Creativity - The Best and Worst Thing Ever

In an attempt to be as scientific as possible about one of the least scientific, infuriatingly dumb parts of my daily life, I'm going to present a pretty bogus, biased, and untested theory.

The Two Axes of Creativity

Anyone who's ever had to write a report, or draw a picture for art class, or do anything vaguely creative has realized two things. They either wanted to do the thing or didn't, and they were either good at doing the thing or not. With that in mind here is a nice visual aid.

As you can see, I've conveniently labeled the quadrants for you. As I remember from high school algebra, the four chunks of a two-axis graph are numbered this way by convention. I've somewhat accidentally placed my labels on the graph to rank these from I (the state in which I spend the least time) to IV (the state in which I spend the most time). This may or may not be true for other creative people. I've warned you: this is a bogus, biased, and untested theory. So let's pretend to be thorough.

Quadrant One: I am a Golden God

As evidenced by the position, this is by far the least common state of mind. When it happens, you know. You can create whatever you want, and you want to create everything. You are in THE ZONE. Nothing can stop you, because your confidence is being proven every step of the way. This is also a very dangerous state to be in: you have a great chance of thinking what you're creating is good just because you're in the right mood. When your taste and ability to judge art increases (much faster than your ability to create it), you find yourself in quadrant two.

Quadrant Two: Worst. State. Ever.

I thank the muses, gods of creativity, angels, and inanimate objects around me that I spend very little time here. Not as little as I'd like.

This is pure torture. All you want to do is create. You try, and you fail. Then you try again, and you fail harder because now you're more aware of how much you suck. You try to go do something else, like play a video game, watch a movie, or read a book. But every bad guy you slay, every line of dialogue, every metaphor you read stabs you in the heart with the bluntness of a rusty butter knife. You don't want to consume: you want to create. There are many medicines for this state, but I would not recommend any of them. Hemmingway drank. Warhol did drugs. I usually go for a walk.

Okay, so maybe the last one is okay, but in this state of mind you are severely likely to walk into a manhole, so be careful. All you want to do at this point is shut your brain off long enough to enjoy what you used to love.

Quadrant Three: Those Who Can't Create Get Wasted and Play

This is my third most common state. I spend a ton of time here, and for good reason. The reason I ended up creating things in the first place is that I loved art, music, writing, and digital stuff so much I wanted to make my own versions. This, believe it or not, is actually a pretty good place to be. You're enjoying the world, and you're letting your mind relax. You're being something honest and real: yourself. But you can't do this forever. It's not exactly that clear what you need to do with your life in this state: but it's realy easy to just not care.

Let me be clear: You really should spend some time here, because it's the only way a creative person can really charge their batteries. The first advice you'll hear from any writer if you ask them how to start writing is to read. Really go out and live your life, but how can you be a good musician if you never listen to music? How can you be a good writer if you don't even know who the formitive writers of your era are? You HAVE to find out. But then, you have to move on and make stuff. Even if it sucks.

Quadrant Four: Screw It, We'll Do It Live

As a creative person, you want to spend as much time as you can creating. You can't always control how inspired you are, and if it's any consolation, you're not the only one. But this is like anything else: you have to just keep trying. You may not always have that weird mystical spark that you always want: but you can control how much effort you put in. You can always control how hard you push yourself to do something.

As you can see, I spend the most time here. This means I'm fully aware that there are flaws in what I'm doing, and I'm not in love with it. But I have to teach myself to care less about that than I do about getting it done. I like to say it's the only path forward. Maybe it's just my only path forward.

But hey, I promised you bogus, biased, and untested. That sums up what I do, but enough people like it I keep trying. You can too.

Why Writing Well is Hell

Let me start by just saying this: anyone can write. And in my personal opinion, everyone should write.

Obviously, it's a good idea to be able to update your own resume when you get fired for complaining about your boss on Facebook, or draft an angry drunken e-mail to your neighbor when they leave a passive aggressive message on your door. I'm speaking more of "composition", the art of conveying in written form something coherent: formed purely from nonsensical ideas in your head. Or perhaps relating a boring real life story in an entertaining fashion. I'm talkin' Writing with a capital W: the kind you had to do in high school and/or college; if you're awesome, the kind you still do today. It's important, it's necessary, and it's great. It's also absolute hell.

Writing in and of itself is not some insurmountable task, as I said: anyone can do it. But writing well is a nightmare.

Let me clarify: I can write. I might have some form of compulsion. I have completed National Novel Writing Month no less than three times, and always well OVER the expected word count (50,000 words, which is arguably not a real book but for most people that's a crazy amount of words in a month). I write a series of journals, editorials, scripts and prose for the sake of just doing it. Sometimes it gets drawn by my awesome wife. Like most people in my generation, I've found myself in a really dumb internet argument that stole my entire evening (the word counts there are too embarrassing to relate). But I can't promise you any of it is "good." I certainly can't promise that any of it is written well, and holds together under any kind of scrutiny.

Why not, Nathan? Give me one good reason, you jocund, rotund, fecund wall of hubris! Feel free to look those words up, I'll wait. In the meantime, I'll do you two better: three reasons writing well is such a grand and face-melting task, and my vain attempts to address them.

Writing Something Worth Reading

I can't tell you how many conventions I've attended in which people tell me that their story "is one of a kind." It's "never been told." When I finally coerce them to divulge their secrets (after swearing on the blood of my firstborn that I will never steal said solid gold nuggets of genius), they tell me something like this:

• See, the main character is actually dreaming the whole time.
• They use a gun that is illegal in this country, no one's even heard of them here.
• The hero is actually the villain.
• It's like Lord Of the Rings, but darker.

I won't even go into how these people define originality, because honestly it doesn't matter. The problem here is that these are not stories. These are not journeys of the human spirit. They're twists, hooks, gimmicks, and (generously perhaps) they're concepts. I can laugh and judge them for this: but we all do it. I'm as guilty as any and all of these people. In fact I slipped one of my own ideas in there.

I get it: you have a story you want to tell, and you don't even get why the hell anyone should care if it's original or true or deep. It's your damn story. What makes YOUR story worth telling, jerk?

Well, it's worth something if it matters to you, the writer. If you're honestly passionate about a story in which the hero was secretly a sleeping villain with an illegal gun in a dark Lord of the Rings universe, then you've got a start. If you're telling that story because you think it'll sell, quit now. But if you REALLY want to tell this story, if it has been a part of your life longer than you've known you wanted to tell it, your next step is making me give a crap.

Eloquently Making People Give a Crap

Creating a story (or embellishing an existing story) takes understanding. Not just of language, pacing, direction, and themes; it requires understanding of other human beings. You know, the ones you want to read this thing. If you have never spoken to someone about your ideas for fear of letting the world know your secret genius concept, there's a good chance you haven't let someone tell you that said concept is really stupid. And you should. Right now: find someone and tell them your idea, and PRAY they tell you it's stupid. If it is, you will know right now that at least one person is going to write a nasty comment if you share it online. If they don't, now you're going to have false hope that you're a genius, and merrily go about your life believing that until an editor pops your bubble. I know this all firsthand. Most importantly though, if someone doesn't like your idea, don't quit.

MAKE them care. It may mean you need to tweak your core concept to appeal to them. Much, much more likely is the possibility that you just need to tell the exact same message in a way that reaches them. Maybe your epic space opera setting isn't necessary for telling the story of a girl who loves her pet. Make it a dog, not a flesh-eating space mutant rat: maybe your audience can step into the role of the girl without having to imagine their face being ripped off.

Ultimately, your story is not your setting. Your story is not your gimmick. Your story is the core of what you believe and who you are laid bare for someone else to read. Or, it's like, bitchin' lasers and stuff. But it's your story.

Know Yourself: Know Your story

The biggest reason that writing is hell is this: it's all you. The medium may obscure this a bit. A script for a film or a comic or video game may end up taking on more attributes of other creators before it reaches the viewer, but it will always be your story. Your characters will all be some person born in your head, and whether you like it or not, they are your little brain babies. When people read the work, you will have the fear that they are peering directly at your soul. If they hate it, they hate you, not your writing. The bad news is: this is a little bit true.

Now I'm not saying that anyone who has hated something you've created wants to murder you in your sleep. That might be true, I can't speak for everyone. But more than likely, they saw your need to be loved shine through more than your need to be honest. They may have seen your lack of confidence as a joke, and the punchline never came. They may have seen your over-confidence as a mask for your true fears. And they didn't hate you, per se, but they found a moment of untruth. This falseness reeks. What's worse: it makes the reader feel fake. It's okay to lie: as a matter of fact most writers make a great living doing it. But ACCEPT the lie. Realize it's a lie, and sell it like a used car salesman. If you're trying to convince yourself, you're not going to convince the reader.

How to make Writing Well Not Hell (The Hard Sell)

If you're the TL;DR type, you jumped down here looking for The Big Truth. I hate to disappoint you: there is none here. Maybe writing isn't hell for you, maybe it comes easy and your stories are genius and no one ever dislikes them. Maybe you're full of crap. But in the end, no matter how much you master the semicolon, you can't use technique and style to get around a complete lack of something to say. How do you know when you have something to say?

Some itching, burning desire to communicate something must exist somewhere in the recesses of your heart. If you don't express it you will feel emotional and possibly physical pain. If you don't feel this way, then go find something that makes you feel this way. Go to the bookstore, and ask the hot guy or gal that works there what's a great book to read on a day like this. Or hell just hit on that person. The resulting adventure (or absolute failure) will give you something to write about.

If you're just writing to make money, or because you think you deserve to be popular for your unique and wonderful brain, you're going to either be very lucky or very sad. Anyone can write. Writing well is about the courage to know that you're probably an idiot and your work feels like an ego trip. But that's okay: we all are. Real writers just keep writing anyway.

Introducing Odd Thoughts

This is new. We're going to start up something different: more free content. Sometimes it'll be thoughts on the state of the industry of comics, video games, art, and literature. Sometimes it'll be poems, short stories, or little bits of design work. The plan is that we're going to put something out there as an outlet for the crazy things that are constantly attempting to crawl their way out of our brains. This is mostly going to be Nathan's soap box, to be fair: but he's the writer, so what did you expect?

Here we go!

Odd Thoughts no. 1: It's not a blog

I personally don't like the term blog, it always makes me think of the digital equivalent of a booger. I'm serious: I can think of no better way to explain my mental image than an amorphous blob of abstract thought oozing at you through a monitor.

This is not one of those, as appealing as that sounds. Rather than dazzling you with a rant on the current economic state of the comic industry (contain your sadness), I'm going to make you some promises right off the bat.

1. I am not writing content to make you buy things. If you like our stuff, by all means go buy it. But I'm here to share things I either think are interesting, funny, or really really annoying. Hopefully you'll agree.
2. I will not commit to a schedule I can't keep, so I'm not going to post a schedule. Yet. Once I figured out how many of these we can pull off in a week, we'll go from there.
3. I will listen to your feedback. If you like it, please let me know. If you don't, please let me know. I may even mention you in a hilarious anecdote here on our massively popular site. Hit us up on faceybooks, twutters or Up On Dem Gewgles to give us your best and worst. We can take it.

That's a lot of information for the first post. Let's just end it here, and my next post will live up to the above 3 criteria. If it does not, you may have all my hot wheels cars.