Sculpting/Collaging vs. The Blank Page

Just listened to this great interview with a comics guy. I don’t know this guy or the comics thing, but I loved the way he talked about creativity.

He makes this comic. It’s basically a collage of victorian clipart. He manipulates them, puts them together, zooms in, zooms out, and mashes a story over it like so much mod podge.

He talks about how this kind of creativity is much more inspiring to him than a blank page. Well, yea, no shit.

He also talks of his career as a movie trailer editor. Again, taking this thing, collecting some scraps and bits and rearranging them.

He also talks about how he sometimes just starts with the pictures, puts them together and then gets inspired by something this bear could be saying to this guy.

Rearranging existing things to find some connection that wasn’t there before. Manipulating some existing thing into alternate shapes.

I love this as a model for creativity… or a mode. I love his perspective about this. I also love his easy way of saying, “yes, this is what I do.”

Re-jiggering how I think about what I do more towards this “collaging” or “sculpting” mode takes some of the pressure off.

When I brainstorm a bunch of stuff, put each idea on the whiteboard or notebook or on its own sticky note, and then rearrange them…

When I draw a bunch of boxes in photoshop in different colors and then rearrange them…

When I clip bits of websites I love and rearrange them on the canvas…

Because, let’s be honest, blank pages fk’n suck.

Pic above from this comic

On Asking for Advice & The Rub

I just received a long note from an earnest fizzler trying to make their thing and getting really down about the results. I wrote her this response:

Wow, thanks for sharing so candidly.

I don’t have specific, mind blowing advice for you, not only because I don’t have experience in the your specific industry, but also because it sounds like you’re getting to a REALLY great point.

What you’re experiencing is what I call THE RUB. It’s when the pain of the thing, the compromises, heaviness, resultlessness and harshness of the current situation are such that we either double down to make the thing succeed or quit.

THIS is where you’ll find what you’re made of and what really matters to you about this project (and others).

And for that reason I recommend you stop looking for advice. You DO need a little encouragement: you’re not far off now. You’re on the right track. This rub is what it’s like to be an entrepreneur and an artist. It’s what makes the best in you come out. If everything went well all the time we’d still be making the mediocre stuff we started with.

Might feel like I’m sluffing you off here. I’m not. The rules are all changing. The advice someone gives you will be based on stuff that happened in the past. You’ll come up with better, more honest, more YOU, more NOW methods and directions than anyone else will give you.

As long as you’re taking the basics in Fizzle (choosing topic, defining audience, differentiation, productivity, intro to traffic) and understanding the seeds of this stuff, you’ve got the tools you need.

If there’s a specific question you run into, shoot me an email. I’ll probably try to get you to go with your gut, fail fast+loud and learn. But I also know there are particular bits of unknowledge or misunderstanding we all get sold at one time or another.

Also, remember: no one’s guaranteed anything in this. Our chances are bad on our first venture/idea, but they get better with each venture. Take that on the chin, gird your loins, see this thing happening over the next 4-5 years NOT the next 4-5 months. The work you’re doing, setting your own deadlines, building your own thing, is the hardest core bootcamp available to you.

I gotta run. Hope this feels empowering (and not deflating). Break a leg!

Dave Eggers (& Me) on Selling Out

What matters is that you do good work. What matters is that you produce things that are true and will stand. What matters is that the Flaming Lips’s new album is ravishing and I’ve listened to it a thousand times already, sometimes for days on end, and it enriches me and makes me want to save people. What matters is that it will stand forever, long after any narrow-hearted curmudgeons have forgotten their appearance on goddamn 90210. What matters is not the perception, nor the fashion, not who’s up and who’s down, but what someone has done and if they meant it. What matters is that you want to see and make and do, on as grand a scale as you want, regardless of what the tiny voices of tiny people say. Do not be critics, you people, I beg you. I was a critic and I wish I could take it all back because it came from a smelly and ignorant place in me, and spoke with a voice that was all rage and envy. Do not dismiss a book until you have written one, and do not dismiss a movie until you have made one, and do not dismiss a person until you have met them. It is a fuckload of work to be open-minded and generous and understanding and forgiving and accepting, but Christ, that is what matters. What matters is saying yes.”

Dave Eggers (emphasis added)

Dave Eggers was asked about selling out. His response (reprinted here) is long and windy and ends up being deeply rewarding… like everything I’ve ever read from the guy.

I come from a culture of sell-out seekers. We longed to write off anyone that smelled like money or main stream success.

I see now 2 things:

1. I wanted what I listened to to be cool because of what it said about me. It had little to do with the insights or spirit or heroics of the artists I was championing… it had a lot to do with my identity issues.

2. I said money and success but what I meant was greed. This is something Dan Harmon helped me understand in his (absolutely fucking stellar) XOXO talk. Success (financial or artistic or main stream) is not greed. Greed is something real and dangerous and terrible, but don’t make the mistake of equating it with success.

Dan Harmon on Heroes

Whereas the health of an individual depends on the ego’s regular descent and return to and from the unconscious, a society’s longevity depends on actual people journeying into the unknown and returning with ideas.

In their most dramatic, revolutionary form, these people are called heroes, but every day, society is replenished by millions of people diving into darkness and emerging with something new (or forgotten): scientists, painters, teachers, dancers, actors, priests, athletes, architects and most importantly, me, Dan Harmon.”

Dan Harmon

This was one of the best short article excursions on story theory I’ve read.

I think I love this story stuff (find more here) so much because it’s like learning about myself, our humanity, what we’re really like.

That, and it helps me become a better marketer and thing maker.

Chase Reeves Interviewed on Business Republic

I’m a little embarrassed about this because it’s so wordy and the audio’s clipping, but there’s some good stuff in here about how I think about design, doing work, and what I was like in high school (such a great question). My thanks to Omar for the conversation.

George Sanders on Built-in Confusions

Each of us is born with a series of built-in confusions that are probably somehow Darwinian. These are: (1) we’re central to the universe (that is, our personal story is the main and most interesting story, the only story, really); (2) we’re separate from the universe (there’s US and then, out there, all that other junk — dogs and swing-sets, and the State of Nebraska and low-hanging clouds and, you know, other people), and (3) we’re permanent (death is real, o.k., sure – for you, but not for me).

Now, we don’t really believe these things – intellectually we know better – but we believe them viscerally, and live by them, and they cause us to prioritize our own needs over the needs of others, even though what we really want, in our hearts, is to be less selfish, more aware of what’s actually happening in the present moment, more open, and more loving.”

George Saunders

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