Six ways to stop being creative

May 30, 2007 By in Creativity, David Theory Leave a comment

Uncreative sleeping tapirToday we take a break from our usual tips and strategies for being MORE creative to discuss the exact opposite idea. After all, at this point you probably have so much creative energy that you need to slow it down or shut it off.

What are some good ways to crush your creativity?

1. Surround yourself with uncreative, unadventurous people. If you do this, you can be sure that any creative urges you have will be squashed as soon as they appear. Also, make sure the people around you are less intelligent than you are. That way, they won’t challenge you, just limit you.

2. Write a bad review of your project before you’re even finished. Before you finish a project, start writing a review in your head. Just list all the faults and be as harsh as possible. Don’t give constructive criticism, in fact don’t even focus on the material, critique yourself personally. Doing this can guarantee you’ll never finish.

3. Start it tomorrow. You’re really busy today. Everything should clear up tomorrow. And if it’s not better tomorrow there’s always the day after that.

4. If your energy starts to lag, put it aside for later. Don’t worry. You’ll get to it.

5. Deny any solution that comes from inside the box. Wait until you have an idea that is crazy original. No one wants to see a great, classic idea well-presented. Nope, people want everything to be amazingly original. In fact, if anyone has done anything remotely similar to what you want to do, why bother?

6. You’re an adult, act like it. Creating shouldn’t be fun. Unless it feels like work it’s probably terrible. In fact, the whole idea sounds silly. Nothing is fun. Nothing is funny. Any idea that you have the might make someone question your position as a responsible adult shouldn’t be spoken aloud. Just squash them down into your stomach, they can help plug your ulcer.

Creativity Tip: Operatic Emotions

May 29, 2007 By in Creativity, David Theory Leave a comment

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There are some frames of mind that are great to visit when you are creating, but terrible when you stuck in it and trying to just live your life. This is one of those.

When you’re working on something, throw all subtlety to the side and try heightening the emotion behind what you’re doing to operatic proportions. Nothing just happens in an opera, everything has a deep emotional meaning and is either the most wonderful thing in the world or the most tragic. This can make even a trip to the grocery store into a life or death struggle.

You know that person who cut in front of you in line? No longer is he just a rude person taking advantage of you, he is now a villain who is not just destroying your life. He’s insulting all of your ancestors and plotting your downfall. In fact, he has probably been sent by an evil god to torment you. What a tragedy! Will you stop them or silently suffer while they gloat?

Applying this kind of emotion to what you’re working on is not only going to let you more completely explore it, it can also stop you from holding onto to unhealthy emotions in your life. Pushing things to the absurd can both give them power and remove power.

Try this: Take a nothing story from your day, something with a beginning, middle and end, and retell it to someone using operatic emotions. Justify your behavior in the story based on the heightened emotions. Let the story either end triumphantly or tragically.

Use this ability until you can turn it on and off as easily as a light switch. Eventually, when you sit down to create any tiny situation in your life can become the fuel for high drama and transcendent art!

After all, who wants art that even the artist doesn’t really care about? No one except people who buy art for hotel rooms.

Salvador Dali On Creativity

May 27, 2007 By in Quotes Leave a comment

Screen Shot 2017-08-18 at 4.35.00 PMI just read a great article in The Guardian on the films of Salvador Dali written by JG Ballard. He has some interesting things to say about surrealism, its initial dismissal and current acceptance:

Suddenly, surrealism is everywhere, in those citadels of respectability such as the Tate, the V&A and the Hayward Gallery. Put on a surrealism show and the crowds flock, quietly absorbing these strange and irrational images. It’s as if people realise that reason and rationality no longer provide an adequate explanation for the world we live in. The lights may still be on, but a new Dark Age is drawing us towards its shadows, and we turn to the surrealists as our best guides to the underworld.

I like the idea of art as an instruction manual on how to live in the future. Great article with lots to think about.

I also thought I would also give a few Dali quotes on creativity not from this article:

When the creations of a genius collide with the mind of a layman, and produce an empty sound, there is little doubt as to which is at fault.

You have to systematically create confusion, it sets creativity free. Everything that is contradictory creates life.

One day it will have to be officially admitted that what we have christened reality is an even greater illusion than the world of dreams.

You know the worst thing is freedom. Freedom of any kind is the worst for creativity.

The history of punk zines

May 26, 2007 By in Music, Reference Leave a comment

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The Digital Fanzine Preservation Society has posted a huge archive of original punk zines online for free!

Not only do these magazines have obvious historical value, but the style and layout have been appropriated many times and it’s nice to go back to the angry, messy and difficult to read originals. No large company could ever match the offensive cheapness of the originals.

As a teenager I bought some of these at Monkey’s Retreat in Columbus, Ohio. They fascinated me and, I have to admit, scared me a little bit. Looking at them now, I just see the the cut and xerox, all text done with a typewriter and DIY simplicity. But, at the time, they seemed like they came from a tremendously cool alternate universe where the magazines looked like they were written and designed by people in an insane asylum.

You can also get a selection of old Maximum Rockndroll issues from their site.

Even more zines here!

Playing the audience like an instrument

May 25, 2007 By in Comedy, David Theory, Inspiration Leave a comment

storyrobot, my favorite improv blog, points towards this quote from comedian Louis C.K.

AVC: When you’re taping in front of a live studio audience, do you find you’re playing to them as much or more as the people at home?

LCK: It’s not so much that you’re playing to them, it’s just that they tell you what’s working. It’s like doing stand-up. You would never do stand-up without an audience. I mean, no one would even consider it. It’s like they’re the instrument you’re playing. It’s that intimate of a relationship, and they’re that essential to each other.

The audience as the instrument you’re playing is a fantastic metaphor. The more removed you are from your audience, the more you tend to forget that they are even there. A stand-up gets instant feedback, but a novelist might not get a reaction for years.

Do you take the audience into consideration when you create?

One more great quote from the interview:

You also can’t afford skepticism, because it’s preparing for failure, which is useless. You don’t need any preparation: Failure’s just gonna suck.

Quotes from Onion AV

Pitching Yourself

May 24, 2007 By in David Theory, Marketing Leave a comment

On Tuesday I watched the first episode of the reality show On The Lot. Supposedly, through a series of Survivor-like eliminations, they’re going to discover a great new director and let them direct a film. To get on the show people had to submit a film, so they already know that everyone involved can produce a viable product. The competitions seem to focus on other related skills. Tuesday’s show focussed on giving a "pitch," from a one-line premise they were given, to a group of industry people who would judge them on their idea and presentation skills.

I was shocked at how horrible most of the candidates were at selling themselves. Instead of talking excitedly about how fantastic all their ideas were, most of them started with an apology or communicated how little they thought of the premise they were given.

It really brought into focus how terrible most creative people are at selling themselves. If you can’t convince someone how fantastic what you’re doing is, why should they even bother to check it out?

Even if what you are doing is complex and layered, shouldn’t you be able to clearly and enthusiastically describe in a way that would make someone want to learn more about it? Isn’t it worth a few minutes to figure our how to describe what you do to other people?

One of the judges on the show said, It costs about a $100,000 a day to film a major motion picture. When you are a pitching a story to a company, they have to feel like they can trust you with that much money. Even if they like the story, they might not trust you.

Don’t apologize for what you’re doing! Let other people know how great
it is. They may decide they don’t want it, but they’ll walk away
feeling like you know what you’re doing. Get so good at selling yourself that everyone you talk to would trust you with their money!

Here’s an idea, pretend you are sitting across from a New York Times reporter. He/She is bored, doesn’t know who you are but has to interview you, He/She says, "So, what exactly do you do?"

Answering this question is the key to getting an audience to trust you.

Creativity tip: choose an audience

May 22, 2007 By in Creativity, David Theory Leave a comment

The process of creation involves an endless number of decisions and its easy to get hung up. A single moment of doubt can bring everything to a halt when you are presented with a series of seemingly equally good choices.

If you find yourself in this situation, why not just choose an authority figure you trust and make that person your audience? I don’t think you should actually show what you’re doing to that person, just do what you think they would enjoy most. You don’t even have to know the person to use this method. You can pick a critic or another artist and design for them.

Billy Wilder, a fantastic movie director, so trusted the instincts of filmmaker Ernst Lubitsch that whenever he needed something for whatever he was working on he would ask, “How would Lubitsch have done it?” He even hung a sign in his office with this question to remind himself of its importance.

Decide who your Lubitsch is and use them as your intended audience when you are stuck for a decision. When you choose someone who has standards and taste at least as high as your own, asking that question can only make you better.

Change your creative energy

May 21, 2007 By in Creativity, David Theory Leave a comment

Does the project you’re working on seem dull and lifeless? Have you lost interest in it! Change the energy!

Too often we get so bogged down in the original emotion and inspiration for an idea that we forget having some contrasting bits will improve the entire piece. If you’re writing something really depressing, try adding some humor. Even in Shakespeare’s most tragic work he has funny characters and scenes. If you’re working with a muted colors, try a touch of brightness. Not only will it draw attention to some important detail, but it also makes the rest of the piece look that much darker.

You can also change your own personal energy. If you have been working slowly, try working quickly. If you have been creating on the computer, try working with pencil and paper. If something makes you feel angry, try working from happiness.

Even the worst heavy metal album has power ballads between the head-banging thrashers. Not only does it attract more female fans, it also makes the rocking songs seem that much more brutal.

Change up your energy!

Creativity tip: go to an open house

May 17, 2007 By in Creativity, David Theory, Inspiration Leave a comment

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Here’s a fun tip for the weekend.

If you are stuck for an idea, go and take a tour of a house that’s for sale. The best are houses that are open to anyone who wants to look. While in the house, examine it for clues about the people who live, or lived, there. Are they happy? Do they have children? What kind of taste do they have? What are they trying to hide from you?

Walking through someone else’s house can be like living someone else’s life for a moment. This change of perspective can provide you with topics, characters and visual stimuli. Not to mention it could provide the setting, and possibly a plot, for your movie or screenplay. I sometimes draw a quick map of a location that I might want to use at some point in the future. (Don’t do this in front of the realtor or they might think you’re coming back to steal.)

I remember one house I toured, the owner, a life-long bachelor, had recently died, that had a basement full of unopened boxes of model train supplies. There were tiny houses, cars and engines that had never been touched. Most were still wrapped in the same shrink-wrapped plastic they had been wrapped in at the factory. I asked about them and the real estate agent said, “Well, the family said that he always wanted to start building model train sets like he had when he was a kid, but he never had the time.”

Why make up details when they are right there in front of you?

Comedy By The Numbers

May 16, 2007 By in Books, Comedy, Writing Leave a comment

Comedy_by_the_Numbers_2nd_loresThe new McSweeney’s book, Comedy By The Numbers by Eric Hoffman and Gary Rudoren, is a really rare thing. It’s a book about comedy that is actually funny. Pretending to be a comprehensive guide to the 169 comic attitudes and situations ,it manages to be equal parts sarcastic snark and earnest opinion. There is actual information in the book. It’s easily more useful than a book like Comedy Writing Secrets and a heck of a lot funnier.

I recommend it, especially if you enjoy the humor of Mr. Show. Definitely not recommended if you are easily offended. In fact, stop reading now because I’m going to quote it.

Here’s one tip:

#144 – THE DOUBLE TAKE
One of the masonry units of physical comedy – the chairman of the board of reactionary humor. This comedy device is to one’s repertoire what trinkets and beads were to the Native American Indian way back when – once you see it, you must have it! You will need full use of your eyes and eyebrows, mouth, neck and sometimes ears in order to get the substantial laugh that accompanies this baby.

BUT ME… HOW DO I DO IT??
Easy. Follow this simple example of a typical situation where THE DOUBLE TAKE reaction is set up – Picture this scene:
1. You come home from work and say, “honey, I’m home” as you’re walking through the door.
2. You hang up your fedora and coat and walk into the living room.
3. You pick up your newspaper and sit in your favorite easy chair, barely noticing your wife and dog across the room.
4. Your wife is sitting on the couch wearing a huge piece of cheese as a hat and your dog, King, is sitting next to her in a push-up bra and crotchless panties.
5. You ask your wife how her day was in such a manner that means you don’t really care.
6. You flip through your newspaper nonchalantly as she answers: “unusual”.
7. You say: “That’s nice, dear” in monotone that befits your lack of interest.
8. As you flip the paper one more time, you glance over at her and King and clearly notice what they are wearing is inappropriate, but it doesn’t register in your brain at that moment, so you look back at your paper.
9. BUT at the same moment you stop rustling the newspaper, your brain DOES finally register the inappropriateness of their attire and you pull the paper down to your lap, while snapping your neck back to look at them and raising both your eyebrows, widening your eyes and leaving your mouth agape (open). Your face is expressing how unbelievable it is that your wife is sitting on a couch with a dairy product on her head and your pet is cross-dressing in intimate apparel!!

WHERE DID THE DOUBLE TAKE ORIGINATE?
Interestingly enough, this facial comedy began with the immigrants who brought with them to America, not only their yearnings for freedom and democracy, but also a sense of reactionary humor bred from the shtetls of Eastern Europe.

Read a few excepts on their website.