I started listening to a new book today, John Cleese’s Creativity: A Short and Cheerful Guide. It’s pretty short, and I’m almost half-way through, but — fittingly, I guess — it’s already sparked an idea for tonight’s post. It’s a little self-referential, but I want to talk about my creative process a little bit. Especially because coming up with topics for these night after night has required more than a little imagination.
There are a few ways I try to stay inspired. One of them is an idea I just heard in the Cleese book that I’ve also mentioned here before, but I’ll share it again: constraints. I start drafting these a few hours before midnight, knowing that I want to have everything published, a title, an image, a little blurb on Post., and the post itself, before the clock strikes twelve. Those constraints do a couple of things for me. First, it forces me to focus on a single thought which I can elaborate on and, hopefully, not get too distracted from. Second, it provides a deadline so I don’t end up endlessly editing these instead of actually publishing them. Lastly, that urgency is also a motivating factor for me to get out of my own way. The pressure created by setting both a time and a place for these means that I don’t have too much time to second-guess the direction I’m heading in, while still being able to try and land the plane.
There was a Matthew Barney exhibit at the SFMOMA shortly after we moved to San Francisco where he was creating works by physically binding himself in some way. A part of it was a drawing on one of the walls of the center stairway which he created by harnessing himself from the ceiling and only making marks as he swung close enough to make contact with the section of wall he was drawing on. That piece has stayed with me for a number of reasons, not least of which is that no matter what the original vision was, the marks are the marks, and you can’t really change them once they’re committed. That’s something I’m trying to get better at accepting here. And another reason I want to keep doing these.
I’ve always had a hard time with the idea that done is better than perfect. But having these constraints every evening forces me to do the best I can, and then let it out into the world. Could these be better? In my opinion, yes. But if I held them until I thought they were really perfected and ready for public consumption, honestly, there’d probably be very, very few of these for you to read. (It’s up to you to decide whether that’s a positive or negative, though.) Thankfully, as Biz Stone is fond of saying, creativity is a renewable resource.
Uncovered
27 December 2022
Creative mourning.
I started listening to a new book today, John Cleese’s Creativity: A Short and Cheerful Guide. It’s pretty short, and I’m almost half-way through, but — fittingly, I guess — it’s already sparked an idea for tonight’s post. It’s a little self-referential, but I want to talk about my creative process a little bit. Especially because coming up with topics for these night after night has required more than a little imagination.
There are a few ways I try to stay inspired. One of them is an idea I just heard in the Cleese book that I’ve also mentioned here before, but I’ll share it again: constraints. I start drafting these a few hours before midnight, knowing that I want to have everything published, a title, an image, a little blurb on Post., and the post itself, before the clock strikes twelve. Those constraints do a couple of things for me. First, it forces me to focus on a single thought which I can elaborate on and, hopefully, not get too distracted from. Second, it provides a deadline so I don’t end up endlessly editing these instead of actually publishing them. Lastly, that urgency is also a motivating factor for me to get out of my own way. The pressure created by setting both a time and a place for these means that I don’t have too much time to second-guess the direction I’m heading in, while still being able to try and land the plane.
There was a Matthew Barney exhibit at the SFMOMA shortly after we moved to San Francisco where he was creating works by physically binding himself in some way. A part of it was a drawing on one of the walls of the center stairway which he created by harnessing himself from the ceiling and only making marks as he swung close enough to make contact with the section of wall he was drawing on. That piece has stayed with me for a number of reasons, not least of which is that no matter what the original vision was, the marks are the marks, and you can’t really change them once they’re committed. That’s something I’m trying to get better at accepting here. And another reason I want to keep doing these.
I’ve always had a hard time with the idea that done is better than perfect. But having these constraints every evening forces me to do the best I can, and then let it out into the world. Could these be better? In my opinion, yes. But if I held them until I thought they were really perfected and ready for public consumption, honestly, there’d probably be very, very few of these for you to read. (It’s up to you to decide whether that’s a positive or negative, though.) Thankfully, as Biz Stone is fond of saying, creativity is a renewable resource.
See you tomorrow?