Impulse
“The road to creativity passes so close to the madhouse and often detours or ends there.”
— Ernest Becker
Many of us have the desire to make things, but for some this rises to the level of being a compulsion, and potential obsession. This is a meta topic to discuss since this article I’m currently writing is born out of that same compulsion.
In business, people often make a very specific mistake: they create things they like without stopping to ask whether it solves a problem in the world, or whether anyone would want it, or need it. Instead, it’s better to start from the perspective of your potential customer. This customer centric view has become more the norm in recent times. Similarly, in modern times you’ll hear people say (because it’s sexy and fashionable these days) “I want to start a company”. They don’t have a vision, a problem they want to solve, a mission statement, a purpose, just a desire to start a company. That is often a recipe for failure in business. Without a direction to orient yourself you can’t create cohesive strategies and you get spread thin because you don’t know what to say no to. I understand the logic of this, I agree with it in many ways, but for the person who is cursed to create, it might be better to violate this principle.
Exorcism
Christopher Hitchens once quipped that everyone has a novel within them, and in most cases that’s where it should stay. Maybe that’s true, but I’ll counter with a quote I recently heard from George RR Martin about what it means to be a creative person (in this case a writer):
“What’s important to me looking back… even at the times where I was afraid I wasn’t ever going to sell another book, I never doubted that I would write another book.”
— George R. R. Martin
If your North Star is Creation itself, you need to exorcise that out of yourself otherwise it festers and spills out in unexpected and even unpleasant ways. The creative impulse, motivation and inspiration exist in an endless cooperative and contentious cycle. Sometimes they overlap in ways that seem divine and flowing, other times it’s a mammoth effort to summon up even something mediocre. To be possessed by such impulses in the absence of the muse is a uniquely frustrating experience.
If you aim for creative consistency then simply by statistics alone most things you create won’t be that great, but it shouldn’t stop you. These things must be released. Let the amateurish make way for the exemplary. Cast them out like creative cannon fodder to be shot down by subpar metrics, unfavourable opinions and your own coruscating self criticism.
“In business, people often make a very specific mistake: they create things they like without stopping to ask whether it solves a problem in the world”.....it’s often a “fake it, until you make it”, the mission is created on top of the business idea, as well as the ethics or eco-friendliness and all that sh7t. First comes accounting, then the sweet layer of creativity and sustainability comes. Maybe:))
It feels to me like this is the what it’s like to understand ‘life is about the journey, and not the destination’. The destination: when things become easy and predictable. Following the thoughts means we are surrendering to wherever our minds wander. When we document these time stamps through our creations, we are able to look back at that journey. The meta perspective allows us to see all the obstacles of writers block and unfavorable statistics, and watch a character develop. ‘Creating no matter what’ is the ultimate trust fall.