Creativity
Feb. 17th, 2006 09:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stickmakerI cringe whenever I hear some interviewer ask a writer or composer "Where do you get your ideas?" My experience has been that anyone who has to ask such a question can not understand the answer. Because if they had the knack, they'd already know. There seems to be a faculty present in the creative which is simply lacking in others.
A few years ago I was learning to use a new word processor at work. Having nothing work-related to use, I simply started writing a story. One of my cow-orkers stopped by, watched a moment, then asked what I was doing. I explained. "Where are your notes?" he asked. "These are the notes; this is the first draft." "You mean... you're just making it up... as you _go_?"
He didn't know where it was coming from.
It's not just that good writers are always keeping an eye out for story ideas from everyday life. It's that most writers _can't help_ getting ideas from what happens around them. This flow of ideas from the creative knack is what drives writers to invent fiction.
Writers keep having people come up to them and say "I have a great idea! If you write it, I'll split with you, fifty-fifty!" The proper response is "I already have lots of great ideas. Far more than I'll ever be able to develop."
For a creative person the idea is the easy part. For the non-creative, having an idea is a mysterious process which most of them emulate imperfectly but never truly experience.
A few years ago I was learning to use a new word processor at work. Having nothing work-related to use, I simply started writing a story. One of my cow-orkers stopped by, watched a moment, then asked what I was doing. I explained. "Where are your notes?" he asked. "These are the notes; this is the first draft." "You mean... you're just making it up... as you _go_?"
He didn't know where it was coming from.
It's not just that good writers are always keeping an eye out for story ideas from everyday life. It's that most writers _can't help_ getting ideas from what happens around them. This flow of ideas from the creative knack is what drives writers to invent fiction.
Writers keep having people come up to them and say "I have a great idea! If you write it, I'll split with you, fifty-fifty!" The proper response is "I already have lots of great ideas. Far more than I'll ever be able to develop."
For a creative person the idea is the easy part. For the non-creative, having an idea is a mysterious process which most of them emulate imperfectly but never truly experience.
