Making room to be creative

For most of my life I thought writing meant waiting for inspiration. After writing over fifty songs, I think it is closer to setting up a room and showing up in it. John Cleese gives a talk on creativity that put words to what I had been stumbling toward.

Two modes of working

Cleese describes an open mode, which is playful and curious and willing to wander, and a closed mode, which is purposeful and quick to judge. Both are useful. The mistake is using the closed mode too early. If I start editing a line while I am still finding it, the line dies.

Space and time

His advice is to protect a quiet place and a set window of time, and to treat both as off limits to everything else. A song needs a boundary around it before it will show up.

Stay with the problem

The first idea is rarely the best one. Many of my drafts are me circling the same line until it is true, then throwing it out and writing it again. Sitting with the discomfort of not having the answer yet is part of the work.

Confidence and play

Nothing creative happens while you are afraid of looking foolish. In a first pass there are no bad lines, only lines to fix later. Humor helps. So does hearing the words with a melody under them, which is why I make demos.

How I work now

I draft freely in Google Docs and keep every version. I make a demo to hear what the words do. Then I come back in editing mode and cut what does not have to be there. Open first, closed second.