There’s No One Creative Process. There’s No Grand Secret
I’m starting to understand how ridiculous it is when people ask for the “secret” of a person’s success.
Let’s imagine you get to meet a writer you admire. You want to find out how they got popular, how they wrote the things they wrote, how they came up with the great ideas that launched them into fame and prosperity.
“What’s your morning regimen? Do you brush your teeth with your left hand or your right to enhance the creative process? How do you craft such a great story? What’s the secret sauce? Is there something you’re adding in your water?”
You want to copy everything, from the tools they use, the food they eat, the exercises they do. You want to extract the “elusive secret” that all these successful people know, to be able to bridge the gap between your present, lame life and the life you desire.
What are we really asking here? What are we insinuating?
It’s like we’re asking if there was an enlightening moment where the writer was able to invoke to come up with the story for their popular novel. We’re asking for a shortcut to success, an easy way out of the struggle of writing.
We’re insinuating that there’s something the writer is doing that we don’t know about that is bringing them their massive success. If we just imitate the writer’s daily regimen, if we copy everything they have done to write their magnum opus, we will be able to produce our own great work.
If we emulate the writer’s path to success, wouldn’t it be fair to assume that we would become successful too?
Well sorry to disappoint you, but that’s not how it works.
We’re constantly disappointed that we are not told the “grand” secret. We ask Stephen King countless times how he was able to write such popular books. He simply tells us he read a lot and wrote a lot.
But you’re not satisfied with that, because that’s not the answer you were looking for, and frankly, you don’t even know what you’re looking for. So you’ll keep searching and asking for something that you’ll never find, wasting everyone’s time and energy. Time and energy that could have been used to find what works for you and put in the work.
Disclaimer: Now I’m going to assume some things about J.K. Rowling. (Ironic, as my last post was about not making assumptions… but hear me out!)
I don’t know her personally and I don’t know her journey in becoming a best-selling writer and her process of creating the Harry Potter series. I will use a low resolution version of her and assume what she’d say and believe. This may all be wrong, but then again, who knows? I think it just might help you understand our misconception of creative processes.
If you asked J.K. Rowling how you could come up with the next big story, comparable to Harry Potter, she’d also probably tell you to just read and write. If you asked her how she came up with the idea of Harry Potter, she probably couldn’t explain it to you. She’d maybe tell you the memorable moments of brilliance that struck her during its creation, but even those moments she wouldn’t be able to explain or breakdown. She probably just read and wrote and the ideas came from unexpected inspirations.
The story probably came to her in fragments. I highly doubt the whole story was sitting in her head in completion, waiting for her to put it down on paper. The story had to unfold, slowly and carefully, deliberately and precisely, lovingly and passionately. It was an amalgamation of all the knowledge accumulated during her life.
She made decisions about the story that other writers would not have made. She made characters in ways that other writers would not have made. She created her own world of wizards — a world that was only able to be brought forth by her.
Maybe she’d tell you to go travel and experience things in the world. Maybe she’d tell you to go live through life, go through some struggles and pains, experience heartbreak or love, experience betrayal and friendship… and maybe she’d even tell you it’s not possible.
And that’s certainly true. It’s not possible to write a story like Harry Potter.
It’s not your story to tell. You have something else to share with the world, something personal, something of your creation.
You will create something that no one else but you can create. Every word, every thought and every experience you have is unique and will therefore manifest differently in your words.
Find what process works best for you.
Whether you like writing early in the morning after breakfast and coffee or writing late at night when everyone is in deep sleep and all is silent, search for the process that works for you, that helps you come up with ideas. Read a lot of books and stories to train your eye and find out what makes a story compelling and captivating. Exercise and get your blood pumping if that helps you crank up your creative gear. Talk to people and bounce some ideas around to see if it’s interesting enough. Listen to music that gets you in a contemplative mood or speakers who inspire you.
Don’t look for any more secrets that will magically improve your writing or help you come up with the “next big story”. There are no secrets and there is no “creative process” that works for everyone.
The Fear Never Goes Away
“Henry Fonda was still throwing up before each stage performance, even when he was seventy-five. In other words, fear doesn’t go away. The warrior and the artist live by the same code of necessity, which dictates that the battle must be fought anew every day.”
- Steven Pressfield, The War of Art
It’s still hard for me to write everyday. Even though I’ve been doing it for a month now, I doubt my abilities every time I open up the blank canvas to write a new story.
Everyday is a battle with my self. I am always so close to giving up. I’m my own worst enemy, my own worst critic.
“I have nothing valuable to say. I’m out of ideas. I’m just going to end up repeating myself everyday and people will find out what a fraud I am. My writing is actually bad but people are sympathizing with me. I should just stop writing and stop taking up space. This momentary success is not going to last for long, and I will soon fade away into obscurity.”
I sit with these thoughts for hours every night… and then I just start writing. I don’t let these thoughts stop me from writing something. Taking action gets me out of my head and allows my brain to start thinking of creative ideas that align with what I want to write about, rather than focusing on the self-criticizing, negative and harmful thoughts.
A funny thing I’ve realized is that these thoughts actually make my writing a little more powerful. I use my criticisms against myself. I openly address and acknowledge them, which helps me confront and overcome them.
When I shine a light on these dark thoughts, they cower and shrink, and they become weak and powerless. When I put them on paper instead of allowing them to control my thoughts and emotions, they seem rather strange.
They’re exaggerated and inflated criticisms, and often a little too harsh. Millions of these thoughts race through my mind every second, everyday, but I am unable to be mindful of them or scrutinize them because they happen so fast.
You have to watch your thoughts and make sure that you’re in control, instead of the other way around. You can decide what to think and focus on. You can decide to encourage rather than discourage. You can decide to love rather than to hate.
I’m scared to write everyday, and I will always be scared. It was hard to write this today, and it will always be hard to write everyday. It never gets easier, and you will struggle every time you try to push your creative boundaries. But out of that struggle comes growth and great ideas.
“Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty… I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.”
— Theodore Roosevelt
If there were secrets to becoming successful, I think it would be the willingness to struggle and the courage to overcome your fears.
Don’t think the fear will go away one day. Don’t think the struggle will disappear. It will always be there for you to overcome. Everyday is a battle to be just a bit braver than yesterday, to confront the thoughts that impede you with detachment and take action.
So instead of wishing you good luck, I wish you suffering and pain. To make you stronger, to increase your tolerance and endurance, to push you to your very limits so that you can reach your potential.
“To those human beings who are of any concern to me I wish suffering, desolation, sickness, ill-treatment, indignities — I wish that they should not remain unfamiliar with profound self-contempt, the torture of self-mistrust, the wretchedness of the vanquished: I have no pity for them, because I wish them the only thing that can prove today whether one is worth anything or not — that one endures.”
— Friedrich Nietzsche
