Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Creativity and the selfish inner child

Why is it that I only really want to do something when I should be doing something else? There is a kind of guilty pleasure involved.

I have been applying myself to my blog entries with suspicious ease nearly every day since I started it. And yesterday, when I looked at my other writing, I could see why. I hadn’t been near it for six whole days. My blog has become a sneaky way to assuage the guilt, keep the pleasure, and still produce a few words, (though not the targeted thousand a day).

My creative unconscious is rather like a big child that needs to be coaxed and tricked into doing what my conscious mind wants, and is not above playing tricks itself.
For example, musically, at the moment, it sends me what I can only describe as annoyances. Small motifs of melody play over constantly in my mind, occasionally leaking out vocally to my long suffering family. The one that I have at the moment is a little waltz, completely useless to me professionally. I know from experience that the only way to exorcise it is to work it through on the piano, define it completely in every little detail, and then it will leave me in peace.

I’ll see if I can post it on here when it is ready, so that it can annoy you as well.

1 comment:

Lucy said...

Yes, there ought to be some way for procrastinators like ourselves to fool ourselves that the thing we ought to be doing is the thing we really want to be doing and the pleasant diversion is an onerous chore...
Look forward to hearing the music.