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To Be More Creative, Cheer Up

nautil.us

41–46 of 46 posts

Re: To Be More Creative, Cheer Up

#41
post #38
post #6

I have to say, I can't help thinking the author doesn't know anything about Hemingway or Picasso. Both are very famous examples of how depression can be creative. You can name many others like Virginia Woolf or Emily Dickenson. I think both depression and exuberance can be creative, albeit creative in different ways. Exuberance is very good for, as the author notes, divergent thinking. You simply have the ability to…

As someone with clinical depression and who is also a writer: this is purest self-fulfilling, self-indulgent bullshit, and exactly the kind that kept me bound to my own illness for over a decade. Depression does fuck all either way for creativity, but what it is very good at doing is making sure you're afraid to be rid of it lest you lose that, all the while actually serving to make every creative act an uphill battl…

This is exactly how I feel.

The worst trick depression plays on sufferers is to convince them that they're at least feeling something, and that if they cheer up they'll feel nothing. It's like being in an unhealthy relationship, with yourself.

Re: To Be More Creative, Cheer Up

#43
post #33

http://www.wired.com/2010/10/feeling-sad-makes-us-more-creat... Just above in the news someone posted an article about being more creative when sad. Which one is wrong?

Feeling sad can motivate you to try things to make yourself happy.

Feeling happy can motivate you to try things that make you happy.

Re: To Be More Creative, Cheer Up

#45
post #33

http://www.wired.com/2010/10/feeling-sad-makes-us-more-creat... Just above in the news someone posted an article about being more creative when sad. Which one is wrong?

Feeling sad can motivate you to try things to make yourself happy. Feeling happy can motivate you to try things that make you happy.

What is the difference between yourself and you? I don't see any

Re: To Be More Creative, Cheer Up

#46
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

> dumping quite a lot of work along the way

As if your work were... say... evolving?

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