Do not censor. Explore. Sometimes the most bizarre ideas have meaning hidden within them like dry kindling. Remember: It took a whacked-out epiphany to spark the discovery of penicillin.
Actors taught the wonderfully liberating skill of improvisation discover they can make up insightful characters and situations in an instant. They are guided to trust themselves and their companions. Encouraged not to hold back. Any idea no matter how grotesque, socially inappropriate or strange can transform into a wild comedic treasure.
Daydreaming is not goofing off. It is a healthful, problem-solving brain practice. In fact, a recent broad study stunned scientists in its implications about how active the brain is. Psychological scientist Mary Helen Immordino-Yang and colleagues stated: “We under-appreciate the impact of introspection and daydreaming on our cognitive life and individual wellness.” They coined the term “constructive internal reflection” and strongly suggest that there be a standard educational practice to promote it.
Have Faith the Answers Will Come
I suffer from a common form of doubt called Impostor Syndrome. My fear as a writer-director is that my flaws will be exposed, that I will be seen for what I fear I really am: an unskilled impostor. Hence, I am surprised when an outside questioner, like an actor, forces me to focus on a point I had never considered.
Evolved and appropriate answers often come instantly. We can be unaware how much our experience and knowledge our brains have stored up .
When asked to estimate the scale of our aware, conscious brain compared with our unconscious brain, people very much over-estimate what they can actively feel. In truth, the unconscious is like an ocean and our awareness is merely the boat on it. It is a weird deep, unreachable place where dreams, DNA and life dynamics mingle and occasionally bubble up a brilliant solution.
Be patient, be open and ask your unconscious to help. Be eccentric! Put yourself in the place where you create best. It is said famed 1930s musical director Busby Berkley devised his innovative dazzling geometric dance patterns by sitting in a hot bath every day before going to the set. MRI research says our brains exhibit the same activity when we take a shower as when we experience a breakthrough epiphany. I have made many great discoveries in my shower and none has to do with my anatomy.
Ideas Are Capricious Spirits
We must make a space for them to nest in our minds. Giving an idea time to gestate is natural. Sleeping on it is not just an old saying—it is a functional truth. Changing your environment, watching movies, exercising, tying up your physical body can sometimes free the unconscious. I live with Post-Its everywhere—in the bathroom, my car, on my treadmill. They’re idea flypaper.
Occasionally nothing comes. I have read that the desperate fear that our creative output is at a dead-end may itself be a necessary part of the creative process. Crashing our old reliable day-to-day left-brain processor can push it into the background and unchain our right brain, the source of unconscious epiphanies.
Mysteriously, we don’t always know what we are going to invent, but we can feel something ripening! Like the tip of an iceberg. For two years after our breakthrough Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, I had this certainty in my gut—like a metaphorical story-sausage—that I was going to write a historical female story.
Despite trying to kick-start or rush it out of me, it wouldn’t come. Then suddenly my unconscious was ready. I was ripe. The script poured from me onto the page like a gusher from my soul. It was like taking dictation, and it was intoxicating. It became Moll Flanders, and it took just five weeks to write. Conversely, I have agonized for years over some of my other passion projects!
A tip: When solutions surface, be smart and grab ‘em before they sink again.
Don’t Give In to Your Inner Bully
A public confession: I’d like to commit a murder! I want to obliterate that damn gremlin that floats inside me whispering, taunting me about my imagination’s inadequacies. It’s a bit like the monster outside the plane in that famous Bill Shatner Twilight Zone episode. This gremlin’s attempting to tear pieces off my emotional wings.
I call this insidious creature the Golem. Almost everyone trying to create anything seems to suffer from these critical parasites. “You are wasting your time.” – “Your ideas are so awful, they’ll go into the dictionary under ‘excrement’.”
Bizarrely, I think our Golems are really an evolutionary defense mechanism. They are trying to help us avoid taking risks, because we’ll survive longer.
I’ve found that I cannot judge what I write at the moment of creation. Like it’s from another part of the head. But the old Golem is there, unafraid to spout scorn.
Despite a strong homicidal desire—you can’t seem to kill a part of yourself—I have trained myself to ignore the voice of doom. After a cool-down period, I am frequently amazed how strong the stuff that it damned and lambasted really is. If I had listened to my inner critic, most of my achievements would never have found their way to existence.
Problem-Solving Is Seldom a Straight Path
It can be depressing when solutions don’t unfurl like a magic carpet. There is no organic “on” switch. When X-rayed, Leonardo Da Vinci’s paintings show many earlier layers of work, scratchings-out, compositions that were abandoned. Sometimes it took him years to finish a piece, thus proving that Leonardo was an inefficient idiot who had no idea what he was doing. Yeah, right!
Creativity is imprecise, chaotic, instinctual—but just as often, delicious and amazing. Choosing its path is a great excuse to flow with our curiosities and engage in an omnivorous, explorative life. Ideas build on each other, build on the discoveries of others, then fall apart and rebuild stronger. There is no wrong. Just doing anything creative exercises our inspiration muscles and strengthens our unique voice.
And, just like the weather, we fog in. Expect to plough through the murk. To struggle.
“Inventors Block”
It is in our nature to want to be perfect because we fear judgment by others. But that can freeze the ability to explore the real way ideas often evolve: randomly. When answers don’t come, we must not beat ourselves up. It is like whipping a dove to try and make it kill. Not good!
When writing my book on screenwriting, Riding the Alligator, I searched the web looking for cures for “Writer’s Block.” One Australian, Andrew Cavanagh, had evolved a powerful solution:“Write any old CRAP! A pile of steaming crap, no one would ever read.”
Labeling our new work “crap” cunningly disables our perfectionism by saying we’re just playing in a mud puddle. Splattering creative clay where ever it flies. There are no consequences, hence no failure.
“The biggest mistake most writers make is that they confuse the creative process with the critical process,” says Andrew Cavanagh. “And that leads us to secret no 2: The biggest secret of great writing. Re-writing.”
When we step back, our stream-of-consciousness crap pile is often the foundation for a pretty good sculpture. We can see how to give it greater definition, even if it is a tad lopsided.
I was surprised when I recently discovered the identical “crap” axiom being used in a blog for computer program originators who feared going forward. I realized geeks really are my tribal cousins.
The first draft of anything is sh*t.
-Ernest Hemingway
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