Letter 34: August 25, 2008: A change of work is as good as a rest.
Here's a page on the web site of Dean Keith Simonton, one of the big names in creativity research: http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/simonton/dksinprogress.html. While looking on the site for something I actually needed, I found instead his list of works in progress. I'd very much like to copy his entire opening paragraph here, but it's not mine to copy, so if you have time please take a look for yourself. The paragraph sums up what it's like to be a polymath, to be a Renaissance man.
Simonton was lucky enough to be born before the current fashion for pathologizing everything. People who take an interest in many things, who move from one to the next as the searchlight of their excitement swings onward, who maybe feel bad about actually accomplishing a fraction of their notions... these days they're diagnosed and drugged at age seven. So much for the Renaissance man, so much for tomorrow's brilliant adults...
...where was I? Oh yes. Look: in his sixties Simonton is turning out 21 documents a year, has 17 publications on their way through the presses, has 16 projects in hand that he knows about and says some of his best work happens so suddenly that it isn't even on the list. Goodness, he even keeps his website up to date - how many of us stay on top of that part of our jobs? How he does it I can only speculate, so I'll do that: I guess that, when he's not teaching his five classes, he does what interests him at each moment.
I was thinking about this today as I walked in Malibu Creek State Park. An unusual number of runners on the trail today - must be Olympics fever. I was thinking about a client I met a while back, who had the kind of mind I just described, and who'd never realized it was a wonderful rare talent.
And I thought about the two major writing projects that are on my mind currently. One is urgent, the other important. So I'm getting it right and doing the important one. Looking forward to the other, not as a job but as a welcome change and relaxation.
Some writers like to have two (or more) jobs on the go at all times, so that each can be a diversion from the other(s). That way, you never have to waste any of your time, but you still have the pleasure of feeling like you are.
Something you can try today or at least this week: have more than one writing project in hand. It might not reduce your enthusiasm for each of them. It might even heighten it. When enthusiasm on one project wanes, turn to the other. And vice versa. Oh and, like all of my suggestions, if it doesn't work, stop doing it.
David
David Jung McGarva
+1 (818) 707 1871
Write me: david at todayiwrite dot com
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