People often have stereotype or fantasy that artists receive their inspiration from high above, as if the “drop of gift” appear all of a sudden. Wouldn’t it be eye-opening if professionals reveal how that process actually works? In fact, numerous books have been written by artists to disprove the “muse” myth, showing that it is nothing romantic but just consist of routine hard work. In this blog post, I’ll talk about what unites novelist Murakami Haruki, advertising legend James Webb Young and choreographer Twyla Tharp in the creation process. Together, these professionals have done us a huge service by distilling the often mystic creativity process into technical steps that can be reproduced by people in every field.
Murakami on establishing routines as your backbone
Murakami Haruki has a big and diverse portfolio including long and short fictions, essays, and finally in 201x he published an autobiography reflecting on his 4-decade long career. With very imaginative works under his belt, Murakami might be the farthest from the bohemian lifestyle we outsiders projected on artists. In fact, his daily routine is more similar to an athlete or middle manager in a big corporation than any artists. In the book, he reveals his strict daily routine that he sticks to wherever he goes (get up at 4 to write 5 hours with 4000 words, run for 1.5 hours, retire at 9pm) for 30 years. It doesn’t matter if inspiration comes or not, he just sits and writes regardless.
The book is an expansion of his “routine as backbone of life” philosophy, highlighted by his collection of short essays on running We outsiders would think writers are just like any other office workers who slump in a chair all day and don’t require a lot of physical work. However, according to Murakami, writing takes a huge toll on BOTH mental and physical reserve. In order to keep drawing ideas from mental space to sustain the brutal long journey of developing a long novel and its roadblocks, one needs a strong physical “shell”. A healthy body is also essential to maintain mental balance, which protects the integrity of his plots. To accomplish this, he needs the aforementioned routines to keep both his mental and physical machines running smoothly and consistently.
Running also resets his mind and trains him to be more focused and enduring, two other qualities highlighted as essential in a long writing career. As he finds out from those “one-hit wonder” writers, talent comes and goes like a fleck. But focus/endurance can be trained (via routine physical exercise like running), and are the fuel that can sustain the years one pour in developing a long novel and the frequent struggle with writer’s block.
The other assets to acquire as a writer is to broaden one’s experience and not suprisingly, collect more materials by detailed observation of everything, even the mundane. This bit is echoed by Young, which I will introduce in the next section.
Young on creating new by combining the old
Advertising executive James Webb Young abstracted creation as a principle of combining old elements into a new idea, which is enhanced by one’s ability to see relationships between apparent disparate things. To practice this principle, Young offered what he called a simple process that is difficult to practice as people don’t believe in it. Rather, people seek complex inroads to “crack the creative code”. In his very short book, aptly called A Technique for Producing Ideas published in 1965, he emphasized that this process can be learned, practiced and refined by anyone. He distilled this brainstorming process into 5 steps,
- collect ideas: This is the foundation of everything. Your curiosity and keen observation power come to play here. For Young, people fail at being creative first by not gathering raw materials diligently, but by sitting idle waiting for a novel idea to strike.
In advertising an idea results from a new combination of specific knowledge about products and people with general knowledge about life and events.
Types of ideas to collect:
- specific ideas about the product and consumers in your industry
- general ideas: daily observations from diverse fields that drip into idea banks Young suggested putting these into index cards and categorizing them, something very similar to the Zettelkasten Method introduced by Niklas Luhmann in the 20th century. The advance of digital tools allow us to practice this methodology by building a second brain, something that will be our central reserve for the next step.
- link ideas: This is the fun part. Now you get your hands dirty by closely examining each idea, turn them around, rearrange them and linking them. For Young, this step is where the actual creativity happens, when you see the relationship between things and combine old ideas to form new ones. Using existing materials in your second brain, you can remix, cross-link, visualize apparently disparate things to see if they share any hidden connection. In this step, our second brain allows us to tend and nurture our ideas like seeds and plants in a digital garden.
To some minds, each fact is a separate bit of knowledge. To others, it is a link in a chain of knowledge. It has relationships and similarities.
- incubate: distance yourself from the ideas and let them develop unconsciously
- wait for ideas to emerge in a new form
- develop, test, iterate: this step is similar to the Agile Methodology in which you develop your newly formed idea into a small deliverable, launch it and collect feedback, then adapt and iterate
His 5 steps illustrate that creation is not able making something completely out of nowhere, but more a gradual process of synthesizing existing elements into new compounds. I learnt about this book by a reference in a book on copywriting techniques, and I find Young’s process as relevant today as it was decades ago. To me, his combinator principle is a good complement to lateral thinking in finding new ways to solve problems.
Tharp on knowing yourself and sustaining the flow
Choreographer Twyla Tharp is similar to both Murakami and Young in putting habits/routines first. For her to sustain a half century of tough physical and mental work, she cannot rely solely on a random spark of inspiration. Rather, she leans on consistent effort and preparation. As she attests with her successful projects spanning decades, when you build a routine, things will gradually come out.
She distills the whole creative process into technical how-tos (with lots of exercises to ensure that you’re putting her words to test) in her book The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life.
I really appreciate Tharp’s honesty in sharing both her success and failures, and reflecting on both the why and how in these experiences. The book reads like a manual that is easy to follow. I’m even more impressed when she does our homework by guessing what our fears and thoughts are along the way, and counters our thoughts with her experiences. Why all these exercises? Because she debunks the cliche practice makes perfect, and instead emphasizes perfect practice makes perfect. You need to know how to practice and she vows to be your guide in this.
cultivate up a routine
Mitigate inertia and ease into a routine forming. Routine takes out the friction of thinking what to do. It becomes so automatic that your energy is not spent deciding or debating.
Here are several tips she offers to help you cultivate a long-lasting habit,
- good working environment
- a ritual to start the routine. Make it a knee jerk thing so that when you do the ritual (e.g., light a candle), the routine will automatically follow
- stand up to our fears. She has provided counter arguments to all of the common ones
- remove distraction (music, multitask, phone, looking at mirror - ego, news - things that are other/uncontrollable, talking - silence is solitude, )
What happens when we fail to keep up the streak? Tharp differentiates lapse (break your habit once) from relapse (break your habit twice or more), in which we might go back to an old habit or form a new one.
self-awareness is your map
Tharp also stresses the importance of knowing your creative DNA: which lies in the common traits of all your projects, the media you feel natural to create in. To unearth your DNA, write a creative autobiography where you explore all the projects and pursuits, and see what commonalties lie under.
People who are talented in multiple areas can easily be consumed by this curse as they are distracted and don’t know which domain to focus in. She recalls when she draws stage design and costume, she suddenly feels an inclination as a painter. She gave this a deep thought and finally decided that while she could paint well, she felt much more natural in dance.
practice action-oriented thinking
Tharp’s mantra is “Do a Verb.” Instead of merely thinking about your creative project, take action. Write that first sentence, sketch the initial design, or play the opening chords. Action propels creativity forward. You only know how to do something by doing it. Creative is not a celebral process, you have to write to know how to write, or get writing ideas. You have to move your body to know what to choreograph.
The start of a paragraph is not the same as starting to write. Don’t think you don’t know how to start a post, just write whatever you have in mind, even though the point should be put in the middle. Once you get it down, you will be able to keep rolling and work from there back to the beginning of the post. I have this experience with blogging when I didn’t know how to start, but following her advice, I just wrote something in mind and suddenly ideas kept coming in.
Scratching - a big idea is a goal, you need small ideas to put together to become the goal. Scratching is the collection, unearthing of all these small ideas.
build a treasure box for each project
Tharp collects everything related to her project in a shoebox, a physical manifest of ideas in her mind. This not only acts as an idea bank, but also as a reminder of a project’s progress. It also serves as an archive when the project is completed.
keep the juice flowing
Tharp advices against exhausting your “groove” or flow. It’s equally important to know when to stop than to start. When you still have gas in the tank, stop there. Write down the remaining undeveloped ideas, and start from those tomorrow with new eyes. This has several advantages
- avoid burnout
- the remaining ideas can be incubated by subconsciousness during sleep, same per Audrey Tang, ex-Digital Minister of Taiwan, revealed in her interview and Young in the book.
- you will not start with blank slate and in a rut tomorrow. You are guaranteed to have something to start to work with every morning. This way the groove keeps going