Yakoob on 9/3/2012 at 07:01
So this is somewhat of an E/N* self-reflective rant so please bear with me. Lots of the things I do for my job or in spare time, be it video games, filmmaking or even occasional blogging/writing, is often equally composed of technical and artistic. Now I've always been a geek/nerd who loves the technical (programming, light math/lenses/aparature/etc), but I also dabble and thoroughly enjoy the creative side of things: thinking of a story, crafting an interesting world, creating believable characters, designing gameplay, etc. The only problem is... I think I really suck at it.
I don't mean I don't have ideas; on the contrary, I have plenty of them. Ask Renz for the list of several solid "game ideas" I PMed him with various degrees of fleshed-outness (I actually have typed up design docs for some of them), or consider the film scripts I've written, or story / blog post / tutorial notes and outlines I have saved up in various documents. Everything is roughly 50% done and... and that's as far as I usually get. I'm great with coming up with disjointed ideas, premises, outlines or side-plot-lines, but I can never bring them together into a complete whole.
It's not that I lose interest, not at all. I still love and would like to implement all of my started projects. Except none of them are fleshed out enough to be doable; I always get 50% into an idea and then hit a massive desginer/filmmaker/writer's block, and just cant get past it. Eventually I come up with something new or go back to a previous half-finished project; the back-and-forth never stops. As for solutions, I've tried the "suck it up, sit down and just do it" but my mind just starts drawing blanks, and I suddenly find myself not enjoying fleshing out things as much as coming up with them initially. I hate to admit it, but sometimes I feel like I am the dreaded "idea guy" .
But even if I do bring an idea to a point where it's feasible, there is another issue I've been struggling with. It takes A LOT of time to make quality game/movie, which is why I find it hard to dedicate to finishing any of my projects as I never truly believe it will be worth the effort in the end; instead I feel I may be wasting this "A LOT" of time on a crap idea whereas I could be working on a better one I've had. But of course, the "best" one is always the one I am not currently working on. And I also don't want to finish my projects JUST for the sake of finishing them either; I know this may go against the principle of "creating," self-fulfillment and maybe render me as sort of an anti-artist, but I always feel like if the finished product isn't of the highest quality I can give it, or fails to compel the intended audience, then the time spent on it was indeed a waste. I've done my fair share of shitty college movies or poorly designed programmer-art games before and there is no point making more of those; god knows the internet already has enough of those already.
I know that lots of great indie hits (angry birds, minecraft, tons of short films etc) do start as someone just screwing around with some cool ideas and no long-term or big plan, and it's a great way to foster creativity! But idealistic hopings aside, the ones that do succeed in this approach are but a tiny, tiny fraction, and being the aforementioned geek, I just cant ignore the statistical reality. I do enjoy creating for creating sake's, but after a week of coding, designing, script-writing or planning, the sensation of "I could have potentially wasted a whole week" just overshadows it...
I'm not really sure what I expect of this thread, but I know I don't want ego-boosting or motivation "just do it!" type stuff. But I figured, it wouldn't hurt to share my inner-struggles...
* E/N - Everything/Nothing, a term from the something awful forums that marks a post that means "everything" to the poster but "nothing" to the rest of community. AKA a self-indulgent pity rant.
Koki on 9/3/2012 at 08:33
Quote Posted by Yakoob
So this is somewhat of an E/N
Now see this is a man I can get behind in the most heterosexual way possible, stating up front that I don't need to read that wall of text.
So I just wanted to point out that having "Creativity at 50%" and "Cocksucking Vampire Rabbis" threads right next to each other is p. funny. Especially since the CVRs are
real.
Muzman on 9/3/2012 at 09:42
You should check out that Ed McMillan interview from a little while ago, if you haven't. He pretty much lays it out on this subject quite nicely, and without being a sort of 'toughen up, princess' jerk about it. Basically you have to finish stuff. It doesn't matter how many better ideas you had along the way. None of it means anything if you don't finish something. You are going to hate what you make, particularly early on, and there's every chance it will not be very good. But the scale is logarithmic and you will be so far in front of anyone who just got to '50%'.
McMillan is lucky in a way that he's just one of those driven guys who does finish stuff and doesn't seem afraid of his ideas. but it sounds like he knows the feeling. Sure there are a few cases where people slam dunked their first thing and everyone threw laurels at their feet but they are very much the exception and not the norm (and often if you look they often fuck up their second thing because there were no lessons of this sort on their first one).
This doesn't mean you can't make a choice to leave one project and move onto a better one. The thing is it'll be an imperfect choice and that one probably will still seem like you could have made a better leap, or a new one will come along, at some point. Staying with something and finishing it off properly is its own set of skills though. One most people don't spend any time with because they only got to 50%.
Kolya on 9/3/2012 at 09:59
Quote Posted by Yakoob
I always feel like if the finished product isn't of the highest quality I can give it, or fails to compel the intended audience, then the time spent on it was indeed a waste
And that's your answer right there. You're afraid of failure, that's why you dabble in the middle and never finish these projects. This keeps open the possibility that if you were to finish it, everyone would love it and it'd be a huge success. You put a lot of yourself into these projects and that would make any failure a personal defeat.
faetal on 9/3/2012 at 10:58
I know that feeling.
I take, on average, about 2 years to complete a song and I have found only one stimulus which drives me to complete faster - having someone hang out with me while I write. If I don't have someone around to impress, I tend to just do a bit of writing, decide I'm pleased with whichever element of the song I have just laid down, and then proceed to play games for the next 3 weeks to celebrate.
If I have e.g. my guitarist sitting and acting as a sounding board and giving me on the fly criticism, I get things done not only faster, but better. Also, being able to hand him a guitar and say "play this riff repeatedly while I try some counter-melodies" is a useful tool, but I digress. But yeah, basically, I have a hard drive which consists of about 20 completed songs (spanning a 12 year period) and 60+ partially finished tracks / ideas / sketches.
I often muse that if I had 1 wish from a hypothetical genie, rather than go straight for the billion pounds jackpot, I might wish to have the potential to do anything I put my mind to with ease.
Fingernail on 9/3/2012 at 13:18
I find that when you start to work on something beyond the idea stage, that's when the work really starts.
You might think you're at 50% or wherever with just the idea "I just need to implement this..." but in my own experience with writing songs, when you come to actually record/arrange/reherase/perform them is where the work really begins. The words and the music on their own contribute very little without the actual execution, and that's where real decisions have to be made, and you have to confront what works and what doesn't about the original idea.
Kolya's right that it's easier to stick at the "this could be awesome if I ever did it" stage instead of moving to the "well I've done it but it's mediocre" situation. Somehow you have to battle through that and improve your actual ability at DOING what it is that you're trying to create.
Sometimes I think that people who are successful don't necessarily have the best ideas, they are the just the best out of the ones that actually DID something with their ideas.
Pick one thing and do it until it's done. Forget fame, fortune, wasting time or any of those concerns and just try to do the best you can - try to avoid the "I think that'll do" or "this won't really matter" - if you're making excuses for something, it means you're not satisfied and you need to do it better. If you ever expect people to reward you for what you've done, you need to put in the work. This is being professional. The world is full of people taking short-cuts - if you can avoid doing so you can hopefully already put yourself above such efforts.
Doing anything well is hard.
faetal on 9/3/2012 at 13:38
If I ever get round to recording the 6 finished tracks I have sat on standby, it'll be the finest creative work I've ever accomplished, but I'm in the last 18 months of a PhD and am likely moving to France when I finish, so will have to assemble a band etc.. plus start thinking about marrying my gf and starting a family and all that noise...
I think a lot of the time, the problem is that life gets in the way of productive creativity. I love creative work, but because I do so much vocational work, I tend to want to do something more passive in my free time, unless I make sure someone is in the room while I write / record / mix etc..
EDIT: Yakoob - have you tried any collaboration? Sometimes, just knowing that someone else needs you to crack on with things can be a good way to get things moving. Doesn't need to be serious. Part of the reason why I want to get into writing game music is because it'l be to someone else's specs and I can do it alone.
Scots Taffer on 10/3/2012 at 00:18
Having ideas is the easy part, fully realizing and completing them is all work.
Kolya has the heart of it. I'm at exactly that stage with a script I've been tinkering with for a few years but haven't finished the "first draft" (first being notional, given how much it's been rewritten). I keep restructuring it, playing with the characters, continually unsure if I've got all the right elements in play. Part of the reason is because I'm still very much a novice in screenwriting and am continually learning, reading scripts every week and participating in analysis and discussion, but the bigger reason I haven't finished it is probably because if I do and it fails to hit the mark I want, then all that thought and effort is "wasted".
Even I know this isn't correct though, particularly when it comes to movie scripts as it is the most rule-constrained and iterative form of creative expression I've ever had experience with... so I know that I just need to finish it and then move on, come back and work on it again, but the potential for negative response is a power anti-motivator...
Putting something out there that's halfway right is better than having something you think is great but is entirely in your head.
Having a close friend to bounce stuff can be crucial, they can give you a fresh set of eyes, see new solutions to old problems, and so on. People have varying opinions on when you should let someone into the creative process... if you let people in too early, it might deter what evolution it would have gone through sight unseen, but whether or not the outside perspective can get you to the heart of the problem (if there is one) quicker is another perspective.
