A Recipe for Awful Creative Feedback
Yields: 1 demoralized creative
Serves: None
A friend or colleague just sent you their book or film or app or product or album. They’ve worked very hard on it and would like your suggestions for improvement.
Naturally, you want to do the worst job possible and be as distracting as possible.
Follow this simple recipe!
Ingredients
100 tons of ego
Heaping tablespoons of vague suggestions
A pinch of resentment
Instructions
1. It’s about YOU
Look in the mirror and repeat this three times:
“I am what’s truly important.”
Smile, mouth only, no eyes. Crack your knuckles. Let’s get ready to rumble.
2. The truth hurts so make it HURT
Bluntly criticize and give opinions. Be cruel and careless. “This is boring!” “It’s just not working.”
NEVER give specific ideas for actions. NEVER express these notes in a neutral style.
Consistently insinuate that the work would be much better if it was done by you.
3. OVERWHELM and EXASPERATE
Inundate them with feedback, regardless of the project’s stage. Suggest major overhauls, preferably ones that contradict previous notes. Make it clear that scrapping the project entirely is the best overall choice.
4. Avoid BREVITY
Make your message as long as possible. Each point should be a winding essay with tangents. Let them luxuriate in your wisdom.
5. CAPS LOCK
Garnish your treatise with ALL CAPS.
6. KEEP SCORE
After you give your notes, be sure to KEEP SCORE. Which of your notes did they obey or disobey? If they didn’t do your note, that is a SLIGHT! Hold that grudge.
Casually bring up their “mistakes” at unexpected moments long after the project is complete.
Serving Suggestion: Ghost them for added confusion and despair.
Read Like an Artist
How Notes Fuel Your Creativity
Rick Rubin
People don’t think of reading as creative. It’s considered passive, consumptive. Reading certainly can be those things, but it can also be highly creative if you do it the right way.
The simple key to creative reading is this: take notes. Make highlights and write notes. E-books are especially great for this and Readwise is the best tool to manage those notes. Your book highlights and notes should be part of a notes system that also includes your own notes drawn from your ideas, life, and experiences. Out of this brew of your thoughts and the thoughts of others, all sorts of ideas will appear.
Creating is so much harder if you don’t take notes. You’re perpetually stuck in the “blank page” phase, staring into the void and waiting for a lightning bolt of inspiration.
Another key to creative reading that I’ve discovered is this: timing is everything. Read the book when it’s time to read the book.
I pre-ordered Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act as soon as I saw it was coming and I was thrilled to see it pop up in my Kindle library later. Nonetheless, I didn’t dive in, I set it aside.
There are a special few books, movies, and albums that I save until it’s the right time to experience them. How do you know that moment has come? I dunno, it’s a feeling, but I think this feeling comes when the work fits within my current interests and might have a role to play.
The time for The Creative Act recently arrived and I’ve been slowly reading it over recent weeks. It’s an inspiring book regardless of how you read it, but saving it for this moment made it explosive for me. It’s inspired thousands of words of writing and many good creative insights.
The first thing it inspired came after reading this passage.
If you know what you want to do and you do it, that’s the work of a craftsman. If you begin with a question and use it to guide an adventure of discovery, that’s the work of the artist.
This idea combined with a recent conversation I had with my friend Andy Allen, then this article, “Art, Craft, and AI,” came flowing out. I think this piece is a strong insight, but it’s also an early expression and it’ll grow into something bigger and better
The Creative Act also inspired a new course idea. We’ll see what comes of that.
Because I read The Creative Act when it felt right (and made notes!), the book triggered countless ideas, many of which will continue to grow for months to come.
To read more articles like this, subscribe to my newsletter, The Midlife Remix.
Art, Craft, and AI
Guernica, by Pablo Picasso
The categories of art and craft need to be re-understood and perhaps even re-imagined for the age of AI.
Why? Because AI can do craft and it cannot do art. Let me explain.
What is art?
Perhaps you think of a painting hanging in a gallery. Maybe you think of a great artist like Frida Kahlo or Pablo Picasso.
This is a good foundation. Of course, art now comes in many forms, but the core purpose remains the same as it was for these artists. The purpose of art is to express something, to convey an emotion, a vision, or an idea. There is no practical purpose other than that.
Art is connection with another person. This expression is theirs alone and it cannot be duplicated without becoming worthless. Being Picasso mattered. Being like-Picasso didn’t.
What is craft?
Perhaps you think of woodworking, pottery, jewelry, knitting. That’s a good start too.
The craftsperson uses hard-earned technical skill to create something beautiful or useful. They also express something but this expression comes from their culture or heritage. It is not theirs alone.
Craft can also be created on screens or on paper. For instance, life drawing, portrait photography, and most web design are forms of craft. (There are exceptions of course and some people turn these into art.)
Craft is related to art, it’s also creative and it overlaps it, but it’s also very clearly different.
What’s the difference?
Many would say craft is more functional and practical than art, but I think the most important difference is this: the goal.
With craft, the goal is already explicit. You want a pleasing portrait of the wedding couple, with nice composition, nice poses and expressions from the couple, pleasing light, perfect exposure and focus.
With craft there is a formula and this formula can be converted into an algorithm. Here’s Midjourney’s version of a “gorgeous wedding portrait photo.” Infinite photos that look something like this have already been taken and will be taken for years to come. The formula for craft evolves over the years, but there is a formula. The fun and challenge of doing craft is to execute the formula as well as you can.
An AI-created wedding photo portrait
Art does not have a formula. It is ineffable, it is magical, it is shrouded in mystery. Art mostly happens in our subconscious mind and artists are famously inarticulate about how they do what they do.
Because there is no known formula, there is no algorithm.
Again, AI can do craft. It can’t do art. AI will surely improve at craft. It’s unclear if it will improve at art.
The artistic element of what you do will remain safe from automation, and it’s the most essential element of what you do.
How Irritation Turns Into Innovation
What do you think of when you think of a great invention?
I’ll guess it’s one of these.
The Internet
The personal computer
Something by Apple
The car
The airplane
The light bulb
What do all these have in common? Except for the light bulb, they’re traditionally considered man stuff.
But for sheer labor saved, what’s traditionally considered woman stuff ranks at the very top of all innovations. I’m talking about domestic appliances: the clothes washer and dryer, the vacuum cleaner, the modern stove, the refrigerator, and the dishwasher. The story of the dishwasher is especially inspiring… although it doesn’t begin that way.
This story starts with a rich lady being fed up with her clumsy house staff.
Josephine Cochrane, inventor of the dishwasher
In the 1880s, Josephine Cochrane, a wealthy Illinois socialite, was irritated by her servant's repeated chipping of her fine china. Not exactly the makings of a feel-good biopic here.
But Cochrane still fits the bill for our romantic vision of the inventor. Soon after she conceived her idea, Cochrane’s husband died. She needed to make a living and she was an outsider. Cochrane was a woman in the 19th century and not an engineer or mechanic.
Nonetheless, she knew what she wanted: a machine that would wash dishes without scrubbing. She pieced together a primitive prototype in her back shed, with the assistance of a mechanic.
Cochrane’s resulting machine could wash dishes faster and more safely than manual washing. Her design of racks to hold the dishes and water jets to clean them remains the foundation of modern dishwashers.
How much time has the dishwasher saved us? Most families will save about 40 minutes per day using a dishwasher. In a year, that’s about 6 weeks of full-time work.
I’ve lived most years of my adult life without a dishwasher. I’ll say this: life is a little bit better with one. Consider this a testament to how irritation turned into innovation by a determined woman in the 19th century.
AI and The Shock of the New
Nick Cave screams into the void
“The Shock of the New” is culture’s allergic reaction to new art forms. It’s an attempt to kill off the invader.
Whether it’s hip hop or comic books or the blues or video games, or movies or TV or fan art or even novels, these were all considered “not art.” They were lower, inferior, and contemptible forms, not capable of conveying the insight, humanity, and emotional breadth of real art.
This doesn’t just happen with art, it happened with the internet, cars, trains, factories, or electric lights. Anything that was once new – which is everything – was subjected to the shock of the new and targeted for defeat or elimination.
This is happening now with AI.
These attacks come from many different angles, but I want to focus on my domain: creativity and art.
In this realm, the singer-songwriter Nick Cave has been one of the most persuasive and eloquent critics of AI as a creative tool. Cave wrote an influential and ferociously critical letter about ChatGPT. Cave’s words have resonated widely in the months since he wrote it. (If you don’t like reading, you can watch Stephen Fry read the letter here.)
Cave argues that writing song lyrics with ChatGPT is “participating in [the] erosion of the world’s soul and the spirit of humanity itself.”
Holy shit guys!
Nick Cave certainly has wisdom to share about the value of art and how it enriches your life. But he doesn’t have wisdom about ChatGPT, and c’mon, has he ever used this stuff? Judging by his level of revulsion, which is extreme, I’d guess he’s probably never typed a single prompt.
I’m not a great artist like Nick Cave, but I am artistic and I have used ChatGPT for creative tasks. Anybody who has done the same knows this: ChatGPT is bad at art.
If you want bad lyrics, ChatGPT can write those. And y’know, for most pop music, bad lyrics are good enough, so let’s start there.
Yeah, you got that yummy, yum, That yummy, yum, That yummy, yummy
Bad lyrics are good enough
Cave thinks songwriting with the assistance of ChatGPT is not songwriting. Here’s a bit from his letter where he addresses a songwriter who uses ChatGPT for lyrics because it’s quicker and easier.
That ‘songwriter‘ you were talking to … should fucking desist if he wants to continue calling himself a songwriter.
Cave thinks the lyrics of songs are of paramount importance. But lots of musicians and fans do not share this opinion.
Cave makes serious music with serious lyrics. But most people don’t wanna hear that shit. Of all the millions of songs being streamed right now, almost all of that music has stupid lyrics.
Here’s some of Justin Bieber’s famously stupid “Yummy.”
Yeah, you got that yummy, yum
That yummy, yum
That yummy, yummy
It goes on like that.
That song has 770 million views on one platform. It certainly has over a billion listens in total.
Pop music is mostly stupid. You and I and Nick Cave might not like that kind of music, but most people do. They want catchy songs they can sing along with and the lyrics are often unimportant.
If pop artists want to quickly write stupid lyrics with ChatGPT rather than dash them off themselves, I’m sure we’ll all be fine.
But stupid lyrics aren’t just for stupid artists. Lots of great musicians don’t care much about lyrics and toss them together at the last moment.
Mumble mumble mumble
Good music has stupid lyrics too
Plenty of great artists don’t necessarily value lyrics and sang meaningless strings of words.
David Bowie sometimes wrote jibberish lyrics. “Life on Mars” sure is a great song, right? Ever listened to the lyrics? No, you haven’t, but here’s a bit of what’s actually said.
It’s on America’s tortured brow
That Mickey Mouse has grown up a cow
Now the workers have struck for fame
’Cause Lennon’s on sale again
Michael Stipe’s early lyrics with REM were entirely jibberish and maybe not even words at all. Here’s a bit of “Radio Free Europe” (whatever that means).
Keep me out of country and the word
Deal the porch is leading us absurd
Push that, push that, push that to the hull
That this isn’t nothing at all
Plenty of Nirvana’s lyrics were written by Kurt Cobain moments before recording. “Smells Like Teen Spirit” starts like this.
Load up on guns, bring your friends
It’s fun to lose and to pretend
She’s over-bored and self-assured
Oh no, I know a dirty word
Again, bet you never knew most of what was being said there.
Cave would certainly not dismiss David Bowie, Michael Stipe, and Kurt Cobain as “not songwriters” and yet they tossed together lyrics like they were scribbling homework minutes before class.
The most important part of music is, y’know, the music. And inane or banal lyrics can be compelling in the right musical context.
Is prompting ChatGPT less creative than stringing together rhyming syllables? Perhaps it is if you just cut and paste ChatGPT responses, but I’m gonna argue that many songwriters probably won’t be doing that.
William Burrough’s famous novel Naked Lunch was sliced together from existing texts
ChatGPT is useful for good art
One of Cave’s major themes is that ChatGPT undermines artistic struggle.
ChatGPT rejects any notions of creative struggle, that our endeavours animate and nurture our lives giving them depth and meaning. It rejects that there is a collective, essential and unconscious human spirit underpinning our existence, connecting us all through our mutual striving.
I suspect Cave is imagining someone prompting ChatGPT for lyrics, cutting and pasting whatever it spits out and presto.
This is not the reality of creating something good with ChatGPT. This entails lots of editing, rewriting, and writing. ChatGPT is a powerful tool, but it is extremely dependent on the orchestration of a living person, with a heart and a soul. The creative struggle is still very much real if you want to write good lyrics.
The best ChatGPT can do is create fragments that a creative person can isolate, then copy, transform, and combine those bits and others into something good.
There is, of course, a rich history of artists thinking like this.
The writer William Burroughs popularized “The Cut-up Technique” in the sixties. He used to cut out bits of text and string ’em together. Bowie, Cobain and Thom Yorke all did the same thing for lyrics.
I made a documentary series about how this technique applies not only to words, but to music, film, technology, science, and ideas. Everything is a Remix, folks.
Music listeners aren’t idiots
One of the weaknesses of the artistic mindset can be insularity. Put more bluntly: your head is stuck up your ass. Sitting by yourself and composing your great thoughts often means you’re pretty into yourself. I’m speaking from experience here.
Cave is guilty of this in his letter. He’s thinking of his own struggle and striving, but he’s not thinking of his partner in the dance, the listener.
I’ve spent thousands of hours of my life as a listener. The listener is seeking connection with another soul and insight into themselves and into life.
Only extraordinary experiences can do this. If good art is easy and common, then good art is worthless. If everybody can spit out great lyrics with ChatGPT, nobody will be paying attention. The truly great work will have to be even better – or at least different.
Great art gets attention because it is extraordinary. This doesn’t mean it’s better, it just has something unusual. If ChatGPT starts writing good lyrics, the differentiator for good lyrics will move elsewhere, and great artists will still struggle to create this extraordinary work.
There just has to be an apocalypse
Steeped in Biblical narratives as he is, Cave’s vision just has to culminate in a Book of Revelation-style apocalypse. He can’t just say that ChatGPT sucks and you suck if you use it.
ChatGPT has to be “[eroding] the world’s soul and the spirit of humanity itself” and “just as we would fight any existential evil, we should fight it tooth and nail, for we are fighting for the very soul of the world.”
Holy shit Part Two!
Here’s my guess about what’s coming: culture is more resilient than people think. We’ll all adapt, the shock of the new will fade away, and life just goes on. The whole panic gets forgotten and then gets repeated for The Next New Thing.
Art created with AI is not yet good. But it will be. And it won’t happen because AI is that much better, it’ll be because brilliant people find a way.
Age of Deceleration
Part 2 of "Are We Creatively Losing It?
This computer is 10 years old
In my last installment, I asked this question: are we creatively losing it? Go read that before reading on.
The most obvious counter to this question is: but technology!
Yes, there is that. For example.
AI, above all, is exploding.
Augmented reality might be about to go mainstream with Apple’s Vision Pro.
Even the widely despised crypto/web3 is vital, has exciting potential, and is currently worth a fortune. The real question is whether it can do anything or not.
Tech remains an innovative and dynamic realm… but it is definitely slowing down too.
Think about this.
It’s 2024. Let’s say you’re using a ten-year-old computer that you bought in 2014.
It’s a bit sluggish, it can’t run the latest operating system, but it does everything you need. It even pretty much looks like the new models. Sure, you want a new computer, but you’re fine.
Now hop in a time machine and set the dial for 2004.
A new iMac in 2004 looked like this.
But you’re not using that. Again, you’re using a ten-year-old computer. It’s 2004 but your computer is from 1994. That’s something like this.
This beast is an ancient relic. It’s a gray box with a huge, heavy monitor. It’s unbearably slow and has no storage space. You store your extra files on, yep, a stack of floppy disks.
You are miserable and desperate for an upgrade. You’re not fine.
Computer hardware was a runaway train in the eighties and nineties. But not anymore.
You can feel this. You can feel each new iPhone or new laptop being a smaller and smaller upgrade. More likely, you’re upgrading because the old thing is broken.
Tech is still briskly advancing and some areas, like AI, are explosive. But it is slowing down. Those of us who experienced the break-neck innovations of the eighties and nineties have witnessed this deceleration.
But the slowdown in tech is minor compared to the slowdown elsewhere in society. Next time up I’ll show you just how slow progress has gotten in the rest of human creativity.
Operator 11th Hour: Month 1 Update!
I have one quarter (January - March) to establish a viable business producing educational content. I’ve dubbed this mission… Operation 11th Hour!
Month 1 is complete! Where did I land?
The short answer is: 65%. I got 65% of a bulls-eye for the course launch.
Sales were… fine. They were slightly good. And I had good success in a few additional areas:
The Everything is a Remix newsletter had good growth.
I’ve been consistent with producing two articles per week.
The Remix site has gotten the most traffic since its heyday.
I tried Google Ads as a small experiment… and got an actual sale!
I started doing coaching and consulting and I’ve already arranged bookings for Month 2. I can help with ChatGPT training, video and creative consultation, and more. If you’re interested in working with me directly to help with education or your projects, reply to this email.
Overall, Month 1 sales results are mixed.
On the one hand, it’s a decent start and I’m still learning.
On the other hand, this was a launch, which is when you get to ride downhill for a bit. Month 2 will be all uphill, at least for the video course.
All in all, I need to regroup and find some high-leverage plays. Here are a couple upcoming attempts.
Videos are returning to the YouTube channel! The first one is already up!
I’m launching affiliate sales. If you register as an affiliate and sell a copy of my course via your link, you’ll make approximately fifty bucks. (Details TBD)
However, I’m not sure I’ve got anything on deck that can turn the ship quickly. So I called in the cavalry. I’m doing some commission work to relieve some short-term pressure. This will slow the progress on my business, but it’ll give me some financial runway and some space to reflect and re-orient.
Multiple Discovery
What if history's great innovators chose different paths and never made their breakthroughs? Would our world be different? Would we be further behind?
This is one of my favorite segments from the original Everything is a Remix series. It didn't fit in the new version, but I still wanted to update it and share it.
The Creative Apocalypse is Not Near
Image generated with Midjourney; type added by me
We are now about a year and a half into the age of generative AI. There was a lot of fear and anxiety heading into this era. I want to take a moment to assess what the reality of working with this software has been like, from a creative perspective.
Long story short: working with AI is a lot more work than everybody imagined.
Let's start with text.
The major theme of my course about creating content with ChatGPT is that you need to lead. You need to be creative and problem-solve to work around the serious limitations of ChatGPT.
ChatGPT writes generic, dull text, and it's hard for us to read more than a few paragraphs of this stuff without our eyes glazing over. The onus is on you to make that text work.
ChatGPT is a powerful and very worthwhile tool, but the area where it will have the most impact is gruntwork, the boring work you don't wanna do. Actual creative work? It can't do that.
Image generation is even more limited.
Image from The Polar Express, a film riddled with the uncanny valley effect
Much like there's the "uncanny valley" effect in CGI, AI-generated images feel empty and uninvolving. You can see one of these images at the top of this post. It’s fine for this modest purpose, but for higher-level work, it would seem "temp," like a placeholder. (It also looks like countless other images being pumped out all over the internet.)
But haven't I been using image generation? Yes, I've been experimenting and demonstrating what this software does. But, as I said in my course, I don't think image generation is ready for prime time yet. If AI art is going to work for you, it's your own creativity that will do the heavy lifting.
Text and image generation gives you raw ingredients, much more raw than what you would get from a human collaborator. And it takes a lot of imagination in your preparation to make these ingredients flavorful.
How James Clear Remixed a Blockbuster
James Clear poses with his bestseller, Atomic Habits
James Clear’s Atomic Habits is an absolutely monumental nonfiction bestseller. If you’ve only bought one nonfiction book in the last few years, there’s a good chance Atomic Habits is it.
The book is a remix of the work of countless others who’ve researched the psychology of habit formation. Clear is not sneaky about this at all and does a superb job of citing his sources.
Here are some of his biggest influences.
BJ Fogg’s Tiny Habits
The premise of Atomic Habits is similar to BJ Fogg’s Tiny Habits. Both are about how small habits can transform your life. Clear also writes about Fogg’s concept of habit stacking, which is when you link a new habit you’re trying to form to an established one.
Habits as compound interest
What good are little habits? Clear says these small actions create compound interest over time, just like small investments can reap huge rewards over decades. This concept is popular in lots of writing about habits, for instance, the long-running blog Zen Habits.
Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit
One of the most important sources for Atomic Habits is Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit. Duhigg broke habit formation into three steps: cue, routine, and reward.
Clear took these elements and transformed them into cue, craving, response, and reward. He kept the name “habit loop.”
Clear then presented his new model using this graphic from Nir Eyal’s Hooked as a template.
Nir Eyal’s Hook Model
Here’s James Clear's result. This concept is the foundation of Atomic Habits.
Clear’s Habit Loop
Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow State
One of the most influential concepts in self-improvement is Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow. This is when an activity is just slightly beyond your abilties, leading to immersion and improvement. Clear reframes this idea as The Goldilocks rule, which is the same thing as flow, but Clear probably wanted to frame it in a simpler way.
Anecdotes from other nonfiction books
Clear’s anecdotes in Atomic Habits are often drawn from other nonfiction books. For instance, he uses a story about how photography students who focused on quantity rather than quality ultimately took better photos. This story came from Art & Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland.
And Simon Sinek?
Again, Clear’s endnotes do a fantastic job of revealing how he wove his book together. But sometimes, he might go a bit far in his acknowledgments, as in the case of citing Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle concept from Start With Why.
Clear saw this.
Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle
Then created this.
Clear’s three levels of change
In this case, I’d say that design falls squarely in the public domain and no citation is needed
Clear’s secret ingredient?
Many of the books Clear remixes were successful, but none to near the level of Atomic Habits. What’s Clear’s secret?
I think the key was how Clear integrated all this knowledge into his own life. He directly practiced everything he learned and modified it to make it work better. He lived it and wrote about the experience.
Another formative influence on Clear was this tweet from the entrepreneur and investor Naval Ravikant: “To write a great book, you must first become the book.”
Feedback for my new ChatGPT and AI course has been fantastic! You can see a few testimonials from Hans, Jeff and Charlie on the landing page.
I'm now venturing into personalized coaching, consulting, and interactive teaching sessions. If you need deeper engagement, tailored guidance, or hands-on learning, this is how I can provide that. Head over to the contact page to get in touch.
Are We Creatively Losing It? And How Do We Get It Back? (Part 1)
The Rolling Stones in 2023
Are we, as a culture, in creative decline? If so, why and what can be done about it?
As many of you know, I’ve been thinking about this for a bit and I’m going to start sorting my thoughts here, in installments.
Let’s start with The Stones.
I love The Rolling Stones. Sticky Fingers and Exile on Main Street are as great as anything you’ll ever hear. As a young man, I loved them with a weird intensity, and I still love that music now. Lots of the stuff I loved when I was young doesn’t stand up. Their music does.
The band has a new album out and critics are again breaking out this old chestnut: “their best album since the seventies.”
I'm old enough to remember when critics said that about the now extremely forgotten Steel Wheels from 1989. As a hardcore teenage fan, I tried my best to love Steel Wheels but I couldn’t keep up the facade for long. And that album, for its time, seems better than this one.
To be clear: if you love The Stones, the band sounds good on the new album and hey, the old fuckers are still doing it! Maybe that’s more than enough. But let’s not delude ourselves: the new album isn’t actually good.
The Stones have lost it. Just like we all do. Some of us even become embarrassing.
When it comes to losing it, music is a tough industry, almost as tough as being an athlete. Musicians peak early and decline early. They have their heyday, then maybe they're good or occasionally very good after that, but not like they were.
There are always exceptions.
Beethoven was in his fifties when we wrote his 9th symphony (and almost entirely deaf).
Leonard Cohen released I’m Your Man at 54.
Beyonce has remained a vital pop artist into her forties.
Johnny Cash was releasing exciting music at the very end of his life.
It can be done. But mostly, it isn’t. And this doesn’t just apply to us as individuals.
Entire genres lose it. Jazz, classical, folk, the blues, and rock were all once teeming with innovation and are now dead. Rap is late in life and will soon follow.
And entire cultures lose it. Egypt, Rome, and the Ming Dynasty all lost it well before they fell. I’m sure war, disaster, and famines were major drivers, but I suspect creative decline is another factor for why empires fail to rejuvenate.
Are we late in the game too? (By “we” I’m not sure I mean Western Culture, I think I mean global culture. The world is now running on the same economic operating system and seems to operate within the one creative paradigm.)
Now some of you might be thinking… BUT TECHNOLOGY! AI! VIRTUAL REALITY!
Yes, there’s those. But next time I’ll explain why that’s not enough. I’ll continue unpacking this in the weeks to come.
Making creative work less scary
Creating something good is scary. Why?
Because it’s a BIG GOAL. Big goals are intimidating.
Writing a novel is a BIG GOAL. It’s scary.
Better to start with a small goal. Write an article.
Too big? Write a post.
Start with the easiest goal possible that gets you moving forward on the path.
Don’t feel guilty about it. Set the bar so low you can walk over it.
If you keep doing that task it’ll become easy and you’ll want more. Then raise the bar one level. Write a longer article. Keep raising the bar one level and eventually, the next level will be that novel.
Here’s a great way to set the bar low in creative work.
With a DRAFT.
A draft is an attempt at creating something. It’s a version, it’s a step.
Drafts do not have to be good. Especially a first draft.
The author Earnest Hemingway famously declared, "The first draft of anything is s**t."
Whether it’s text or music or code or art or something else, just start with a first draft. Then make it better. Raise the bar one level. Keep raising it until you’re leaping as high as you can.
The first draft is not only the easiest way to start moving forward, it’s the only way to start moving forward.