increased creativity
question (11 of 100)

Q: If you were financially secure and never had to worry about money, would you be able to write (draw, paint, compose, etc.) more? You’d have all the time you need, all the coffee you can drink and all the cigarettes you dare smoke plus all the materials you require. Wouldn't it be a blast?

A: Probably not.

From my experience, I’ve had stretches of times when I was flush with excess money (yes, there can be such a thing, if you consider what you normally spend on as what comprises your lifestyle’s maintenance budget) but didn’t write a single word.

I hesitate to equate increased creative expression with financial freedom. Sometimes, I write to escape the workaday routine of the business, but without something to escape from, I doubt I’d have anything much of interest to say. When it is inspiration that strikes anyway, it strikes regardless of how much money I have in my bank account.

If I had access 24/7 to my creative coterie, I don’t think we’d produce much of any worth, simply because I believe in a degree of distance (in terms of both spatial and temporal) as a necessary component of any artistic collaboration. I also need aesthetic distance from my work – I need to be able to walk away from something I’m working on and do something non-creative for a while. Then, when I come back to it, I can look at it with refreshed eyes.

If I were stuck with nothing to do but write, I’d probably churn out a few things before going completely mad.

It would be different, I guess, if it were my JOB to write.

Or maybe not, if the job were to write creative fiction, poetry and plays (as opposed to editing and writing feature articles and doing research and such). Because how can I then write to escape work, when work is writing?


disturbing search requests

One of the perks of having something like Extreme Tracking is that you get a log instances when your page popped up in response to searches performed on the web. Normally these make sense – Kestrel Studios’ website or this blog pop up when people key in my name or stuff I’ve written about like “Survivor” or “Justine Pasek”

But at last my blog as been submitted in response to an eyebrow-raising search request: “sophie fisted”. Well, sorry bud, but you won’t any of that here (you will find it in Nikki’s nasty work though – heh).

For other people’s disturbing search requests, go here. It’s a hoot.