Committing to creativity
There's a quote from the book City of Thieves by David Benioff where a character laments the fickleness of talent:
Talent must be a fanatical mistress. She's beautiful; when you're with her, people watch you, they notice. But she bangs on your door at odd hours, and she disappears for long stretches, and she has no patience for the rest of your existence; your wife, your children, your friends. She is the most thrilling evening of your week, but some day she will leave you for good. One night, after she's been gone for years, you will see her on the arm of a younger man, and she will pretend not to recognize you.
While I love this quote, as well as the book (you should definitely read it), I can't help but disagree with the premise that talent and creativity are divinely bestowed and out of your control.
I've read a few autobiographies of prolific authors, and they all state the same thing: the words don't come easily and sometimes need to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into the light. The book Creativity by the winner of the most-difficult-to-pronounce-name-award, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, shares this conclusion and suggests that creativity is a creature to be nurtured, given space to grow, and needs commitment and a lack of distractions to thrive.
The thesis is clear: relying on motivation is a losing game. Motivation is a feeling, while commitment is a decision that outlives the feeling.
I've found this to be true in my own life, both in creative pursuits, and in things like relationships and exercise. It is a rare person who is amped to exercise all the time, and so it requires commitment to stick with it. Similarly, showing up well in your relationships can't depend on fleeting passions, because life is bumpy.
The nice thing is that commitments become easier with time. I have near zero resistance to exercising and journalling, and have been doing both almost every day for close to a decade. The first year or two were difficult, but once they were a part of my day, they became absurdly easy to continue doing. Relatedly, when I'm in a good writing routine it is effortless to write. However, if I go a month without writing on my blog (as is currently the case), each word is a struggle.
Action begets motivation, not the other way around.
Creativity is like a muscle. It requires constant use to grow, and atrophies when neglected. But creativity is transferable, and so, engaging creatively has positive effects in other creative domains. This post was inspired by a comic jam I attended this past weekend. The comics were great, genuinely funny, and everyone had a wholesome time. It also made me realise how long it had been since I'd sketched.
Conversely, I speculate that forgoing creative thought will lead to it "leaving you for a younger man". She doesn't leave on a whim, she leaves when you stop showing up.
It hurts when I see people "brainstorming with AI". This is essentially offloading creative thought to a machine, forgoing the most human of processes. It honestly makes me sad, and I can't help but feel that collectively we’re losing something beautiful. The machines are coming for so much, but we can’t let them have this.
So go do something creative. Anything. Make a zine, paint with some watercolours, come up with a song. And keep doing that, forever.
