dgburns
software surfer
One of the best ways to gauge your creativity is to be pitted against your competitors, as in when you are part of a cattle call on a project and only one wins the contract. You can try and get by on craft alone, but that will only get you so far. I imagine that you will eventually write stuff you’ve written before, or with an approach that yields similar results. (haven’t we all been there). The creativity part comes and slaps you right in the face when you hear all the submissions from all these other sources that showcase the wild diversity that can come from even the same starting point, aka a film clip that is given to everyone. I’ve listened to things other people wrote and frankly was astonished at all the things that never occurred to me to write. That alone, is just about the most humbling thing that you can experience. It’s the ‘I don’t know what I don’t know’ part. That’s precisely where the creativity aspect comes in. And our job is to pay some mind to that, and that’s the part that always takes the most time. To get out of your muscle memory, your good and bad habits, your inclination to work in a similar fashion, when the tools we all have can go in so many different directions- almost too much choice frankly.
Creativity is the x factor. Creativity is one wierd animal, it doesn’t play well with time. Actually it defies time and laughs at us. It’s not until you go back and listen to things you wrote much later that you have a better perspective on the creative value of your output. In the moment, it always feels like you are writing the BEST thing you ever did. Even the next day, you might feel really differently about that.
We can try to justify our output by commercial means (as in I made alot of money on THAT track) and therefore it has VALUE. But does creativity care about how much you made? if anything at all. I think no. We can try to justify our relative failure to be creative by stating we had a deadline, but a deadline is nothing other then an arbitrary line in the sand that stops creativity from that point on.
I always felt that time seems to be pliable, my awareness of the passage of time changes based on the time I’m given to be creative. I’ve felt it fold in on itself when I needed to get alot done in a very little amount of time. Other times, with alot of time given, it doesn’t always yield linearly better output.
Time - Creativity - Output - Lasting Value
For some reason they just are not solid objects, they are, for me atleast, very difficult to quantify. It can drive you nuts thinking about it, so I try not to. Especially when you need to jump into a project. At some point I know that I will hit the end, especially with a schedule. You end up having to be a little bit fatalistic in knowing you will have to live with the stuff you eventually produced. And try and be happy with that. Very difficult to do. Close the book, and move on.
Creativity is the x factor. Creativity is one wierd animal, it doesn’t play well with time. Actually it defies time and laughs at us. It’s not until you go back and listen to things you wrote much later that you have a better perspective on the creative value of your output. In the moment, it always feels like you are writing the BEST thing you ever did. Even the next day, you might feel really differently about that.
We can try to justify our output by commercial means (as in I made alot of money on THAT track) and therefore it has VALUE. But does creativity care about how much you made? if anything at all. I think no. We can try to justify our relative failure to be creative by stating we had a deadline, but a deadline is nothing other then an arbitrary line in the sand that stops creativity from that point on.
I always felt that time seems to be pliable, my awareness of the passage of time changes based on the time I’m given to be creative. I’ve felt it fold in on itself when I needed to get alot done in a very little amount of time. Other times, with alot of time given, it doesn’t always yield linearly better output.
Time - Creativity - Output - Lasting Value
For some reason they just are not solid objects, they are, for me atleast, very difficult to quantify. It can drive you nuts thinking about it, so I try not to. Especially when you need to jump into a project. At some point I know that I will hit the end, especially with a schedule. You end up having to be a little bit fatalistic in knowing you will have to live with the stuff you eventually produced. And try and be happy with that. Very difficult to do. Close the book, and move on.
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