Remember the movie Good Will Hunting? In it is a story about a man in a remote hut who became a famous mathematician by deriving advanced theorems from just a simple textbook. That anecdote may have been fictional for all I know, but it illustrates a difference between art and science.
If you never heard music, you would not be able to create it. You would create some wretched cacophony that wouldn't make sense to the rest of our ears. In the same way, if you never experience life, how can you expect to write about it? Lately I've been feeling creatively barren, then I realized my problem was a simple lack of stimulation.
The math genius is able to deduce all the advanced laws because they already exist, merely waiting for discovery. Writing, music, and art on the other hand, are heavily influenced by perspiration and inspiration.
This weekend I took a break from the internet and cable news to spend some time doing real networking. It felt great and I had more ideas than I could keep track of.
I recall seeing an interview with Tom Wolfe (Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Bonfire of the Vanities, etc.) where he spoke about young writers (paraphrase): There's always the kid who writes that great novel at 23, summing up all their life experiences. A year later, they're writing about a writer who is having trouble finding inspiration and just can't find their voice.
Main point: Stop looking to the mainstream for inspiration. If you find yourself tweeting "thinking of something good to Tweet," you might have the same problem.
0 comments:
Post a Comment