creativity and stuff

[VemuKhaham]

So, I'm done for two months with college, holidays are here, and I have deliberately planned only little to do. Actually, I planned to get creative these weeks, but so far, nothing. What is it with creativity? I spend all year yearning for these 2 months, pushing away creative outbursts and ideas because I don't have time for them, postponing them until now, but now... I'm just sitting here, at my laptop, playing games instead of writing. All the ideas are gone. And it's always like that. Last year was pretty much the same. I still have good hopes that things will improve, but still... I guess creativity never comes at a convenient time.

Luckily, I can work with the things I noted down or didn't forget during the year to keep me going, so I guess I'll be alright yet. But to translate mental and written notes into a story is an entirely different matter. The thinking, it often seems to me, is so much more fun than the writing.

I think, for a while, I'll just switch to drawing something. The process of drawing is as much fun as the process of thinking what you'll draw, and usually works to get my creativity going. Sadly though, my drawing skills aren't really of the level I'd like them to be, and the result usually upsets me in one way or another. But that's always the thing with me: I am the harshest judge when I judge myself. The worst thing in life is ambition, or being a perfectionist. If everything I did would suck, but if I were happy with it, wouldn't that be preferable to never being content, even though others may praise you?

But aside from me, who else here has 'creative things' going, besides pure D&D? I know some of a few people, but I guess that there is always more to tell. How do you cope with the uncontrolable ebb and flow of creativity? In general, what is creativity to you? Or, if you think this is the most useless thread ever posted in the history of Kman's, why do you think so?

[menatkhufu]

I dont agree that perfectionism is negative. You may be perfectionist, or you may be lacking stick-to-itiveness, or you may work on or create completely messy things. These are alternatives, and unchangeable parts of your personality, and in the end, if you have the spark, you will have created your thing. Many a masterpiece has emerged from drawings scrabbled on paper napkins, and many a good novel has stayed in the writers attic for years before s/he again chose to work on it. I bet there are a good number of people who has created good things by solely working on 1 project, and trying to perfect it for years. Not to mention that most of them geniuses created worthess junk for a zillion times before they came up with noticeable things.

But I agree, if everything you did sucked and you were happy with it, it would be preferable to never being content and others praising you.

On craetivity, I think that you are born with it, or you are born without it. I draw too, and most of the time I find myself copying other's works. I tried to write some years ago, only to find the same. I just accepted the fact, and moved on to other things, maybe because I'm very fickle with my interests.

Maybe, in this age, being creative is very hard. People are continuously being loaded with various data, everything is ready for you on the internatz, and there is too much stimuli for the common brain to be left alone to its matters and find out what the world and itself is and to create and innovate.

Think that? Already thought. Do that? Thats already done. I think that was the problem for the young me.

Still, I'm very lucky to have found out that I am extremely creative with cooking, so that my friends love me. And my job, since without creativity, one better not practice medicine at all.

[TheZebraShakes™]

Why I think this is the most useless thread on KMan's.
By TheZebraShakes

Ummm. . . well. . . Dammit, I had a whole reasoning ready and now it's gone. Must've been all those fumes while I was cleaning the bathroom.

It's difficult for me to be creative because i am such a huge procrastinator, and when I do finally think of something, I get obsessed to the point where I can't sleep, so it's hard for me to even bother and I just end up writing or doing whatever comes to my mind at the moment.

I've taken to drawing snails of all types recently, ninja snails, D&D snails, cowboy snails, snails that just don't give a f#$%@.

For the most part, writing here on this site is what really keeps my creativity going and my brain functioning. I've never really had to be super creative at any job I've had or school I've been to. I love writing, but I'm just not all that great at it where I'd think that trying to write a book or something like that would be something I'm capable of, so I really just try to enjoy my time here and to make sure that I'm always having fun and keeping my mind from growing moldy.

Also, I watch a lot of TV. OK, that may sound bad, but it all depends on what you watch. I watch a ton of documentaries and news shows and I'm learning a lot from them, so when I'm doing stuff such as writing or thinking, I tend to go back to what I saw on the shows and pull out bits and pieces of ideas and whatnot that I can incorporate into whatever I might be trying to do at the time. As an example, My game here IGTBE, is an evil gang based campaign and although I'm from an urban area, I don't really know all of the goings on, so I find myself watching documentaries on gangs and secret societies and the like and I take a little from what I've learned and use that toward my own creative ends.

I wish I could be more creative in terms of starting up my own non profit organization or community group or something like that, and though I was working on it with some people, It just never really got a chance to get off the ground, especially in large part due to our current economic state, so all of my ideas and hopes for that got swept under the carpet and I was disappointed. When you hit a roadblock like that it's pretty tough to muster the desire to keep on forging foward.

Maybe what you should do is get away from that laptop and those games. They are just distractions and you'll never get anything accomplished as long as they are there, believe me, I know. And don't try to force yourself to be creative, I'm not sure that it actually works like that. I think that you have to be out there experiencing stuff or at least watching other people experiencing it on TV. That might help, though I'm no expert on the matter.

[TheUdjat]

Christ, I could talk about this for hours.

Shakes gives a lot of good advice here. Especially with regard to getting away from distractions to focus on what you want to do, and using input to drive your own creativity. I do a lot of reading to keep myself inspired, and I also watch a selective list of television programming. Things that I like or think are cool or are educational. I also carry a notepad with me everywhere I go to jot down ideas, make lists, and otherwise record the inspiring moments that hit me.

But that is how inspiration tends to work--in waves. However, I'm going to share a somewhat controversial revelation I had, which some may doubt, but I firmly believe in: you can turn creativity into a work ethic.

It's like this. For years I struggled in precisely the way you're speaking about, and in many ways I still do. My creativity seems to hit its stride in autumn and goes for a solid six months, and dies around April. I've only noticed this pattern recently, but it left me with a number of unfinished/half-finished projects that are great in theory, incredibly moving when I think about them even, but so much time has elapsed that I haven't been able to get them back on track. Dozens of ideas. More, even.

Another problem is quantity of ideas. I get so many and I want to dedicate attention to them all, but if I try to do that, I lose focus, and the whole house of cards goes tumbling down. Nothing to show for it. It's extremely infuriating. But what I learned about channeling creativity is that it actually can kind of be forced. Maybe forced isn't the right word. Encouraged.

Creating a piece of writing (my predominant focus) is like... pottery. That's how I think of it. I've got the vision of what I want in my head, but I need to talent and patience to create it. I also need the focus. My first step is always sitting down and, section by section, arduously putting it all on paper (well, electronically). I don't write the ending first or the middle first, or write sections I feel inspired to write, I do it precisely beginning-to-end. As I go, I keep another file open to write down ideas I think of along the way--future plans, things that strike me as I go, and most importantly, things to go back and fix that, as I've progressed, I've changed my mind about. The important part, for me, is to just keep going. My focus is tenuous enough, and I know if I leave something for more than a few days, I'll lose my momentum.

What I'm doing is just getting the damn clay down and into a rough shape. Then when I've written that extremely dissatisfying first draft, I go back and refine it, using my notes. And then again. And then generally another time or two. The wheel turns, I clean up my pottery, shape it more carefully into what I want, and eventually bake it for 6 months while I work on something else, come back, and glaze it.

It's not a perfect process yet. You can tell by how I'm not published. But it keeps me focused, keeps me writing, and keeps me inspired. Over time, I've even developed little rotes to help me get that first, most horrible step out of the way (because editing and cleaning things up, for me, is so much easier than getting it out of my head in the first place). I pick a time of the day to write. I put the right music on. I maybe watch or read something in the same genre during the months I'm working on something. I tell people to leave me alone for a while. I even have a favorite drink, though that's kind of a dangerous habit to develop.

But all of that's just how it works for me. Every author I talk to has a different technique. I know a guy that smokes up and writes his first manuscript on the bathroom floor in pencil on legal sheets of paper, and types it up later, and he manages to produce far more literature than I do. So it ultimately comes down to getting something to work for you.

The biggest piece of advice I can offer is: Don't give up. It's so, so, so easy to give up on creativity. Just don't do it. Ignore the excuses, don't procrastinate, stick to AT LEAST getting it all out on paper. Then you can decide if it's salvageable or not.

Or... don't. Let the ambition fade, don't try to turn creativity into work (because that's what I'm trying to do), and do something else. Someone once said 'If anything can stop you from writing, let it.' I don't personally hold to that, but maybe there's a point to it.

As for ambition... give ambition some respect. If we didn't have ambition, we'd still be foraging for scraps from the better predators. We wouldn't even have stories on the cave walls. We sure as hell wouldn't have roleplaying, and that would be a damn shame.

(By the way, KMans can also be a distraction. I've bargained with myself before: "Okay, I'm not logging on today until I've finished this chapter." True, the chapter turns out a bit hurried and sub-par, but the idea is there, and I can fix it much easier. That's good enough for me. Take yourself away from the boards for a while if you have to.)

[Japic]

Wow; now that's a lot of text.

In short I can't much offere advidse here. What I can say is that so long as you have the gumption to keep going, things will be fine.

My owwn creativity comes in spurts; sometimes where I prefer writing, others drawing (original or copying). Though I can say that with teh helpof KMans I've gotten lots of ideas to proverbial paper over these many years. some ideas are better than others; but I still consider it my #1 source for creativity outlet.

Not much help on topic, but I feelbetter for having said my uncoordinated piece. So thansk for sharing your thoughts about non-creativity.

[Lin]

Creativity is hard work. And its a skill. Unfortunately, that means the only way to get good and stay good is to do it all the time. Spending a lot of time not doing it and then trying to do it all at once is a recipe for disappointment and despair. It that makes sense: practice creates improvement and a doing a lot of work at once is harder just doing a little. By not practicing for a long period of time, then expecting to do lots of work all at once, you've basically given yourself a double-whammy of difficulty that I've faced many times. You just can't brute force skills like that. The things we think are easy are only that way through consistent work.

[VemuKhaham]

So hey everyone, thanks for the feedback. I share many of the sentiments put up here, such as about being original. However, I'd like to think that creativity isn't per se originality: like Chaucer said in the 14th century: everything worth writing has already been written before, so if he had that idea already back then (though of course from a very different perspective), then I think good literature isn't so much about being original, but about making good use of the right cliche's at the right time. Especially with the fantasy genre: it's basically a genre that revolves around traditions/cliche's, but still different books might feel entirely unique to a reader. The same with drawing: God only knows how many people have tried to draw the same things or themes, like stories of the bible or mythology, but still, different portraits can be unique and good. So originality, though nice, isn't crucial, I think.

As for watching tv, yes, I do that to get inspired too, and it often works. Especially when I watch nature documentaries like Earth, and see all those unimaginable places that our earth features, then I draw on that greatly.

And yes, I've done away with the games for a while, and it's helped. Playing Civilization is fun, but it's also addicting, and saps every bit of creativity away from me, and it robs time like hell. Thanks especially for that suggestion!

As for whether I have my own annual waves of creativity, I can't say yet. It sounds like quite a useful discovery once you've made it, but probably difficult to find out. I do tend to be more creative when I'm busy though. I think it's because my mind wanders off to escape all the tasks that I have to perform. But when I'm busy, I can't write them down, of course.

Ambition is nice of course, though sometimes I'm actually trying to figure out who's off the better: animals or us. But I think I should give it some credit.

But there's good news. With my mind free from games and with a few afternoons of drawing scenes from the world in which my story is set, I think I've come closer to something creative. Yesterday, I tried to write again, but what I came up with was half a page of terrible crap. Then, while in bed, I did another analysis of the specifics of my current helpless state. I figured I had lost touch with the world I was setting my story in. A year ago, when I thought about that world, I couldn't stop imagining things. Now, it almost felt intimidating to think of it.

So I figured: I can't write a story set in a world of which I don't know what it's about, can I? I needed to recollect what central themes there were concerning the world and the things happening in it. They are the foundations of any stories spinning forth from that world. From them, I can write.

Today, I started early in the morning and I've been writing enthousiastically for several hours. I'm really happy about it, I finally think I broke through a layer of dust that had been gathering on the boundaries of my creation during a long year of neglect. I took up a big broom and started brushing the dust off of mountains, the branches of trees and the sickly people living in dusty little towns. It's summer again in Ardulace.

I think I'll write some more now. Thank ya'll!

[TheUdjat]

Jul 17, 2009 10:06:25 GMT -5 VemuKhaham said:

So I figured: I can't write a story set in a world of which I don't know what it's about, can I? I needed to recollect what central themes there were concerning the world and the things happening in it. They are the foundations of any stories spinning forth from that world. From them, I can write.

This has been exactly my trouble with certain worlds of mine. Venusian Skies comes to mind, where it becomes difficult to write or stage anything in it because it just doesn't feel finished. (It's been off my radar for a while, though). I also have a tendency to get caught up in trying to figure a setting out so hard that I never get the plot moving, which has been problematic in several other stories. As you did with Ardulace, I sat down with Providence some time back and just listed, wrote, analyzed, and mapped out how everything I could think of worked in the setting, from people, figureheads, military, law enforcement, local customs, government, religion, etc. I didn't hit every tiny little detail, but knowing all of that made going back to edit the story so much easier. I knew what I was trying for. Themes are an important part of that.

And then there's stuff like my latest story, where I just haven't bothered defining the setting because it's close to real-world, and I don't want it getting in the way.

Today, I started early in the morning and I've been writing enthousiastically for several hours. I'm really happy about it, I finally think I broke through a layer of dust that had been gathering on the boundaries of my creation during a long year of neglect. I took up a big broom and started brushing the dust off of mountains, the branches of trees and the sickly people living in dusty little towns. It's summer again in Ardulace.

I think I'll write some more now. Thank ya'll!

I'm glad you're making progress with Ardulace. I will try to be more diligent about reading the bits and piecs you post on here. I was glad to see a fellow writer charging headlong into a new frontier!

[VemuKhaham]

Well, there's one other thing that helped me as well. Before I set upon this project, I had many many different projects running at the same time. Most of them involved a setting as well, some more elaborate than others. I'd made them for stories I'd plan to write, for campaigns I ran, etc. Each had unique content that I liked, but neither of them felt fully developed.

Now, Ardulace was born from a shared project with a friend, but that friend is now no longer busying himself with the great hobby of fantasy, and I am carrying on the torch alone. Ardulace rested for a while, while I created other stuff, until one day, about a year ago, I decided to pick it up again, but to handle things differently.

Instead of starting to develop yet another individual world, I decided that I had better just focus on one thing. This Ardulace was going to be the bedrock upon which I would mix all the best stuff from other worlds and ideas I had yet created so far. Of course, not everything could mix, but with so many different ideas from different origins, new ideas spawned, like when you mix colors, you get new ones. I kept the mythology of Ardulace but adapted a history of a major empire from another world to fit into this world and found that it only enriched the history. Elves and dwarves too gained new cultural features that for some reason blended seemlessly with the world of Ardulace. I now have many names for the same places/people etc., but instead of scratching all but one, I kept them and gave them different etymologies. Since then, I've been determined to stick to Ardulace, because I no longer felt like abandoning all the riches I had made up in the past. My ambition now is to further develop this world and make it a recurring background setting for many stories to come. I just hope that in the future, I'll still be able to be loyal enough to stick to Ardulace, but I have good hopes.

I'm not saying that this is what you should do, but it sounds like you've got many things going on at the same time, like I had, and it's hard to keep focused. I myself find that it's hard enough to keep focused on one world (besides the one we're actually living in), so I'm glad I have set myself these limits.

But that's just my thoughts. Oh, and those writings on Ardulace I have on these boards, I had almost forgotten about them! They still give a good image, but a LOT has changed. One thing, for example, is that dragons are now asexual, they have no gender. Raising a dragonchild is therefore quite hard. All changes that come about through the proces of mixing and matching and finding out that one thing is incompatible with the other and has to change, and the process of writing and rewriting it and then rewriting it again. And I'm glad I did it.