Thoughts? How do you organize your creative activities?

Why You Need to be Organised to be Creative (BoDo)\

“Be regular and orderly in your life so that you may be violent and original in your work.” Gustave Flaubert

So you start the day full of enthusiasm. You’re excited about a new piece of creative work and itching to put your ideas into action. Firing up your computer, the familiar stream of e-mails pours into your inbox, burying the ones you didn’t get round to replying to yesterday. Scanning through the list, your heart sinks – two of them look as though they require urgent action. You hit ‘reply’ and start typing a response to one of them… 20 minutes later you ‘come round’ and realise you’ve got sucked into the e-mail zone and have been sidetracked by interesting links sent by friends, as well as writing replies about issues that aren’t a priority for you. You minimize the e-mail window and get back to your project…

After 15 minutes you’re really enjoying yourself, getting into your creative flow – when the phone rings. Somebody wants something from you. Something to do with a meeting last week. You rummage through the papers on your desk, searching for your notes. You can’t find them. Suddenly your heart leaps as you lift up a folder and find an important letter you’d forgotten about – it needed an urgent response, several days ago. ‘Hang on, I’ll get back to you’ you tell the person on the phone, ‘I’ll ring you back when I’ve found it’. You put the phone down and pick up the letter – this needs sorting immediately, but you remember why you put it off – it involves several phone calls and hunting through your files for documents you’re not sure you even kept. By now, you’ve only got half an hour before your first meeting and you’ve promised to ring that person back. Your design stares at you reproachfully. The e-mail inbox is pinging away as it fills up – already there are more messages than before you started answering them. Your enthusiasm has nosedived and the day has hardly begun. Creative work seems like a distant dream.

Is this a familiar scenario for you? Swap the design software for a wordprocessor and I’ve been there a hundred times. In an ideal world we’d be putting all our time and energy into creative work, but the realities of modern work often seem to be conspiring against us. And in lots of ways the scenario is getting worse. The wonderful thing about modern technology is the amount of communication and information-sharing it facilitates. And the awful thing about modern technology is the amount of communication and information-sharing it facilitates. We are deluged with new information and connections, via telephones, webcams, instant messengers, e-mail, websites, blogs, newsletters, wikis, and social networking technology. The list gets longer every year. And with Blackberry and the mobile internet you can have data and demands coming at you 24/7. No wonder people are starting to run workshops on ‘digital stress’.

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I can absolutely affirm the need for order in the life of an artist who is working on his own time in the studio. It's much too easy to get sidetracked. Email, TV, video games (are all of the worst distractions electronic???). The exception is my bipolar friend who tends toward manic and works ALL THE TIME. He cranks out so much work it puts me to shame. Then again, he doesn't sleep much either!

I read a book last year called The Creative Call that, IIRC, intended to help artists establish such a rhythm. The book wasn't very well written, but it is practical for people getting started. My brief synopsis of the book here.

I don't really agree with the phrase "You need to be organized in order to be creative," however. Maybe I'm mincing words, but "creative" comes in a lot of different forms.

I'm learning the truth of this both at work and at home. A lot of the copy I write is interrupted by stuff on the Internet (which I use for work)...case in point being A&F.

But it was a serious problem for when I write fiction in my down time; I would also be distracted within minutes by other sites, and so forth. A few weeks ago I forced myself to get into the habit of waking up an hour and a half earlier than I normally do, shower/dress/etc., and make breakfast (which I hadn't been doing for over a year). Then, while I drink coffee and eat, I work on my novel (with pen and notepad) by candlelight. It has really, really helped me, and I look forward to it.

I hear you - I've been working on making the switch to writing longhand (sounds easy enough, but I have to MAKE myself do it) for that exact reason. On the computer is games, internet, email, and all other kinds of nonsense that I do instead of my writing. Makes the writing time more special, and more effective.

Personally, I'm just trying to stay creative. I've stepped up the administrative ranks this past school semester, and more than the time that it takes to do the extra work, it's the amount of ENERGY that it takes. I come home about the same time I did before, but far more worn out.

I don't know if getting more organized will allow me to be more creative, but it would give me more chances for the creativity to happen. Though my organization has been very weak as of late (in terms of allowing creative time), there have still been those projects that arrive in my head and MUST BE ACCOMPLISHED - regardless of my schedule. Like I said, I'm trying to be a disciplined creative, but both practicality and my nature step in and block those attempts. But that's no reason not to try.

This is slightly off topic, but it is interesting how the medium affects one's writing. I started out by writing longhand, then switched to a typewriter, then switched to a PC/word processor -- the last some 27 years ago now (WordStar and vi!). And it boggles my mind that at one time I was able to write semi-coherently while putting pen to paper.

I can't do it anymore. I'm so used to editing on the fly that I can't imagine trying to write anything using pen and paper. I'd find the process excruciatingly slow and frustrating, and the paper would be filled with illegible scratchings and crossed-out words. Then again, I so seldom write anything by longhand that my penmanship has suffered dramatically. My signature now resembles something I used to only see on prescription forms from my doctor.

Much of it has to do with the type of writing you're doing. As far as writing reviews, I'm in the same boat with you, Andy. I couldn't imagine trying to write a music review or 'blog post without a computer (well, aside from the whole Internet thing for the latter). I almost have to do it long-hand if I want to get anything done with fiction, though.

I wonder if it has something to do with how I structure the journalistic and fictional writing I do. When I press releases or news articles for my job, or when I write music reviews on the side, I jump all over, dumping out ideas as they come and then organize them later. It always works. Fiction is different...very different. I have to let it flow. If I get an idea I want to use later, I make note of it in the back of my journal pad and work it in as it comes.

There are curious reverses of this as well: I know of artists who used to be more creative when they had a day job, and when they left their day job to focus completely on their art, they lost inspiration and spontaneity. At least that was my impression.

I've also read of composers who need to be distracted by something else while working on new compositions. As if they needed to not focus too much, to keep some natural running. It's really interesting.

Now I think communication stress may be not a perfect distraction.

Animator Richard Williams (The Pink Panther, Who Framed Roger Rabbit) wrote in his book The Animator's Survival Guide the following...

I can understand where you're coming from.

I think for me, this sentence is still extremely relevant-- just replace "creative" with "productive." Sometimes, I'm not trying or working or really even anywhere in particular (often in transit) when ideas or creative juices start flowing. I often mull before I write fiction, and I'm sure a lot do-- even if it's not the actual chunks of story, at least skeletons. But I can attest to the fact that I get very little writing done if my room is a wreck or out of sorts (college apartment living = bedroom is bedroom, office, studio, theater, etc., etc.). Even if it's not in direct correlation to my writing, clutter in general is distracting.

I can't write by long-hand. I mean, I'm physically capable and have legible enough handwriting to do so for long periods of time thanks to many, many handwriting workbooks circa 1st through 7th grade (ah, classical education), but it frustrates me because my hands don't write as fast as they can type. It may have something to do with the fact that my first finished non-picture story was written on a Mac computer when I was six, and I've never really successfully used anything else. But I almost always have to unplug internet cordage. Also, most writing programs I use have a "full screen option" and that tends to help, tremendously. There isn't even any computer "clutter" of other windows or such.

Another thing, perhaps not really organization but habit-- I find it hard to write for more than a few minutes at a time if I don't have a cup of coffee or tea. I drink them sporadically, and they're often cold by the time I'm finishing them, but the presence of a good cup of either helps. It's something to do with my hands and my mouth when I need to pause for a second and think things through.