Inventing Itself
By Peter LloydYou may have have heard a novelist explain to an audience how a novel, “sort of wrote itself.” How the characters developed on their own, took on their own lives, as the author worked. Songwriters claim that songs ”just sort of come to me.” That would be nice, wouldn’t it?
Having written fiction and songs, however, I can relate. But it also happens when I write non-fiction. It happens to artists as well. My friend Betsy Baltzer writes, “Painting is like that—it just happens before your eyes. Where did it come from?”Betsy’s painting Fido and Rover appears at left.
Inventors and Invention
First, let’s get a better handle on the “just happens” experience. I’ll start with non-fiction, because we all write it.
If you think back on a memo or a report or a comment on Facebook, you might recall those times you started writing what you had on your mind, then found yourself measuring what you subsequently wrote against what you’d written. Maybe you changed something you wrote to accommodate your more recent words. Then suddenly another thought pops into your mind, spurred, perhaps, by a combination of thoughts you’ve introduced.
In short, your initial words commit you. Once you write, for example, that “Now is the winter of our discontent,” you commit yourself to dark metaphors—winter and cold against contrasting sun and love, maybe an “ambling nymph,” but, ultimately, a gloomy forecast.
Next, combinations appear. And with combinations come possibilities! Keeping hammering at it and, before you know it, you’ve got Richard III. It’s the same whether you’re writing, singing, drawing, or doing improv.
I think that’s what the novelist talks about. Initial efforts both limit and open up creative opportunity. Which is why getting started—simply writing, drawing, or tinkering with anything—always gets you creating.
Though I’m not an inventor, at least not professionally, I can vouch for tangible things inventing themselves. From fixing a faucet to building a dog house, I always find myself improvising. And the history of invention is littered with examples of inventors stumbling upon creative solutions while tinkering.
So art, music, and things do invent themselves. If you let them.
Peter Lloyd is co-creator with Stephen Grossman of Animal Crackers, the breakthrough problem-solving tool designed to crack your toughest problems.
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