Letter 46: November 17, 2008
You're taking care of everyday things, but you're living at the edge of a song - Laura Nyro
A fish that gets away or a baseball phenom who injures his arm may be long remembered, but a writer endowed with brilliant creative processes who never picks up a pen will remain unknown - James Kaufman
Let's get back to those 4 Ps, can we, after a few weeks away? We talked about the creative process, and about creative people. Number three, taking em in a random order, is the creative product. It's widely accepted that to be "creative," what you create has to be novel and useful. R. A. Ochse said it more fully: creativity "involves bringing something into being that is original (new, unusual, novel, unexpected) and also valuable (useful, good, adaptive, appropriate)".
Pause and apply that to whatever it is you're writing, or about to write. Does it apply? If not, I'll see you next week.
Of course you have to decide what "novel" means. Must you be the first person in the world to have a particular idea, or do you only need to have it? Depends, doesn't it. If you're making a blockbuster movie, it has to be one that was not made three months ago. Pause for cynical laughter from some of you; but you know what I mean.
But if you were telling your kids a bedtime story it wouldn't matter if another parent miles away had made up the same story. When you bake a cake from your family's secret recipe, there may be a thousand other families with the same recipe, but none of you knows about any of the others. And if you did know, it would still be the recipe Grandad invented, right?
So you are held to different standards of creativity... no. You are held to different standards of originality depending on the goal you chose in the first place. Your level of creativity is the same, but the criteria for recognition are different.
How does that apply to your writing? What's your audience? Do you seek widespread publication? That involves research, to see what's been written already. Goethe expressed thankfulness for not being an English-speaker because they had to live in the shadow of Shakespeare. Whatever genre your novel or screenplay is in, you live in the shadow of someone.
Or do you write for yourself, or for your writing group? Then the criteria are different, and your work is none the worse or better for that: it's just different, it's just appropriate.
Stand on the shoulders of giants? Certainly we do. You have to, for giants cast mighty big shadows.Something you can try today: know your audience. Are you writing to impress an editor or producer? Or for the public? Or for fun? Then do it.
David
David Jung McGarva
+1 (818) 707 1871
Write me: david at todayiwrite dot com
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