Good Taste And The Gap

John Lacey — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 01:33:23 +0000

Cynthia Harrison wonders if she isn’t a bit ‘mental’. She writes:

I’ve always wondered if writing is a sign of a mental problem–for me specifically, not for other writers. I mean, really, why would I want to do something for which I am routinely rejected? And for so long? I’ve been writing for 40 years. Trying to publish a novel for 30 years. Well, off and on, between kids and marriages and degrees and teaching jobs, but still. Why haven’t I given up?

Well lots of people do quit. Does that make them sane?

Ira Glass, host of This American Life, talks in terms of good taste – that passion and understanding you have of your artform – and the gap between that good taste, that thing that you aspire to, and your current abilities.

Ira Glass:

And you get into this thing that I don’t even know how to describe but it’s like there’s a gap, that for the first couple of years that you’re making stuff what you’re making isn’t so good. It’s not that great, it’s really not that great. It’s trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it’s not quite that good. But your taste – the thing that got you into the game – your taste is still killer. And your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you’re making is kind of a disappointment to you, you know what I mean? Like you can tell that it’s still sort of crappy.

A lot of people never get past that phase, a lot of people at that point they quit. And the thing I would just like say to you with all my heart is that most everybody I know who does interesting creative work they went through a phase of years where they had really good taste, they could tell what they were making wasn’t as good as they wanted it to be, they knew that it fell short. [...] But we knew like it didn’t have the special ‘thing’ that we wanted it to have. And the thing I would say to you is that everyone goes through that.

So I guess there are two ways of ‘dealing’ with the gap. Either you decide it’s too large – or too unimportant – and quit, or you keep working to overcome it. You overcome it by creating that great body of work Ira speaks about, by continuing to show up to the page or canvas [or whatever your medium is].

Thanks to Joshua Withers for bringing this video to my attention.

Creativity Is Still A Process

John Lacey — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 10:04:17 +0000

I’ve been a fan of Kate Bush for some time now. For some reason over the last three days I’ve been particularly fascinated by her work, watching documentaries and music videos and interviews with her. The thing that I found interesting was the way music commentators described her as being a ‘fully-formed’ artist from her musical debut. The inference I think was that she came out of the womb as the creative force we see and know and love today. This was despite the fact that the same documentary alluded to her artistic development; to her learning the piano and the violin from an early age, her studying dance, her writing songs from a very young age, her EMI ‘Artist Development’ deal, and a wealth of support from her parents (her father was typically the first audience for her early works) and family friends. To me this demonstrated a complete lack of understanding of the creative process as a process.

In the same documentary the same commentators suggested her Hounds Of Love album was her greatest and most complete work. They went further to suggest that the reason for this was because after being hurried on earlier projects, being constrained by time and the expense of studios and equipment, she built her own home studio. Here she could work at her own pace, here she could entertain creative whims and take artistic risks. The difference here was time. Because ideas – and artists – go through a period of gestation, and creativity and art take time.

In a similar vein, Mur Lafferty in her most recent podcast ISBW #133 – You’re allowed to suck / Anders and Defendini Interview:

You’re allowed to suck in your first draft but you’re also allowed to suck at the beginning of your career. Now I haven’t read the book yet but I have heard many people mention the Malcolm Gladwell book that talks about how you need to have 10,000 hours of doing something before you’re a master. And a lot of people have said ‘You don’t want to sell your first novel.’ And some outspoken agents on Twitter have even said ‘Don’t send me your NaNoWriMo novel.’ NaNoWriMo probably says, ‘we are all about quantity over quality. The goal is to get the book on the page, after that fix it. Or make it longer. Or learn how to write a book.’

I think one problem novice writers have is we believe every idea we have is a perfect snowflake that must go out to the world. This is what causes people to work on a book for 20 years. It’s what causes people to freak out when they’re rejected, and not think, ‘okay, well if this story or book has been rejected 50 times maybe I should put it aside and write something else.’

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Good Taste And The Gap

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