Creativity is all about the motivation

Back in 1990, creativity researcher John Hayes from Carnegie Mellon University identified that the big factors between creatively productive people and those who were not, was motivational. He identified that strong motivation was needed to work hard, to work for an extended period to develop mastery in the chosen creative field, to have the discipline to revise extensively, and to find and pursue interesting problems to high standards. (If you would like to read his paper on this, the pdf can be downloaded here)

I found this interesting because most of the more recent material that I’ve been reading and studying on creativity doesn’t get into the issue of motivation except to mention that there is extrinsic and intrinsic motivation, and creativity springs from intrinsic motivation. But then they stop and go on to other questions like whether creativity and IQ are correlated (they’re not) or whether one’s environment affects creativity (it does).

So how do you develop intrinsic motivation? I have come across many, many instances of people who want to be more creative, to increase their creative production, but simply find themselves unable to do so. And it one way or another, it comes down to the fact that the person does not have the intrinsic motivation to do the work.

Where does that intrinsic motivation come from, and how do you develop it? I think it comes from self-awareness, and that is, unfortunately, often uncomfortable to cultivate. First of all, you have to ask yourself why you want to do the work. Is it for the money, because you want to be famous? That’s really an extrinsic motivation, and won’t be enough to carry you through the years required to gain mastery at your art.

If, instead, you look closely at your own reasons for doing your creative work, and are doing it because some part of your soul will die if you don’t get it out, or because you need to add some small bit of beauty to the world, you might have a chance. If you are fine with forever working in obscurity, with no one ever recognizing any brilliance on your part, and never being appreciated beyond your own circle of friends and family, if you are willing to accept this and keep working, then perhaps you have sufficient intrinsic motivation to achieve greatness.

This isn’t very cheering, I know, but creative work is hard, and there’s a reason why so few people achieve greatness; it isn’t because few have sufficient IQ or a genetic gift, it’s because few have the motivation to keep working long enough and hard enough.

If greatness isn’t your goal, that’s fine, too, but that doesn’t change the need for self-awareness and knowing your whys. If you aren’t getting to creative work you want to do, look again at your reasons for doing it; re-thinking and changing your purpose may change everything, and you just might find the level of intrinsic motivation needed to reach greatness, after all.

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The Forbidden

Here’s your Saturday Flash Fiction. This was inspired by a discussion on Tumblr of all the ways that Rowling could have integrated people of colour better, in her accounts of wizards in North America.

Enjoy!

The forbidden

Ngala crouched low in the belly of the slave ship, curled so that the manacles and chains were as much out of the way as possible, with the least pressure on his raw ankles and wrists. The air was thick with the scents of urine, feces and vomit, and the moans of the sick and the injured. And the cries of the hopeless. There were those who had suffered no great physical injury, but something inside, something in their spirit had broken, and they just died.

Ngala was not one of those. The desire to see home again, to breathe free air, to dance in the rain, to embrace his family, sit with them over a meal, that desire was powerful. But even more powerful was the hate. Hate for the strangers who had snatched him up and forced him into this human waste pit, hate for the men now transporting them like unruly livestock, and hate for whoever would be at the other end of this journey.

He nurtured that hate, carefully fanned that flame in his heart. He wanted that power, he needed it.

The other prisoners around him were sitting as far away as their chains would allow, and only looking at him with suspicious, sideways glances. They knew what he was. Or they suspected, anyway, fed by the whispered rumors.

He knew, distantly, that at least part of the hate and the anger came from failed hope. When he was first taken, he and his brothers had been set upon too quickly for them to reach their wands and use any defensive magic. Then they were all stunned and unable to gather the focus necessary after the slavers shot young Akul in the face as a warning to them all what would happen if they tried to use magic for anything.

The slavers had found the other wands and snapped them in two, and burned the fragments in front of them. But earlier in the day, Ngala’s brothers had thought it was funny to steal his wand and toss it back and forth between them, keeping it away from him as long as possible. When he had finally gotten his wand back from his brothers – something that required a tackle and a skinned knee – Ngala had hidden his wand in his hair, and the slavers hadn’t found it.

Ngala had hoped and waited for a chance to take out the wand and free himself and his brothers, return home in triumph. But the slavers had a wizard waiting for exactly that, and the moment Ngala made a move, he was caught and beaten, his wand broken and burned. And they had killed an elderly woman in front of him to demonstrate his error.

Now he sat and concentrated. The wand made magic easier, more powerful, more focused, but it wasn’t necessary to do magic at all. He concentrated on the words of power, using his hate and his anger as fuel. When they got to their destination, things were going to change.

When design makes your choices for you

I came across an excellent article today (via boingboing.net) by Tristan Harris, former “design ethicist” at Google. In the article, he talks about how we all think we have free will and full choice in what we do (or do not do) online, but we don’t consider how those choices have been manipulated by design choices. Sometimes the manipulation is deliberate on the part of the business or organization in question, sometimes its just an accident, but either way, the effect of the design choices needs to be looked at discussed and considered by as many people as possible, first of all so that the manipulation becomes less easy to do deliberately, and so that businesses and organizations are held accountable for their design.

Harris points out a few specific ways we’re hijacked by design in his article. One that resonated with me was the hijack of presenting a menu of choices as if it were a full and complete menu, so that people don’t stop to question what has been left off of the menu, and whether the menu truly answers their needs, or whether it is distracting you with lots of irrelevant choices or pretty pictures. In my experience, looking at what is NOT said or NOT offered is one of the most difficult things to do in life, but it is also one of the most powerful in terms of boosting quality of life, communication and creativity.

Another one he mentioned was that businesses can (and do) manipulate your choices by making the choices they want you to make very easy and frictionless (like buying something, or subscribing), and making the choices they don’t want you to choose very difficult (like returning something, or unsubscribing). They often must offer you the choice they don’t want you to make (sometimes by law, sometimes by convention) but they make it as difficult as they can for you to carry out that choice. Since most of us are busy, and creatures of habit who don’t like to deal with conflict or jump through hoops, we allow ourselves to be manipulated.

Harris gives some good examples and warnings, and will make you think about how you use the internet, and why. If you want to read the full article, you can find it here.

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Prodigy or late-bloomer; which type of creative are you?

I’ve not yet finished reading Originals: How non-conformists move the world by Adam Grant, but I’m finding it very interesting, so far.

The thing that has intrigued me the most so far is the distinction he writes about, a distinction first described by economist David Galenson, between conceptual innovators and experimental innovators. Conceptual innovators formulate a big idea, and are often helped by their lack of knowledge in an area, because they think past and around the rules and assumptions that limit the thinking of the experts in an area. As a result, conceptual innovators do their best, most ground-breaking work early in their careers, and often achieve nothing particularly notable in the second half of their working life. Some notable examples of conceptual innovators are Albert Einstein, James Watson (one of the discoverers of the structure of DNA) and the filmmaker Orson Welles.

In contrast, experimental innovators solve problems through trial and error, and evolve their approach over time. This means that they need quite a bit of time and expertise to do their best work, and thus are late bloomers, doing their best, most ground-breaking work late in their careers. Experimental innovators include William Shakespeare, Roger Sperry (who identified the different specializations of the two brain hemispheres) and filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock.

I find this very interesting, because not only does it explain a recurring pattern seen among creatives, it can give creative people better perspective on their work. Experimental innovators need time to develop their expertise and develop new ways of doing things, this tends to be a long term and fairly sustainable source of creativity and innovation. Conceptual innovators tend to get less creative over time, as they become more entrenched in the conventional thinking of their area. Which means that conceptual innovators, if they want to keep being creative and innovative, should move to a different area or subject or medium on a regular basis.

So the question for every creative person is, which type are you? Are you a late blooming experimental innovator who needs time and space to develop expertise and new ways of doing things, or are you a conceptual innovator who needs to be a novice at something to re-think the area, and then needs to move on to something else?

This has significantly altered how I look at creativity and creative people. Which is what a good theory should do. But being an experimental innovator myself, I’ll have to think about this, and tinker with it to see how it fits in with all the other stuff I’ve learned about people, psychology and being creative.

I do recommend Grant’s book, for anyone who’s interested. Besides his discussion of experimental versus conceptual innovators, he also talks about why Nobel Prize winners are more likely to be artists of some sort, and why we’re terrible judges of our own work, among several other very interesting ideas.

Body Fashions

Here’s your Saturday Flash Fiction. Enjoy!

Body Fashions

Mirabel checked herself over again in the mirror. Her copper carapace gleamed in the sunlight streaming through the window, highlighting the lovely curves of the new design. Petra had even included some subtle retro filigree patterns in silver at just the right places to emphasize the curves.

Sasha and Toobie were going to be so jealous! Mirabel thought in delight.

Her friends were already at the fountain in the park where they always met. They both exclaimed over her new carapace, but Mirabel was a little peeved to notice that Sasha had a new device on her arm, an odd-shaped thing in a dull, antique bronze.

Before Mirabel could say anything about it, though, Toobie raised her finger, holding it up between the three of them. Sasha immediately put her gleaming silver finger to Toobie’s brass colored one. They both looked expectantly at Mirabel.

She paused for a moment longer, to select which memory she wanted to share. Toobie and Sasha were both of the random memory school – they didn’t pre-select what memory they shared, they let the sharing process grab one at random, so that they were sometimes as surprised as the person they were sharing with. Mirabel didn’t like doing it that way. Her friends occasionally joked that it must mean that she had too many secrets; she didn’t, really, she just didn’t like being surprised by her own memories.

That one, of her sixth birthday, before she uploaded. That would do nicely. Mirabel put her coppery finger to the silver and brass ones, and let the sharing happen.

She let the glorious rush of sharing lift her, metaphorically, a rush very similar, it was said, to the rush of endorphins in a human body from things like sex. Toobie was sharing the memory of her first sharing, shortly after she was uploaded. It was weirdly recursive, but a satisfying share, nonetheless.

But Sasha –

Mirabel stumbled back, and she felt Toobie doing the same, both staring at their friend. Sasha’s memory had been recent – yesterday, in fact. It was filled with pain, fragmented like Sasha’s digital memory hadn’t been recording properly.

And it had to do with that bronze device on her arm. It had been installed, and…

That’s when Mirabel suddenly realized she no longer had control of her body. She tried to scream, to run away, and nothing happened.

“It’s all right” said something out of Sasha’s mouth. “This will all be over soon.”

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In thanks for Charles de Lint

Charles de Lint has been one of my favorite authors for quite some time now. He’s one of Fantasy’s godfathers, in that he was writing modern urban fantasy before it was even considered a thing.

Some of the reasons why I love his work are his very poetic, lyrical writing style (which probably comes from being a musician, as well as a writer), but also his fantastic blend of mythical and magical elements right in with mundane, modern settings is done more deftly and seamlessly than any other author (Neil Gaiman comes close, but as much as I love Gaiman’s work, I think de Lint edges him out in this respect).

De Lint’s stories also have a deep, profound belief in the power of love and in human goodness. He doesn’t flinch from including and exploring terrible events and circumstances, and many of his characters are deeply wounded or broken by awful things that have happened to them, but most have his stories have a strong theme of healing and moving on, even if the moving forward isn’t in the way or form that the character wanted or expected. He includes this fundamentally positive outlook without ever getting preachy or sappy about it, which makes it all the more effective.

I haven’t read all of de Lint’s books, but I have read many; my favorite one for the moment (though it’s been my favorite for years, now) is Tapping the Dream Tree, a collection of short stories that take place in his fictional New England town of Bedford. The book includes stories about a musician meeting the devil at the crossroads, a war between ginseng men and bees, and a werewolf going on a blind date. I find them all pretty fantastic stories.

Though I consider Tapping the Dream Tree to be my favorite book of his, I will always have a special place in my heart for his novel Svaha. I read it a number of years ago when things had not been going well for me for quite some time, and I could almost see a great, black whirlpool of despair and depression opening beneath my feet. I picked up that book to find some escapism; it’s set in a post-apocalyptic Earth, so it might not seem to be a good choice in that respect. Except that the deep, fundamental hope and optimism that runs through so many of his stories, and is especially strong in this novel, is what saved me.

I might have fallen into the whirlpool. I might have ended up caught in there for a very long time. But I was able to step away from the edge because of that book, in my hands at the right moment.

So I’m very thankful for Charles de Lint, and his writing. And I hope I can do as well in my own writing, some day.

Illusions of Competence: When you can’t see it, and others can’t tell you

After I posted last week about the problem of unknowing ignorance, a friend pointed out to me some material on the Dunning-Kruger Effect. This effect is a very common and pernicious one, where a person who is quite incompetent at something thinks that he is very good at it; he makes the highly inaccurate assessment because the skills that are necessary to judge one’s own competence are also the skills that are necessary to be good at it. Someone who lacks the skills to be competent at something, then, also lacks the skills to be a good judge of their own competence and usually greatly overestimates it. One look on the internet for people defending discredited or outlandish ideas will show you Dunning-Kruger Effect in action; the lack of knowledge and skill required to analyze someone else’s logic is the same lack that results in a person being unable to analyze their own ideas.

Interestingly, the Dunning-Kruger Effect seems to also result in the impostor syndrome, in which highly competent people tend to underestimate (and be very anxious about) their abilities, perhaps thinking that if they can do it well, everyone else must be able to do it at least as well. This is the Effect operating at the opposite end of the spectrum – the highly competent person becomes less confident in their abilities, as the incompetent person becomes highly confident.

It makes you think twice about judging someone by how confident they seem in their abilities, doesn’t it?

This isn’t the same thing as I was talking about previously, but it’s related, and a very interesting bit of research and analysis. The thing that I find especially interesting is the potential for the Dunning-Kruger Effect and the Confirmation Bias to meet and amplify each other.

I talked about Confirmation Bias here a little while ago, the idea that once someone thinks they know something, or that something is correct, they have a tendency to create their own little echo chamber. That is, people stop paying attention to any evidence that they’re wrong, and only see or notice evidence that they’re right.

So potentially, people may fall into the Dunning-Kruger Effect – they’re terrible at something, but they think they’re really pretty good. But because they’re convinced that they’re pretty good, the Confirmation Bias comes into play, and they refuse to see or acknowledge any evidence that they’re actually not as good as they think they are. Even people saying exactly that, to their faces.

There are quite a few classic texts, from Lao Tsu, to Socrates, to many other philosophers from both East and West who express the sentiment that a wise person has some idea of how much they doesn’t know. That is evidence that these effects and biases have been around for a very long time, but it’s also a hopeful indication that it is possible to step out of or avoid these traps of delusion, at least to some extent.

As I discussed before, about confirmation bias, one of the best tools for avoiding that trap is to keep trying to disprove anything you think you know. For the Dunning-Kruger effect, the best approach is likely to be humble, in the first place, and double-check with other people as to how you’re actually doing. That can be a bit painful, as you have to be willing to accept the response that you’re actually not as good as you think you are, but in the end, maintaining illusions of competence does not allow you to learn and grow.

Learning and growing is, of course, one of the key factors in maintaining creative output, growing as an artist and as a person, and living a life that is satisfying and fulfilling. And that’s what we’re all here for, isn’t it?

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Help Wanted

Here’s your Saturday Flash Fiction. It’s shorter than others, but I like this one. I hope you do, too.

Help Wanted

“Next pers- oh!”

“I’m here for the job, Ma’am. The one you posted?”

“Oh, well, I’m not sure…”

“Please ma’am, I’m very good at what I do. Please at least consider me.”

“Hmm. Well, all right. What are your qualifications?”

“I learn fast. And I’m always pleasant. I never lose my temper.”

“But…really?”

“Oh yes. I also type fast, and I can take dictation. And I’m very organized.”

“I…see.”

“And the best part…”

“Yes?”

“No one will get in to see you that you don’t want in. No one argues with me, you see. Because of the horns and fangs.”

“I had noticed them.”

“I would never hurt anyone, of course. But you don’t have to tell everyone that. I certainly don’t.”

“You’re hired.”

Sparking joy OR thought

It’s been a little while since the book came out, but I recently took a good look at Marie Kondo’s book The life-changing magic of tidying up. I’ve been thinking about that, since, especially as I am very not fond of housework, and my house is in a pretty much permanent state of disorder. I do like it when I and my family do manage to occasionally get enough housework done in a short enough time to make our place relatively tidy, though, and Kondo’s advice to get rid of everything that isn’t actively used, and doesn’t “spark joy” as she puts it, has a certain appeal. If nothing else, fewer possessions mean fewer things to clean, put away, and keep organized.

Except for books. My husband and I are both bibliophiles and we have an enormous amount of books in our house. Fiction books, non-fiction, reference, and scholarly books, we have many shelves filled with them. Sure, we can get rid of some of them and not miss them, but getting rid of all but just a few that we’re actively reading as Kondo suggests sounds deeply painful.

I recently came across an article that discussed how researchers have found that while a tidy and uncluttered space is better for focusing and getting productive work done, a cluttered one is better for coming up with good, creative ideas (I’d give you a reference for that, but I forgot to write it down or otherwise bookmark it, and now I can’t find it. If anyone can help me out with the link, I’d appreciate it).

This is especially the case for books. I certainly find that if I read a book and then get rid of it (or return it to the public library, as the case may be) most of what I got from the book slips out of my head, eventually, and becomes inaccessible. If, however, the book is on my shelf, in my living or work space, even if I never actively read it again, when I see it there I remember the most relevant points the author made, I think about the ideas and I’m able to make connections. The brilliant author Octavia Butler got ideas for her writing by having four or five books open around her house and allowing the ideas to bump into each other in her head as she wandered around and read them (I have the reference for this one; if you want to see more, I got this from http://tumblr.austinkleon.com/post/143805305806).

I’m not entirely disagreeing with Kondo’s approach.  I think the idea of getting rid of anything that isn’t used frequently or doesn’t spark joy is a good approach for things like clothes and personal products, and many other categories of things around the house, I would add another criteria, especially when it comes to books – if it sparks joy, OR it sparks thought, it deserves a place on my bookshelf.

Conscious choice is awesome

I’m right in the middle of reading the WWW series by Robert Sawyer (that’s a trilogy with the book names Wake, Watch and Wonder). Sawyer has been a favorite author of mine for a while now because he thinks hard about science (gets his science right, too!!) and integrates some fascinating ideas, speculations and philosophy while still telling an interesting and well-paced story.

This series is no exception. The thing I found most interesting, though, is his speculations on the nature of consciousness. He discusses (mostly in the second book) how there must be an evolutionary advantage of consciousness over non-consciousness – that is, sentience or self-awareness. He then goes on to speculate that the evolutionary purpose of consciousness is to allow conscious beings to overcome their basic, biological programming.

The example he gives is that our selfish genes have given us a biological programming to be biased towards those with which we share genetics, that is, so that we’ll always favor our kin-group. This has a sound evolutionary reason, since this gives the best chance of survival and propagation for our own genes. With consciousness, however, we can make the choice to value all lives equally, and more importantly, the choice to cooperate and collaborate with people who are very different from ourselves, instead of competing with them, or trying to violently dispose of them.

I would also offer the example that when our biological programming is telling us that anything we don’t understand is a threat, when we are constantly being told by people in authority that we are surrounded by threats, using fear as a political tool, we can consciously choose to examine those fears and decide what is appropriate. We can move beyond those fears and refuse to be manipulated by them.

In a time and place where so many other indications are that the world is going to hell in a handbasket, this has given me hope.

So thank you, Robert Sawyer. You’ve given me something to aspire to in my own fiction, I hope I can do it half as well as you.