One Thought

I’ve noticed that most good writing uses metaphors. Metaphors can be powerful–they hold a concreteness, a directness, and a life that other devices lack.  It’s important that metaphors be original, though.  Cliches rarely add much to writing and often detract from it. Most cliches are metaphors, which means you have to be doubly careful not to use them. People are more likely to remember metaphors; that’s why they often become cliches.

Let’s look at a example.  Say I want to describe a table with a lot of staplers on it.  (Apologies in advance for the mundanity.)  There’s a table in the back of the supply room with staplers on it. Not just a few, mind you–this table is covered in staplers. Open the door and you are faced with an army of staplers peering back at you. Staplers are innocuous alone, but in large numbers–when in battle formation–they can make your soul spasm. Approach carefully–these devils will strike you with their metallic fangs if they get the chance.

I used several metaphors in the preceding paragraph: “army of staplers,” “peering back,” “in battle formation,” “make your soul spasm,” and “strike you with their metallic fangs.” The subject of the paragraph is mundane–a collection of staplers–but it is described vividly: as a menacing army ready to attack. The staplers have a reptilian quality: they peer at you and threaten you with their fangs. This metaphor brings the subject to life. It evokes a vivid picture. It conjures an emotional reaction in the reader, giving him a feeling about the staplers that the mundane, obvious description would not have. Metaphors bring vividness, concreteness, and emotional impact to writing.

Some of what I am calling metaphors may better be described as turns of phrase. In this context, I mean an interesting, lively way of expressing a normally-pedestrian thought. For example, two paragraphs ago I claimed, hoping to frighten you, that a pack of staplers can “make your soul spasm.” Is a spasming soul a metaphor? Maybe. The soul in this case is a metaphor for the body, which can spasm. But there is no extended metaphor–just this short phrase. I think the real point here is to express a common idea–fear–in a novel way. It’s more exciting and surprising to think of a soul spasming, which you may not have done before, than to read that the staplers can scare you. And it’s more rewarding to read something original–only 228 hits on Google for “soul spasm”!–than it is to be confronted with cliches like “scares you out of your mind” or “sends shivers down your spine.”

Conclusion: Metaphors are powerful. They are exciting. They invoke emotions and conjure mental images. They bring life to writing. Use ‘em.

When you feel passionate about what you are doing, you radiate energy and enthusiasm. Others pick up on this, consciously or not, and are attracted to it. Passion is magnetic. Passion makes you set goals high. It gives confidence; it gives energy. Passion begets quality–if you’re passionate, you don’t want to stop halfway.

When you’re passionate, you seek out what you want. This is because you know what you want–in fact, in a way passion is knowing what you want. If you don’t know what you want, it’s impossible to be passionate, and if you do know what you want–and are completely open with yourself–the urge to seek it will be irresistable. Indecision and uncertainty kill passion.

Good things come much more readily to those who are passionate. Passionate people seek out what they want–but, in a way, they don’t even have to. If you’re passionate–if you know what you want–you radiate an energy that brings your desires to you.

Passionate people excite others; they tend to make great first impressions. They make what they want clear, explicitly or not, and people take notice. Others are often more than happy to help out the passionate: they may pull strings; they may collaborate; they may simply give their enthusiastic support. But they will do something. Wanting something passionately produces circumstances that lead to getting it. A passionate person will get what she wants much more quickly and often than an unpassionate person.

A ‘whole’ life is one whose parts fit together. Such a life is devoid of contradictions; its elements do not compete. Wholeness makes a person complete: it gives a person an identity and self-certainty that cannot be obtained otherwise. Though a passionate person may not lead a whole life, passion makes wholeness possible.

To live a whole life, you must know what you want and seek it in all areas of your life. Wholeness allows the elements of life to work together, to aid one another. Wholeness brings a new level of meaning and purpose to life beyond what passion can bring by itself.

Being creative is hard. More specifically, creation is hard, and creative creation–excuse the jargon–is very hard. (To create is to produce something; to create creatively is to produce something substantially original.) Creation is active and intentional–you can’t just wait for it to happen. Drive and determination are necessary.

Creation is quite doable, though. I create all the time in my job, for example. When I come up with new ideas and implement them or express them to others, I am creating. Work is very structured, though–I come in at a specific time, sit down, and have nothing to do but create (for the benefit of the company, of course). There is social pressure to get stuff done, and doing nothing would be conspicuous.

Creation in an unstructured environment is more difficult. Without structure, you’re accountable only to yourself, so the social pressure isn’t there. That means you have to apply pressure to yourself or structure things so that pressure is applied externally (i.e., get a teammate, get a teacher, or meet regularly with a group). Without pressure (internal or external) it’s natural to do what is easiest in the short-term.  And what’s easiest in the short-term is often not very rewarding in the long-term.

Let’s assume you’ve properly structured an environment that allows you to create with relative ease. If your goal is simply to implement, that arrangement is fine. However, if you want to step beyond the bounds of what has been done before–that is, to be original–more is necessary.

Implementation skill is far more common than creative skill. Case in point: though there are innumerable skilled instrumentalists and prolific composers, original music is quite rare. It’s relatively common for musicians to learn to create music in a certain way and then simply to implement that technique, song after song. Music can be like any other trade–with enough practice, little inspiration or creativity is required.

Creating creatively is very hard, and, from my experience, very few people can do it. Creativity requires originality–the ability to combine influences in a way that generates something substantially new–and this skill is difficult to develop. While it’s possible to teach techniques for thinking creatively, it’s impossible to teach how to be creative–by definition, there can’t be a step-by-step plan. Contrast this with implementation skill: one can become an excellent implementer simply by learning and practicing. Creativity requires an extra, hard-to-define leap beyond implementation.

I think creativity can be practiced, though. It’s difficult to create without implementing first. For example, it’s difficult to compose new music without learning to play existing music; it’s difficult to develop your own writing style without experimenting with the styles of others. Implementation skill is necessary, though obviously not sufficient, to creativity. Much of creativity is simply combining influences in new ways. Forcing yourself to step outside the boundaries of your influences on a regular basis can develop the creative skill. Practice is extremely important