Stupid, stupid bravery
Some thoughts on the creative process
The early part of my education built up a foundation while the latter part focused on analytical skills. But relatively little attention was paid to the creative process.
First, a disclaimer. The word “creativity” may conjure an image of an idiosyncratic artist working on experimental art. But creativity, as I see it, is really the process of coming up with anything new. This definition applies to songwriting in the same way it does to startup ideas. I’m not aiming to put together an academic guide, but I’ve been reflecting on the question more recently and want to share how I think of creating something.
One approach has been to think about the structure of the piece first, and then work from there. For my travel reflection, for example, I knew I wanted to start and end with my friend’s prompt, but I wanted the middle parts to wander in a way that mirrored my sabbatical. This approach has also been particularly helpful for speeches or stand up; something about the ephemeral medium of speaking means that the audience engages on the structure at least as much as the content.
I ran into a friend of mine from college a couple of months ago in Brooklyn. He’s spent most of his career in fiction writing. I posed the same question to him: how do you approach the creative process? He began with some version of my answer above, but went on to suggest his best work comes out of “building by association.” In other words, he finds one nugget - a scene, a line, an image - that he feels says something meaningful, and continues to build around it.
I’ve leaned on this approach, albeit less frequently, and mostly in writing short stories or music. It’s notable that the output tends to be further removed from reality: fictional characters, brand new songs. Usually the basis point - a new melody I came up with on guitar, for example - ends up as a minor part of a much larger piece. It would seem hard to believe it was the original inspiration.
But mostly, I view creativity as a process rather than an outcome. Original ideas come at the heels of countless derivative ones, and the only way to see the other side of mediocrity is through persistence. This point is worth stressing: very far from the notion that some people are simply more creative, or that their ideas are better by default, is the truth: creative people generally are just more persistent.
But why are some people more persistent than others? Practical reasons play a role: the amount of time you allot to working on something, or the opportunity cost of that time. Many high-achieving, ambitious people tend to avoid creative pursuits because they have so many good options to consider. Conversely, many persistent people simply can’t afford to forgo income.
But high-achievers avoid creating for other reasons, too. The risk of failure is nearly certain for your first several ideas, and repeated failure - especially for those who are used to succeeding - feels disconcerting. Growing comfortable with failure requires suppressing instinctive judgment towards new ideas - the same judgment we’ve spent our entire education developing; dissolving expectations of ourselves; and caring less about what other people think. Or, put more simply, what John Mayer calls “stupid, stupid bravery.”
My process for coming up with a startup idea - which has yielded some exciting topics I’ll share at a later point - has evolved considerably over time, but my philosophy around persistence has not. I’ve struggled at times feeling comfortable with failure, but I’ve tried to remain relentless in giving myself runway and manufacturing serendipity. I think I’ve scored pretty well against those objectives. It’s taken time, but the approach seems to be paying off.
Creativity is just a function of volume, and our best ideas are just ahead of us.