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Blogs by Richard French
On Creativity -- Part Two 12/13/2014 3:27:52 PM
It occurred to me a while ago that complacency is a big enemy of creativity. Creative power evaporates as soon as we say, “I’ve done a lot. I’m satisfied with my achievement so far. I’ve proved my point.” As far as creativity is concerned, it’s much better to have a sense of quest, to be on a search. “I’m going to find out how to do….[fill in the blank]. I’m going to learn how to make….[another blank waiting to be filled in].”
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I’ve been curious from time to time about Cyril Connolly’s memoir “The Enemies of Promise”. I found a summary of it on Wikipedia.
The book turns out to be Connolly’s explanation of why he never wrote a major literary work – not what I expected. Family members spoiled him when he was growing up; the well-known English schools he went to hindered him; the literary environment of the day didn’t suit him; he admitted to being lazy; he feared success and believed that God would keep him from the pride of achievement; romanticism and its myths did him in. Quite an array of excuses, to which I will add that he lacked discipline in many ways and that he was such a difficult person that he must have disliked himself much of the time.
Bringing the question down to earth, I believe that creativity starts with a desire to make something and continues as we figure out what we have to do, including what sacrifices to make, in order to realize our dream or wish. Talent grows.
Perhaps Connolly didn’t want to make a great work of literature after all and liked the social aspects of the writing life. But whoever said that everyone who puts sentences together must create a masterpiece?
It could be that Connolly berated himself excessively. His professional life was not a waste or a sham. He became a brilliant critic and wrote at least two works that have had long lives. The other is called “The Unquiet Grave” – which Wikipedia says contains his reflections as he neared the age of 40.
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“Be sure not to waver,” my father once said to me in a kindly way as we walked beside the Charles River in Boston on a 4th of July at least thirty years ago.
Criticism, opposition, unexpected challenges are common phenomena that everyone who wants to achieve anything comes up against.
What to do when a storm of obstacles rushes at us?
If we believe in what we’re doing, if we know our project is right for us, if we love the goals we set for ourselves, we keep on going.
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Graham Greene on a novel he didn’t write:
“As we drove to the hotel I was thinking of the novel that was doomed never to be written, ‘On the Way Back.’ I believed that I had discovered what was wrong with it, what was preventing its free growth in my mind. The setting was too closely fixed on Panama– I ought to make the scene an imaginary Central American state. After all, I had seen a little of Nicaragua, a little of Belize….” (From “Getting to Know the General).
I liked what he suggested about the importance of free growth in one's mind.
