The Idea Catcher

// May 20th, 2010 // 8 Comments » // creativity, illustration

“I have so many ideas that I’m lucky if I don’t trip over them each morning.” J.S.Bach

I love the image of Bach tiptoeing through his room, over the ideas strewn on the floor like yesterday’s underwear.

Isn’t that just how creativity works, too? Ideas are abundant.

Having ideas is much easier than bringing them into the world.

If i’m looking for a good metaphor, I always begin with nature. And the sheer abundance of creative activity in nature amounts to an embarrassment of brilliance–think about the millions of eggs laid by sea turtles on a beach on a single night; the way fruit rots on the ground beneath trees; the outrageousness of Spring where the whole landscape blooms for a few weeks.

Maybe you’ve experienced one of those lazy days lying in the garden, trees swaying above, the drone of bees thick in the background, as idea after idea flows through your mind, only to be swept away as you fall into a nap. Or maybe your ideas arrive in the shower. Or you receive wild visions while stuck in traffic.

Ideas are floating all around us.

The next step involves action. We need to pick up our imaginary butterfly net and snatch the ideas we most resonate with, the ones we commit to working on.

But I’ve noticed something that can stop me from picking up that net and going for it.

Once I commit to an idea I remove it from the safe bubble marked ‘daydream’ and start to make a place for it in the real world. Undertaking this process means I risk mucking it up, or being laughed at,  or ridiculed.

I have piles of notebooks that I keep in a red box, each one filled with sketches, doodles, ideas. I love that box. It’s like a bright red cocoon for my ideas. They sit in the box like fat little grubs, readying themselves for the day they’ll burst out into the world.

Flipping through my notebooks can be like chilling out in one of those covered butterfly exhibits. I can safely watch all my ideas and sketches flap about, both hands tucked in my pockets to avoid squashing anything.

But if I want to create, then I need to get out that net and commit. Problem: I often find a sense of dread rising when I do that.

I think that sense of dread comes from the tension between the ideal version of the idea in my head, and the flawed version which my limited abilities will actually produce.

And it’s true, the flaws will be there. But these flaws are part of the good work that I’m trying to do, too. This is the work of adding beauty and meaning to the world.

And not just any beauty and meaning, but the singular beauty and meaning that can only come filtered through me, and my perfectly flawed life. That’s the only stuff I can bring out into the world.

So, my thing at the moment is to try and be a little more daring. And to snatch these ideas as they float past, then do something with them.

Flap Flap. *swoosh*

5 Unhelpful Questions For Your New Creative Project

// January 26th, 2010 // 8 Comments » // Uncategorized, creativity, curiosity

At the start of a new creative project do you ever find yourself facing down a barrage of shaky thoughts designed to prevent you from even beginning?

I certainly do. Sometimes the starting line can feel like the finishing line where, just as one last burst of energy is required to break the tape at the end of the race, a similar burst of energy is often required just to break self imposed barriers at the start of a creative journey.

These barriers often appear as questions, which is a big clue: it’s almost as if they’re designed to divert me from creative action and send me elsewhere looking for the magic answer that will make things go smoothly.

Here is a small selection of those questions from my head:

1. Do I Have Everything I Need?

Possibly the sneakiest question, and often the first to come up for me.

Here’s where the part of me that’s scared to create offers to ‘help’ by planting a doubtful seed which gives the option of ‘preparing’ rather than ‘creating’.

It’s sneaky, because sometimes we do need to gather a few things, research, prepare ourselves before we sit down to create.

But more often we need to just sit down and write/draw/sing/strum/move–whatever the action is that moves us into our creative project.

And if we don’t have everything we need? I’m often surprised when caught without my note book or preferred art supplies at how innovative I can be on the spot.

I’ve written snatches of poetry on napkins, sketched with coffee and fingers, made impromptu toys for my sons with cardboard boxes, formula tins. I’ve seen amazing Aboriginal cave art in Australia that was accomplished with sticks, spit, and crushed rock.

2. OMG! Where Did I Put The Map?

That fearful part really wants you to lay the path out exactly, wants to know where this is all leading. Because if the distance from point A to point B is comprehensively mapped out and all the dragons are banished to the edge of the page then nothing scary (ie: creative) can happen.

True creativity is always about discovering something new, no matter how incremental that discovery may be. If that newness is missing, then nothing has been created.

Needing to know the exact layout of the terrain means eliminating any risk of tripping over the unknown. Safe, but definitely not creative.

I think this is why planning, or having an exhaustive outline for a creative project is so tempting–it gives a sense of security. But writing an outline or hanging onto a predetermined plan for your project shuts out opportunities for new learning and creative growth.

It’s O.K. to have a sense of where you might want to go, but more important than that is a willingness to go where the creative project asks you to go.

If you’re surprised and thrilled by where your art takes you, then your reader/viewer/listener is more likely to feel surprised and thrilled too.

3. Can I Do It As Well As They Did?

If I listened to that one every time it came up I’d be a grown man sitting in a crib. Unfortunately, I’ve listened a lot. It’s a pointless question, comparison is not the point of creativity. Creativity is.

The best antidote I’ve ever seen for this question was reading a Gary Larson collection (the ‘Far Side’ cartoonist) that had a brief history of his cartooning career. He showed some of his first cartoons that ran in local newspapers way before he took off. The drawings were crude and a bit amateurish, but you could see the seeds of his unique style and great sense of humour in them already.

The important thing wasn’t whether his cartoons were as skillful as a Charles Schulz, or as funny as Bill Watterson, it was whether or not he was creating his own unique viewpoint and style, at whatever level he was at, which is what eventually made his work seem so effortlessly brilliant.

4. Will Everybody Like It?

It’s the most natural thing in the world to want everybody to like something that’s important to you. You’re bravely putting yourself out there in an art-form you’ve come to love and want to work at.

But this is entirely the wrong question to be asking at the start of the process. Probably in the middle and end too, but especially at the beginning. It’s like setting the handbrake, bricking your wheels and slashing your tyres all at once. You’re guaranteed a fast trip nowhere.

I used to post a lot of poems up on poetry critiquing sites, I liked it when the poems got a good reception, but I always learned more when people let me know what didn’t work.

The best response I ever got was when a whole lot of people loved a poem I had posted and another significant group absolutely hated it. To me, the fact that people were strongly engaged with the poem, some of them to the point of being pissed off, was more important than what they thought of it.

5. Will It Be Perfect?

Um, no.

This question is rarely asked via an actual ‘voice’ in my head. It’s more of a visceral question in the form of a general unease, because I know it won’t be perfect and imagine all sorts of consequences: shame, ridicule, low grades, loss of status.

Of course it won’t be perfect. And that’s a good thing. If everything I created was perfect, creating art would be a sterile experience not worth pursuing.

Not only will my creation not be perfect, It’s pretty well destined to fail, at least partially. That’s a good thing too. Failure is the Vitamin F of creativity, it’s good for your heart and your eye, your bones and your soul.

*****

All of these questions seem to have my best intentions at heart, and in their own way they do. Taking creative action means putting myself out there, and I find that scary. At some level I want to be protected from that.

At the same time I want to be vigilant in keeping focus and diving in as deep as I can when I create. And that involves letting go of any expectations I might have for the end result.

Mild Flooding, Water Wings Are Located Beneath Your Seats.

// January 8th, 2010 // 1 Comment » // Uncategorized