality of the artist’s work, and leave him only with the responsibility to produce, then creating becomes as mundane as digging ditches.  Successes and failures, peaks and valleys, are what make anything in life enjoyable.  Everything that is enjoyable in creating, the energy put into making something good, is lost the moment you give that responsibility to someone else.  A writer becomes just a typist.  A photographer might as well just use a point and shoot disposable camera.  A painter is just putting colours on a canvass.

Now that I’ve wailed against Elizabeth Gilbert, I will say that despite my dislike of the notion of an external genius, I agree with what I believe to be her underlying point.  Gilbert’s entire talk, in my view, is a roundabout way of saying that for any artist to succeed, what he needs to do is produce.  Everything else is a secondary consideration, because no matter how much talent, genius or whatever you have, none of it matters unless you produce.

Then again, Elizabeth Gilbert wrote an international bestseller, and I’m still trying to figure this whole creativity thing out, so what do I know?

Have you ever read an entire page of a book, only to get to the end and realize that you have no idea what you just read?  You know you read it, but yet you haven’t the slightest clue what it was about.  This has been an issue for me ever since I started reading books that didn’t have pictures in them.

Much of what I’ve done in my life, I’ve done with the goal of finding happiness.  My career changes, my geographic moves, my relationships, they’re all related to happiness.  In some way or another, every decision I make is related to my happiness, and I think the same can be said for everyone.

The pursuit of happiness is a defining human trait, and a topic far too broad for me to cover in a blog post.  Instead, I want to focus here on how happiness relates to creative endeavours, and how it should be used as the litmus test for deciding on what we should be doing right now.

This discussion would be a lot easier if I could define happiness, but unfortunately, despite numerous attempts, happiness remains definable only subjectively.  Further complicating matters, what we often think will make us happy, in the end, does not, or the happiness is short lived.

The Subjective Nature of Happiness

I’m a minimalist by nature.  To me, happiness comes from things experienced and not things owned.  This is a belief commonly held by minimalists and vagabonds.  However, I do not believe that this is the only path to happiness.  It’s easy for a supposedly enlightened person to say that money and possessions have never made anyone happy, but is that true?  Perhaps those things would never make me happy (at least not by themselves), but that’s not to say they wouldn’t make someone else happy.  Are you trying to tell me that none of the world’s millionaires are happy with their possessions?  Although jealous people might like to think that, I find it hard to believe.

Similarly, some people must be in love to be truly happy.  Others are happiest when they are unattached and free to live their lives unencumbered by restrictive relationships.  Having lived both ways, I find myself happier while in love.  But, I’m a hopeless romantic.  I believe there are just as many people living happy and fulfilled lives without significant others, and I’m pretty sure I know a few of them.

The same logic goes for creativity.  There are those who believe that the true path to happiness lies in creating and being creative.  By creating we are fulfilling our human destiny, and as such should feel fulfilled and happy.  I feel fulfilled and happy when creating, whether it be writing, drawing or a business solution.  On the other hand, other people are perfectly content being uncreative.  There is value in being able to accurately repeat something without changing any part of it.  Take the following example:

Growing up, I was truly blessed in that both my mother and my father are excellent cooks.  However, their excellence could not be any more different.  My father has the amazing ability of improvising a dish on the spot, essentially creating it from nothing.  I have never seen him use a recipe.  The side effect of this is that I don’t think any two meals he’s made have been quite the same.  My mother on the other hand, can replicate any of her staple recipes with robot-like precision.  Her best-in-the-world lasagna tastes the same today as it did twenty years ago.  And hey, if it’s the best in the world, why would you change it?

All of this is to illustrate the simple point that happiness is not a one-size-fits-all garment.  What makes me happy, will not necessarily make you happy. 

Happiness as  Litmus Test

The only constant is that happiness should always be the measure of anything you do.  I write fiction because it makes me happy.  I’ve chosen to write 52 short stories in a year because it makes me happy.  I’ve endured the difficulties of a long-distance relationship for several years because she makes me happy.  I’ve taken pay cuts because the work makes happy.

I wouldn’t recommend that anyone do any of the things that I’ve done, unless they make him happy. 

So, my only piece of advice is that whatever you’re doing, make sure it makes you happy.  If it doesn’t, what’s the point?

Photo courtesy of pasotraspaso.