Jonah Lehrer, author of Imagine: How Creativity Works says:
Because creativity has long been associated with the muses, we’ve assumed that creativity should feel easy and effortless, that if we’re truly inventive then the gods will take care of us. But nothing could be further from the truth. Instead, creativity is like any other human talent: it takes an enormous amount of effort to develop. And then, even after we’ve learned to effectively wield the imagination, we still have to invest the time and energy needed to fine-tune our creations. If it feels easy, then you’re doing it wrong.
Just like it would be impossible to take up the cello and within a few months or a year play like Yo Yo Ma, our skills at writing, singing, dancing, composing, painting, sculpting, et al can take years to develop. This reality might be hard to wrap our minds around as members of a culture where we have been trained to expect things instantly, from messages to mac & cheese. Yet I haven’t had anything else in my life that has proven more gratifying, more soul nourishing, than the process of developing my creative life, which by the way, I’ve been working at for well over a decade.
What about you? Are you willing to “put in the the time and energy needed to fine-tune” your creations? I hope so, because the world needs you.
www.susangabriel.com
From our lovely email subscribers:
“Read your blog and really liked it. Whatever the talent…it’s an on-going thing to keep working at it. When you fall away from it you actually lose your confidence and your ability to do what it is you LOVE. Thanks for the lifting words. Nancy”
and:
“Very well said Susan. I agree with every word. Because everything takes time to cultivate, nothing truly worthwhile comes to easily. Hope you are having a beautiful life. Trelys”
> Just like it would be impossible to take up the cello and within a
> few months or a year play like Yo Yo Ma, our skills at writing,
> singing, dancing, composing, painting, sculpting, et al can take
> years to develop.
This is why, although I’m supposed to cheer when I hear that someone penned some fan fiction that they then published online in eight weeks and got ten thousand downloads and now inked a million dollar book contract, I cringe. I understand why the publishing houses do it—it’s bucks. But these things are always terrible, yet today’s young readers will grow up thinking they’re reading Great Literature, because a publisher that wants their money and isn’t patient enough to let them learn to appreciate Dickens, Hawthorne, Steinbeck, Kafka, Tolstoy, or Kundera tells them so. There used to be a time when even great artists would throw their works in the fire because they weren’t satisfied with them. Today everything someone does is genius and if you don’t do it you’re a “H8er”—heck, even spelling is optional with today’s readers and writers.
Don’t want to come off as a misanthrope who’s always saying things were better in the olden days, but those gate keepers and arbiters of taste served a valuable function, one that’s lost on today’s generation.
I tend to agree with you, John. Though I’d like to think that my daughters, in their 20s now, have a little more going on since they’ve always been big readers. But I know exactly what you mean. The whole Snookie memoir for 4 million or whatever it was, struck me as insane.
Btw, it took me a while to get H8er!
It’s not insane from a business point of view. They’ll make it back. They won’t make it back on my novel even if it’s the greatest thing since War & Peace (which I sincerely doubt it will be). Deborah Eisenberg, whom I consider to be the best American fiction writer working today, had her complete works published only in flimsy softcover with less-than-newspaper-grade paper. Her sales are counted in the thousands. Snookie moved that many books in her first day, I’m sure.
Hi Susan,
I have days where the words just flow out of me without me having to think. And I also have days where I struggle to write even a hundred words. On a good day I try to write as much as I can because the next day might not be so good.
Hi LK,
I know exactly what you’re talking about. There’s an ebb and flow to my creativity, too. On the flow days, I hop on the wave and ride it as long as I can. Those are really good days!
Thanks for commenting!
Yes, I agree with both of you. Two weeks ago I was stuck in a really deep funk and couldn’t write my novel. I tried switching to a short story and had the same struggle. Suddenly last week everything was suddenly easy. As I’ve said to Susan before, I’ll never get these writers who say they write 1,000 words a day (or ten pages, or whatever) every day. If I forced myself into some sort of artificial quota, I’d turn out crap and become very down on writing.
Not to compare myself, heavens, but Beethoven had a period from about 1809 to 1814 where he barely wrote anything. This came after a period of amazing fertility, 1801-1808 where he wrote so many of his “hits”—Da da da duuuum!