the two stages of creativity
This is a reaction to a blog post by Gregg Fraley.
This whole conversation reminds me of a Hemingway quote, which is:
‘Write drunk. Edit sober.’
Of course I am not encouraging people to run out and start drinking, but the point I think here is that there are two very distinct stages to creativity. I agree it is a choice, but it is also a process that can be understood (to some degree).
Stage 1: let it flow. Write write write. Do NOT stand in your own way. Write as much as possible and NEVER self-censor. That is for stage 2. This is the creative muscle that needs to be exercised and to quote Voltaire: The perfect is the enemy of the good.
Stage 2: look at what you wrote as if someone else wrote it. Feel free to move back to stage 1 if you get a good idea. Remember that 99% will be not usable and that is as it should be. Another good concept (I don’t know who said this first): Kill your darlings. That means that if there is one thing that you are REALLY excited about, it might be a good idea to get rid of it. Superstar tidbits tend to get in the way of the whole. Be honest with yourself.
Those two steps have served me well for 20+ years, and I got problems but a lack of creativity is not one of them. What tends to happen, I find, is that as you perfect this 2 step process, with the two steps so separated (flow versus scrutiny) your brain over time is actually able to do them simultaneously – and that is somewhere after your first 10,000 hours (read Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell for more on that). It is here that good things can occasionally just land on the page, fully realized. That is what people talk about when they say the song wrote itself. This has happened to me on many occasions and these are among my best works.
Lastly, remember that this is not about you, it’s about what you are writing or creating. I have never once been able to consciously direct or insert meaning into anything. If you get good at step 2 you will find that often if not always the good stuff is not what you expected or wanted – it is the stuff that was NOT consciously created. It is the stuff that just happened along the way. That is why step 1 is so important – you will never know if it is good until AFTER you have finished it. So don’t judge yourself until you have walked away for a moment and can move on to step 2.
Good luck everyone!
EDIT: apparently, this is the original ‘kill your darlings’ quote:
Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch: ‘Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it – whole-heartedly – and delete it before sending your manuscripts to press. Murder your darlings’.
Later this phrase became ‘In writing, you must kill your darlings’ which has been attributed to William Faulkner.
