Never mind the fact that I have sixteen half-written blogs to choose from this morning, running across any article about the creative process warrants a stop at the lemonade stand.
(Eat, Love, Pray Author on How We Kill Geniuses by Kim Zetter)
Over the years, I’ve read a couple of really great books about the creative process by writers, dancers, choreographers, photographers, painters, designer, and ever a few actresses thrown in for good measure. Most of these books end up as best sellers. For one, people like me can’t walk past one in a bookstore without marching to the register. Granted I’m biased, but I think creativity captivates people because it has no formula. Beyond sitting at your desk to write everyday, or showing up at the studio to dance, there’s no guarantee that brilliance will come.
In fact, it rarely does.
According to the United Nations Educational and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), there are 175,000 books published in the United States each year on average. Of those, less than 5% ever sell more than 5,000 copies, and the odds of winding up on the New York Times Best Seller list are 220:1. If my Times measuring stick doesn’t convert to your standard, consider this: On any given best seller list, more than five spots might be occupied by unbeatable bestsellers which have been on that list for years!
The point is that a million writers are putting thoughts to paper at any given moment, half of them have the intention of being published, a quarter of them will convince themselves that they deserve to be published, less than that will convince someone else (who can actually make that happen), 795 lucky writers have a shot at a Times best seller, and in the end, the one who strikes any of us as the creative genius wont even be able to tell us how they did it.
Whether it’s all just smoke and mirrors, divine intervention, hard work, or dumb luck, we'll never really know where creativity blurs to genius. Neither will the artist. Which is why I love this article I ran across yesterday.
If you haven’t already (Ali, Theresa…), read Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. I’m not going to get into any selling points since 99.9% of you have read it. The real story is what happened after it became a huge success. With its success, Gilbert achieved unexpected attention, which she says, was all very nice until people began to wonder how she would ever top her achievement.
“Everywhere I go now people treat me like I’m doomed,” she said.
Following her tremendous success, Gilbert watched as her peers set her smack dab in the middle of their concocted “downhill dilemma.” It was not the way she saw it at all.
Last Thursday, Gilbert gave a speech in California entitled, “How We Kill Our Geniuses.” The idea is that American society kills its geniuses (aka best selling authors, and all types of artists) by demanding super-human powers from them. Gilbert argues that “…instead of seeing the individual as a genius, we should view the brilliance as a gift from an unknowable outside source –some might call it a muse, others a fairy or god force—that visits us on occasion to participate in an act of creation, and then leaves to help someone else.”
She received a full standing ovation for her talk from an audience of people who, according to Kim Zetter at Wired, “generally don’t give in to beliefs about muses, fairies and god forces.”
I’ve absolutely heard this theory before. In fact, I’m sure that it’s a mindset prescribed to artists for the same reason doctors prescribe Ambien. This type of thinking takes some of the pressure off someone trying to put everything they have into a creative endeavor. Renowned choreographer Twyla Tharp says that you can walk around every day hoping to get hit by a bolt of lightning (metaphorically speaking), but unless you hike up to the top of a hill, it’s less likely to happen. Okay, I’m sure her metaphor is a bit less gruesome, but she describes it as lightning, nonetheless.
It’s all about the legwork on our “mortal” end of things (if we’re talking divine intervention, that is). Gilbert said in her speech that she ran into a severe case of writer’s block while writing Eat, Pray, Love and resolved that if the book didn’t turn out to be as good, it wasn’t going to be entirely her fault. “So if you want [the book] to be better,” she said aloud to whatever entity it was that usually helped her, “then you’ve got to show up and do your part of the deal. But I’ll keep writing anyway, because that’s my job. And I’d like the record to report today that I showed up.”
Just do your job, Gilbert says. Show up everyday. Hike to the top of the highest point for inspiration –whatever it may be that positions you in the right place every day so that when the lightning/god force/220:1 probability/transcendent state/muse/fairy/inspiration decides to bless you, it will know exactly where you are.
I read Stephen King’s book On Writing when I was in high school, so I’ll end with my favorite quote:
“Put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn’t in the middle of the room. Life isn’t a support-system for art. It’s the other way around.”
No comments:
Post a Comment