An Infinite Supply of Creativity?

[grace_slick]

What happens if you literally run out of creativity? If after several months of trying regularly to come up with new material, you just find over and over that you

[oldgitplayer]

An important question is being asked here. I have an answer for myself, but I don't know whether it applies to everyone.

In short - I think that if we are by nature creative, then we have an infinite 'supply'.

I don't really see it as a supply, but more as a mental and emotional mechanism. We just need to keep the creative mechanism fed and lubricated.

 

I have spent my working career in a visually creative field. In my early years the work involved design, production and administration of each project.

But as time passed, I was shifted steadily into the design side of things only. That was terrific, but I soon found that it was not easy to be creative day in, day out. Weeks, months passed and it just got harder.

I managed for 3 years but reached burn-out, so I had to quit and walked away from the job.

After that I started my own business in the same field, but I did the design, production and administration again. Well - I've survived all these years now and remained creative.

What it taught me was that it's tough having to be creative on a daily basis, and that it needs some breaks.

 

As far as keeping creativity fed and lubricated, I think we need to keep ourselves exposed to different things and more importantly work in different ways.

With songwriting, I compose sometimes with guitar chords, sometimes with piano, sometimes with bass, sometimes with percussion, as well as my voice.

Also I love every kind of music, and am inspired and fed creatively by it.

For example, there is a piece - Bach's harpsichord in Fm that I have loved all my life. It moves me emotively every time. So I wrote a song with the piece as a starting point. It doesn't sound in the least bit, baroque, or Bach, or heavily borrowed. But it fed the creative part of my brain and moved me into fields I hadn't walked before.

So I'm constantly approaching songwriting from different directions, and this feeds the creativity.

 

I'm sure you'll find your muse again. Hey this Australia - its either drought or flood!

[grace_slick]

Hmm

[roman2]

TBH, I haven't encountered the problem myself yet. I've still more ideas in my head than songs tracked. But recently I've stumbled over a great quote by Burt Bacharach:

 

"Music breeds its own inspiration: You can only do it by doing it. You just sit down and you may not feel like it, but you push yourself. It's a work process.... Don't sit around and wait for something magical to happen in your head or heart."

 

I guess that pretty much nails it. Keep writing songs, even though you're not in the mood or don't like that stuff you do for the moment, and sooner or later the creative spark hits you again.

[Monkey Uncle]

I had a burst of productivity when I first starting writing songs, like there were songs that addressed certain subjects and areas of inspiration waiting in line to get out. After I covered that ground, my productivity declined. I don't know that it had anything to do with my innate level of creativity; I just wasn't inspired for a while. I'm still pretty slow at cranking things out. I'm not under any sort of pressure to be productive, so if I'm not feeling insprired to write about something, I just don't write for a while. So I guess I have the opposite issue from what you were talking about in your initial post. You mentioned having inspiration, but not having the creative ability to translate that inspiration into an interesting song; I tend to suffer from lack of inspiration in the first place.

 

Edit: Just saw roman2's post. Sounds like I need to take Burt's advice.

[Chicken Monkey]

You've started a thread on this topic a few times in the last several months. Why don't you think back to what you did to jump start yourself the last time you were out of steam?

[grace_slick]

Well, apologies for the duplicate thread. lol. I think I worded it a bit differently this time. Maybe. I can't remember. I haven't really been all that active on here in the past month, and before that I actually felt quite comfortable in my creative levels, but before that, yeah, I was very up and down in my confidence levels.

 

Songwriters...a moody bunch. *shrug*

[MrQuin]

I think the key is to be daring, trying out new things and getting ideas from books, movies, paintings etc. You have to get inspired by something before you can be creative. The ideas and scraps may seem silly at first but by taking these ideas further you may end up coming up with something new and different. I bet it happens to everyone from time to time, there's nothing coming out and you feel blocked or repeting yourself. Dwelling on personal problems and subjects work sometimes but if you feel dried out look outside the box, outside the self. Above all, give yourself time off, don't force it. You've had it before, it'll come back eventually. This is how I see it.

[bee3]

Note, I've not been very active around this wonderful community lately because I've been depressed and am trying to deal with various things in my life. This is what has happened to MY creativity. Dried up. For now.

 

This is exactly why I started the let's cover each other thing... I was in a rut, lacking any kind of motivation, and thought it would help (and be interesting) to cover each other's songs. I'm on a quest to write a really simple, acoustic type of song now having covered one of Stickboy's.

[Lee Knight]

We do have an infinite supply. It's just that sometimes, we're unwilling to go through it. The whole birthing of an idea thing. At times it is the most wonderful feeling. And at other times, it is excruciating. So we won't go there. Even though we can and don't realize it. It hurts. So we stay away and call it writer's block.

 

When my mom died. Man... Grace, I'm sorry about your recent depression. My mom and I were soul mates and almost telepathic in our friendship. I was crushed. Someone said, write a song about it.

 

No. But then I did. It was there, but for a while... I just couldn't. And so maybe you can't right now. Or won't right now. But that will pass. It will pass.

[Marshal]

It's difficult to keep from copying yourself (myself). It usually means getting out of the familiar boxes I reside in musically and spiritually. That's hard, because that means work, to expand my horizons. I feel creativity is a process where the mind brings together hither-to-before unrelated things and creates something new out of it. That's an inward process of forging steel into a horseshoe. But, if we want to make more than horseshoes, we have to get out of the barn more often. And therein lies the work; learning new musical skills, exposing oneself to new ideas and forms of communication; analyzing the work of other artsy fartsy types. All that background work brings new fodder for the creative mind to slam together into something new when the time is right.

[Lee Knight]

 

I feel creativity is a process where the mind brings together hither-to-before unrelated things and creates something new out of it.

 

 

Yeah... totally. Here's something I posted almost a year ago here o the subject:

 

Define the word "Idea"

What is an idea?

 

 

Great idea for a song, man!

 

How did you ever come up with that idea?

 

Fountains of Wayne seem to have a fresh idea for every new song.

 

How did McCartney ever get the idea for Eleanor Rigby?

 

And John for I Am the Walrus?

 

 

If we are to come up with great ideas... it might be nice to know what one is. What is an idea?

 

An idea is nothing more nor nothing less than a new combination of old elements. - James Webb Young (Marketing master and author of the marketing bible "A Technique for Producing Ideas")

 

Jacques Hadamard (Mathematician) - "It is obvious the invention or discovery, be it in mathematics or anywhere else, takes place in combining ideas... The Latin verb cogit, for 'to think,' etymologically means 'to shake together.' St. Augustine had already noticed that and had observed that intelligo means 'to select among.'"

 

Robert Frost - What is an idea? If you remember only one thing I've said, remember that an idea is a feat of association."

 

Hmmm.

 

At work we had a nice pizza day. And Root Beer Floats. There were plastic cups with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Along side were large bottles of root beer. First in line (aren't I always?) I poured my root beer over the scoop of vanilla. The young, bright Chinese software engineer says to me... "What?!??! You pour it over???? Together?!?!?!"

 

Sure, like this. It's not a scoop. It's not a soft drink.

 

It's a Root Beer Float

 

An hour later I stopped by his cubicle and asked if like the Root Beer Float. "Yes. Very, very much."

 

 

So, to generate ideas? New ones that make people go, "Doh! Why didn't I...".

 

James Webb Young says

 

1. Gather raw materials. Note plural. (I call them old ideas that I like. Like root beer and vanilla ice cream, or peanut butter and chocalate, or rock music and opera)

 

2. The mind "masticates" (chews) the materials.

 

3. Drop the whole subject. It's out of your mind as completely as you can.

 

4. Out of nowhere the idea will appear.

 

5. Take it out for a spin and see if it sticks.

 

6. Repeat.

[blue2blue]

Regarding the recurring nature of this topic...

 

 

I think, artists being artists, this topic, inspired productivity (the locus of inspiration and creativity, if you will) is an evergreen. It's something almost all of us struggle at one point or another, many of us struggle with it a lot. Even highly disciplined people struggle with it, I suspect, judging from the product flow from many writers I've tracked over the years. The flow may stay steady, but the quality of work, while perhaps always thoroughly professional, can vary greatly.

 

I once had a class in 'novel writing' at my local community college. The teacher had just been awarded the National Book Award for Poetry (but had also written a couple novels), there were three published genre fiction novelists (two gals who wrote romance novels in tandem and a mystery writer), as well as a guy who was apparently a very successful Hollywood screenwriter (who wanted to finally sit down and write that novel he knew he had in him). There were a couple of published short story writers, as well. It definitely had the highest count of seasoned writers in it of any writing class I'd had at uni or at that two year school (where I enrolled to study commercial music recoding after a motorcycle accident knocked me out of the work force for a couple years).

 

The instructor, the first day, said, Look... this isn't really going to be about how to write a novel. There is no one way to write a novel. Today, it's hard to even get writers to agree about what a novel is. But one thing we know, that we've seen over and over, is that it takes a lot of what's inside of you to get through writing a book. Creativity and inspiration and writing discipline are something that all of us will struggle with, whether we're writing detective genre fiction or stream of consciousness art lit.

 

As a consequence, the class was really set up more as a big discussion group --in the 60s we called them sensitivity groups (for historic reasons) but they were really about getting a bunch of people facing the same issues together and exploring thoughts and feelings that a lot of us carry around inside of us, typically thinking we're the only ones thinking and feeling those things.

 

Here, we have a somewhat broader mix that we often delve into, moving from those issues to nuts and bolts of craft and even discussing the business side (such as it is). But for most of us, tyro and veteran alike, inspiration, creativity, and writing discipline are continuing problems.

 

It's always the same river, but the water always changes. (Speaking, as we were only yesterday, about hoary cliches. )

 

 

 

[Now, if someone was asking how to hook up a mic preamp, I'd probably tell him to Google it. Those are the easy answers.]

[blue2blue]

Writing an song about how you come up with an idea -- complete with reference to contemporary neuropsychology -- seems very They Might Be Giants.

[Oswlek]

Sure, why not?

[rhino55]

We can be inspired forever, but if we can

[bee3]

 

Not everything has to be radiohead I'm not saying you should start playing blues or traditional country, but I don't see anything wrong with an artist sounding like an artist. If you have a couple of songs that incorporate similar themes, release them together and call it a concept album. That is the way I understand symphonies to work as well.

 

If I wasn't hiding signatures, I'd make that part of mine.

[kurdy]

The form of music we call

[oldgitplayer]

One of the books I have read recently is Paul Zollo's interviews with songwriters. One of his consistent questions is to ask about the 'creative process'. Does the writer consciously write the song or is there 'something else' in play.

The majority of writers suggest that the song just comes, and they are not consciously making it happen. Nobody is suggesting that something esoteric is happening - more that the subject matter has been building in their sub-conscious, it feeds on their life experience until it decides to show itself in the conscious mind.

 

I was pleased to read this, because it's nice to find yourself in good company. The majority of my songs develop from an idea that I write down in prose. I explore what the song might be about, and some of the ideas that it might cover. Write some possible titles. I do a few a week. And then I do nothing.

I guess the sub-conscious takes over and one day I just find myself writing the song. Sometimes lyrics only, and sometimes music only, and sometimes both together. But I've learned not to push it. It happens better under its own steam. Refinement comes even later.

 

So the point of this ramble is that one can be creative in a nuts and bolts way (jotting down of basic ideas) and also be creative in an inspired sort of way (when the sub-conscious has already done most of the work).

Anyway - that's how I work on my own.

I do some work with a songwriting buddy, and we take each other out of our comfort zones - and that's good. Biodiversity gave us this planet.

[Chicken Monkey]

 

One of the books I have read recently is Paul Zollo's interviews with songwriters. One of his consistent questions is to ask about the 'creative process'. Does the writer consciously write the song or is there 'something else' in play. The majority of writers suggest that the song just comes, and they are not consciously making it happen. Nobody is suggesting that something esoteric is happening - more that the subject matter has been building in their sub-conscious, it feeds on their life experience until it decides to show itself in the conscious mind.

 

 

I enjoyed that book, as well. IIRC, he mostly interviewed "rock star" songwriters--your Neil Youngs and your David Bowies. You wouldn't sell as many books, but if you interviewed the people who've filled the airwaves for the last 100 years, you'd mostly be talking to a bunch of people who most people have never heard of who went into an office and wrote for a few hours every day. All the Tin Pan Alley guys, Goffin/King, Holland/Dozier/Holland, Pomus/Shuman, and thousands more.

 

It's easy to find evidence to justify your expectations, whatever they are.

[grace_slick]

We do have an infinite supply. It's just that sometimes, we're unwilling to go through it. The whole birthing of an idea thing. At times it is the most wonderful feeling. And at other times, it is excruciating. So we won't go there. Even though we can and don't realize it. It hurts. So we stay away and call it writer's block. When my mom died. Man... Grace, I'm sorry about your recent depression. My mom and I were soul mates and almost telepathic in our friendship. I was crushed. Someone said, write a song about it. No. But then I did. It was there, but for a while... I just couldn't. And so maybe you can't right now. Or won't right now. But that will pass. It will pass.

 

Oh Lee, that breaks my heart to hear about losing your mom

[eeglug]

I do both music and visual art as creative outlets. To be honest I have too many outlets and too little time. If I had to follow the daily work ethic that some here propose, I'd have no time to eat or bathe.

 

I've had substantial periods of my life where one side dominates while the other is stagnant. Whenever there's a switchover from one field to another, I notice no detrimental effects from my absence. IOW, when I picked up the pencil and paper and started drawing again after an absence of 10+ years I was surprised to find that I was actually drawing better than I remembered. When I started writing songs after 10 years of not doing it, I wrote a few of duds but very quickly I was writing stuff that I felt was just a continuation of where I had left off when I stopped. My personal theory is that the creative mind never stops observing and examining the world and relating it to the art it wishes to practice. At some subliminal level we are digesting and processing the world and storing it for future reference. Down time is not necessarily wasted time.

[grace_slick]

 

I do both music and visual art as creative outlets. To be honest I have too many outlets and too little time. If I had to follow the daily work ethic that some here propose, I'd have no time to eat or bathe. I've had substantial periods of my life where one side dominates while the other is stagnant. Whenever there's a switchover from one field to another, I notice no detrimental effects from my absence. IOW, when I picked up the pencil and paper and started drawing again after an absence of 10+ years I was surprised to find that I was actually drawing better than I remembered. When I started writing songs after 10 years of not doing it, I wrote a few of duds but very quickly I was writing stuff that I felt was just a continuation of where I had left off when I stopped. My personal theory is that the creative mind never stops observing and examining the world and relating it to the art it wishes to practice. At some subliminal level we are digesting and processing the world and storing it for future reference. Down time is not necessarily wasted time.

 

 

That's really cool...I feel better about stagnant times now.