Creativity feels like a magic trick sometimes, except the magician is just as surprised as anyone else that he did, in fact, pull a rabbit out of his hat.
-Where the heck did that thing come from?
And I’ve been sitting here, sipping on this good, good brown water, racking my brain over what to write about for the last, oh, forever or so. Literally a day ago, I dropped 1,500 words on what I thought was going to be a blog, but after thinking it over, it can actually be an adventure. I think it’s worth it – like maybe it earned that distinction of deserving more detail.
For this blog, well, I got pretty far originally, but then the power went out and I had to start over again. Auto-recovery saved some of my effort, but that’s the price you pay for writing during a thunderstorm. And for not hitting ctrl+s often enough. And I’m usually so particular about smashing that combination after every sentence or two.
But even if that other piece does go back into the blog pile, well, I’m still left with needing something to write about now. Blogs are off-the-cuff, yeah, but these feel like they take way longer than they need to sometimes. It’s like someone handed me a canvas and some color and said “paint something nice for me” except its me sitting down at a document, it’s empty whiteness blinding me and myself telling me “here, write something nice.”
I’m standing up on stage, got my black tux on and this matching tophat placed upside down atop a light brown stool. I’ve got my hand in the hat, reaching up against its velvet interior and hoping to find anything resembling that adorable carrot muncher so I can yank it out and show it to everyone.
Instead, there’s nothing to feel but the interior despite desperately rooting around for something to pull out of this hat. From wrist deep to elbow deep, from there to shoulder deep, the audience is murmuring and the magician is panicking. You can’t tell, but he is.
-I know I put that stupid bunny in here somewhere.
The magic trick, instead, becomes just how did I manage to get my arm that deep into that hat. The audience loves it, but the magician is like, oh yeah, that was totally the aim all along (now where is that rabbit?!) Doesn’t really matter, because the show’s over.
Bunny’s missing, but the show’s over.
A recent video game makes me feel like I’m writing a new, fresh blog every time I boot it up. In Mario Maker 2, and I’m almost positive in the first one as well but I skipped it, you get to make your own levels in one of the most popular franchises on the planet. And with all of those tools at your disposal, you can create some truly incredible, unique and downright diabolical stages and share them with the world online.
But there’s this concept of being paralyzed by choice. There’s so many options, and so many different ways to flow from one idea to the next, that it becomes too much to even start and nothing gets done.
In Mario Maker, you’re given a blank canvas and are told “here, make a nice stage” and it’s like, how? What makes something fun? What makes something enjoyable? Is it a well-timed jump over a pit of lava that you yourself had to trial-and-error over and over to make sure it was doable even though it doesn’t look that way? Is it a well-placed block after a leap of faith? Is it just stomping through a level with no danger at all?
I have no idea!
And that line of thinking extends out from just making stages and can be used for writing and other creative endeavors too. Is it fun to look at this drawing? Is it enjoyable to read this blog?
But maybe there’s too much thinking involved and the important thing is to just get something out there that you can work with and start chipping away at with edits and improvements. Maybe that’s true for everything, not just creative things, but all things. Practical things. Just getting a starting point can be good enough, right? Iterate from that?
And through that editing process, as you go over all these silly little things that you, at first, thought were pretty cool, you realize that some actually were and some you could definitely do better on. And as that goes on, your hand brushes across something that isn’t part of the velvet interior of that hat, but instead it feels an awful lot like a bunny.
A few more tweaks and it’s time to yank whatever it is you’ve got your hands on. Fingers crossed that it’s a bunny, right?
Of course it is. What else would it be? That’s the trick.
And then, in no matter what you’re doing – writing, painting, making stages, cooking, dancing – whatever it is, you get told by some people, who are sincere, that they’re impressed by you.
-I like this! You’re so good at what you do! How do you do so great?
Now, don’t get it twisted. It took some work. It took some real effort. You made this trick. But.
Uh.
It’s magic?
Thanks for reading.