TLDR; drink.
To Be More Creative, Cheer Up
11–20 of 46 posts
Re: To Be More Creative, Cheer Up
#12I know that one isn't supposed to judge a book by its cover, but I refuse to take Kirsten Weir seriously by the title of this article alone.
"Are you depressed? Cheer up!"
"Are you in a wheelchair? Get up and walk around!"
"Struggling with money? Try not being so poor!"
The title of that article makes me unreasonably angry.
Re: To Be More Creative, Cheer Up
#13>Bilder offers up one last bit of practical advice: Just get your ideas out there—on paper, on canvas, out of your head. This is why a lot of creative keep a "brainjuice" file full of half-cooked ideas they can later dip into. When you have some creative energy, its easy to just dump it out and then, later, when you're in a more sober and productive mood, start implementing those ideas in an effective manner. Or as w…
This is exactly how I make music. There's three distinct steps, sound creation, arrangement, and mastering. Usually I don't spend more than 15-30 minutes on any one track and sometimes as little as 5-10. But I have a huge pile of unfinished work in various stages, some I never get back to, but some I finish happily enough. My key to creative happiness is to be entertained, engaged, and moving forward.
This is how I write my essays. Out of order. I toy with ideas, play with arguments. Lots of disjointed paragraphs in a single document. Then I step back, look at them, pick out my strongest points and stitch them together into a cohesive paper (dumping quite a lot of work along the way).
Re: To Be More Creative, Cheer Up
#14>Bilder offers up one last bit of practical advice: Just get your ideas out there—on paper, on canvas, out of your head. This is why a lot of creative keep a "brainjuice" file full of half-cooked ideas they can later dip into. When you have some creative energy, its easy to just dump it out and then, later, when you're in a more sober and productive mood, start implementing those ideas in an effective manner. Or as w…
As a 'creative' of many years (not all of them public), I have folders and folders of dead ideas I never used, many of which I agonized over for weeks and even months to no actual productive end. Kurt Vonnegut famously said that the reason he invented Kilgore Trout and his stories was that he loved coming up with the short little SF parables, but that writing them out was just rubbish and usually not as good as the c…
I have the exact same struggle. I have boxes of unfinished art, folders of unfinished writing, and repos of unfinished programming projects.
I read a great quote from Steve Jobs years ago and it has definitely impacted the way I work now:
We tend to focus much more. People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I'm actually as proud of many of the things we haven't done as the things we have done.
Right now I have one project. It's hard to just have one because I'm constantly bombarded with new ideas I want to pursue. But it's the only way I actually have the chance of finishing something.
Re: To Be More Creative, Cheer Up
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Both are very famous examples of how depression can be creative. That probably had more to do with their substance abuse.
We don't really know the full relationship between substance abuse and mental illness. There's a very well-known correlation between the two, but it's questionable whether the substance abuse causes mental illness or the mental illness causes the substance abuse. It's likely some combination of the two: the substance abuse aids the mental illness and the mental illness aids the substance abuse.
Or, you know, actual sensitivity and sadness for something causes both depression and substance abuse.
It's not like don't have things to be sad and depressed about, creative people doubly so.
Thinking it's all just chemicals gone bad in the brain is the fad of the day, like electroshock treatment for gays and ADD over-perscription in previous decades.
People are always conflating circumstantial pepression with "mental illness" but it's not the same.
Or, even worse, a lot of persons with circumstantial pepression prefer to think they have a "chemical imbalance" to get people to think they are absolved of any influence in the matter. Which is the wrong reason, because with circumstantial depression you also don't have much, if any, influence in the matter. It's not like you can reverse the loss of a love or failed ambitions, for example, and just rewire your psyche to not care about those.
(Doctors of course, eager to prescribe anything and with no time for subtle distinctions, easily assure them that they indeed have a "mental illness". There was a whole counter-culture movement in medical circles criticizing that in the '60s and '70s, with is sadly forgotten.).
Re: To Be More Creative, Cheer Up
#16I know that one isn't supposed to judge a book by its cover, but I refuse to take Kirsten Weir seriously by the title of this article alone. "Are you depressed? Cheer up!" "Are you in a wheelchair? Get up and walk around!" "Struggling with money? Try not being so poor!" The title of that article makes me unreasonably angry.
"Unreasonably angry? Be reasonably angry!"
I know, I know, I just couldn't resist.
Kudos though, I concur with one's reaction to this I do.
Re: To Be More Creative, Cheer Up
#17I know that one isn't supposed to judge a book by its cover, but I refuse to take Kirsten Weir seriously by the title of this article alone. "Are you depressed? Cheer up!" "Are you in a wheelchair? Get up and walk around!" "Struggling with money? Try not being so poor!" The title of that article makes me unreasonably angry.
It's different! Not being creative isn't the opposite of being cheery. The assumption is that the reader may not see any connection at all between happiness and creativity, and that the association might provide some insight. Though if you're like me and are only happy when you are able to create things, I can see why you would be irked.
Re: To Be More Creative, Cheer Up
#18I know that one isn't supposed to judge a book by its cover, but I refuse to take Kirsten Weir seriously by the title of this article alone. "Are you depressed? Cheer up!" "Are you in a wheelchair? Get up and walk around!" "Struggling with money? Try not being so poor!" The title of that article makes me unreasonably angry.
"Unreasonably angry? Be reasonably angry!" I know, I know, I just couldn't resist. Kudos though, I concur with one's reaction to this I do.
That's my secret: I'm always unreasonably angry.
[turns around, hulks out, punches space worm]
Re: To Be More Creative, Cheer Up
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Unreasonably angry? Be reasonably angry!" I know, I know, I just couldn't resist. Kudos though, I concur with one's reaction to this I do.
That's my secret: I'm always unreasonably angry. [turns around, hulks out, punches space worm]
Made my evening, thankyou. :-)
Re: To Be More Creative, Cheer Up
#20I know that one isn't supposed to judge a book by its cover, but I refuse to take Kirsten Weir seriously by the title of this article alone. "Are you depressed? Cheer up!" "Are you in a wheelchair? Get up and walk around!" "Struggling with money? Try not being so poor!" The title of that article makes me unreasonably angry.
It's different! Not being creative isn't the opposite of being cheery. The assumption is that the reader may not see any connection at all between happiness and creativity, and that the association might provide some insight. Though if you're like me and are only happy when you are able to create things, I can see why you would be irked.
I honestly can't tell if you're trying to troll me or not. Is there any adult alive who hasn't at one point realized that being depressed might--just MIGHT--impact one's ability to be creative?