I read this Twitter thread and also this piece called 'The Creativity Faucet' on the same thing. (Both via Jack.) I have opinions.
- Short version for those not clicking through: it's an analogy for creative idea generation as a 'backed up' pipe. You have to pump through the 'wastewater' to get to the good stuff, and that's just about getting lots of things pumped out in volume. You can't selectively only pump out the good stuff.
- It rhymes with the old 10,000 hours chestnut, that you need to log 10,000 hours of a discipline to become anything approaching an expert in it.
- I think there is a version of this that is true, and the thread/post actually do describe this, but then conflate it with a bunch of other stuff.
- True bit first: It is a mistake to try to put yourself in a place where you're only churning out good ideas. I don't feel like this is actually that insightful a point, given how many creative workflows and apparatus are engineered specifically around this.
- A prominent example is writers' rooms -- they're not meant to be about sharing 'good ideas', just sharing 'ideas' and then using the room as a development space to make them better. The quality of the original idea is somewhat less important that the ways in which it gets hammered out. (And a writers' room that is closing off 'bad' ideas and not getting people externalising stuff quickly probably isn't fit for purpose.)
- Likewise, a technique I use a lot is as described in the thread -- if I need a small number of good ideas, the best method for me is forcing myself to churn out of a LOT of quality-neutral ideas.
- Say I needed 10 interesting item descriptions that a blacksmith might sell you. I'd give myself... say 15 minutes? maybe? to write down 100 ideas. That forces me to just write down whatever the hell I can think of, because I only have 10s per idea. Most will be utter shite. Some will be great. More will be 'almost there' and I can adapt them or stick two ideas together.
- (The time factor here is important -- having too little time to do the thing forces you to abandon any sense of quality control for the first draft. It's a volume game.)
- So -- so far, so true. The issue I take with the way it's framed is that it presents idea generation as the greatest differentiator of creativity. Which is just not true!!
One of the most valuable writing skills is the ability to generate novel ideas.
- Sure, in some contexts. But as is said often and loudly, ideas by themselves are only worth so much (which isn't much). Execution is key. Doing it at all, for one; doing it well, for another.
- I think that's the factor it misses about, say, Neil Gaiman's career. Sure! The man has good ideas! But that feels like a very small piece of the overall puzzle.
[Neil Gaiman and Ed Sheeran are] among, say, 25 people in the world who repeatedly generate blockbusters.
- I think this also ignores the fact that at a certain point, fame and audience make this self-sustaining. I find it a bit tenuous to make assertions about the quality of the creative craft of people like Sheeran and Gaiman based on their sales figures. Which isn't intended in itself as a comment on either's craft either -- my point is that, at a certain threshold, you're going to sell massively whether your ideas and execution are dogshit or not, so it doesn't really tell us anything.
- Bringing it back to 10,000 hours as well: I think what both miss also is the idea of deliberate practice. The 'forcing through' of volume is a useful tool in the toolbox, but it needs to be supported by other craft work. If what you take away from it is that you just to write lots without caring about the quality of the output... well, that's about half a useful lesson.
- The useful half is that if you're not investing your sense of validity in quality of your output, you will be happier and healthier as a creative, which is something worth cultivating.
- Plus, if you do something a lot over time, you will get better at it even if you don't think too hard.
- But I think where you are actually committed to getting better at something, deliberate practice is so important. And that means: evaluating your work and process, reflecting on those things, and developing focus areas within the craft and finding means for working on them.
- Which can and should include doing the thing lots.
- But doing it without the elements of deliberate practice will get you somewhere, but not as far and far more slowly.
Anyway, I'm probably being needless ornery on this whole thing. There is something actually actionably useful in there, I just dislike a framing that focuses on the ideas as the important bit. 'Where do you get your ideas' is a long-standing cliché of a boring, unproductive question for artists for a reason.
(Ironically, this blog slightly undermines my own point by its own existence. But only slightly.)