I feel like most artists make their rules after the fact. The stuff comes from the sky, and it’s only afterward that you convince yourself you had something to do with it.
> The stuff comes from the sky, and it’s only afterward that you convince yourself you had something to do with it
Oh yes, the romantic notion of "inspiration" from the gods. I guess this works if you are gentleman poet, having the leisure time to "wait for inspiration". But for most professional writers without a family fortune, you have deadlines to meet and you need to understand the creative process just as any artist need to know the tools they use.
Not “inspiration”, I am literally talking about pure intuition. I’m sure it’s one of the few things that’s provable with just anecdotes.
You can have whatever ruleset you want, your ass ain’t making Reservoir Dogs or writing Old Man and the Sea. Now imagine either of those two writers gave you a list of rules to follow. You’d throw that piece of paper in the garbage.
It’s a like a hot girl giving you work-out and diet advice. Thanks, I’m sure that’s what really got you your beauty.
This book has been the inspiration for/method for a lot of hit records.
I think you are underestimating how much method, methodology, effort and development goes into something like Reservoir Dogs. Tarantino may have apparently emerged fully-formed, but he had spent decades learning about cinema the hard way -- watching it, studying it, absorbing the logic/form of cinema. It is (and Pulp Fiction is) not a work of pure intuition; it's clearly a work of homage.
spent decades learning about cinema the hard way -- watching it, studying it, absorbing the logic/form of cinema. It is (and Pulp Fiction is) not a work of pure intuition; it's clearly a work of homage.
So you think he took an academic approach? Dude dropped out of high school and worked in a video rental store. You are only applying the pastel of studious (the puns are just flying today) because he didn't make absolute shit. If he did make absolute shit, we'd say "gee my god, that's what happens when you drop out of high school and think watching movies is enough to write a good movie".
Right? No seriously, right?
Me and you disagreeing is proof enough we have no idea where this stuff comes from.
After a fashion, yes. He took a research-heavy approach, in the same way that many unconventional, outsider thinkers do.
And no, I'm not post-rationalising it.
You can see that work in the films, in the way they reference and invert cinematic tropes, in the choice and timing of lines, and even in the way they rip up stereotypes.
He's an obsessive, but he has definitely studied. For example you can see a deep understanding of B-movies, exploitation movies, and of films like The Taking of Pelham 123.
There's huge evidence of studying, of thinking through the logic and the flow of cinema. He didn't just watch films and luck out. It's much more considered than that. There's clearly an element of an unwritten manifesto in it all (most clearly to me this appears early on in his influence over Four Rooms, which could almost have been the foundation of a Dogme 95 type movement, had they all chosen it)
> Me and you disagreeing is proof enough we have no idea where this stuff comes from.
I think you're assuming magic where in fact there is considerable evidence of effort. Is Tarantino a maverick brat who grew up within the landscape of cinema? Yeah. But it doesn't mean he doesn't work at it, or defend his opinions with study.
I think you're assuming magic where in fact there is considerable evidence of effort.
I'm going to get a little reductionist here. What you said is no different than arguing for creationism (not ironic, we are discussing creating ultimately). Just because Earth is a perfect planet, and we get to drive around in self driving cars, doesn't mean there is any evidence for a grand plan (or any effort of it).
Talent and intuition is kind of like discussing recursion. To first understand recursion ...
Tarantino is just a lucky talented shit, and there's no rhyme or reason for it. Any explanation he gives you after the fact, is just that, after the fact. And the rest of us trying to explain it is no different than trading derivatives.
Tell me the study and rigor that went into the Big Kahuna Burger.
Every screenwriter I've ever heard of says there are three things to do to learn to write screenplays: watch movies, read screenplays, write screenplays. That doesn't mean you'll succeed; it's just that without doing those three things, you won't succeed. I'd say Tarantino working at a video store made one leg of that tripod pretty easy. (He also says he learned a lot about screenwriting by taking acting lessons.)
I wholeheartedly agree with you. Not everyone is a writer.
Surely rules can improve someone’s writing but what do they have to say? That’s up to them, their curiosity, drive, obsessions - and is completely unique.
I posit that the tendency to stick with writing and have discipline and honing the craft is one of the gifts.
And that process is surprisingly full of rigour and self-imposed restriction.
Cinema is an excellent example of this. Good cinematographers follow a set of cinematic conventions that have emerged as "rules" and around which the industry has evolved (like the single-camera convention).
Great cinematographers invent rules and convey them to the viewer in the first act and use them to communicate the rest of the film.
And to make this point even more clear you could substitute throughout the above for animation/animators, and everyone would get it.
It seems like you've either not read the rules, or don't understand their purpose.
On the one hand you're not wrong, but this observation applies to most of life, not just art. As much as people like to think they're rational beings because of the media they consume or the knowledge they've acquired, a lot of life just happens and you justify your decisions with a reasonable sounding narrative.
But within that framework, you're really misunderstanding the purpose and value of these rules. It's not a map to get you to a specific destination like "writing the greatest novel", it's instructions to make sure that you don't run out of gas, take enough water with you and rest enough to make sure you don't crash the car on your way to wherever you're going.
Whether your novel is great, whether it resonates with people, whether you'll die and only after that people will recognize the value of your work, that comes from the sky. But to get your ass to sit on the chair and bang those keys, that does not come from the sky, anyone who has actually tried will tell you that.
The rules are given in the context of writing. I read it, most of it is generic. It’s almost as if the person knows there’s no real rules to the game, and humble enough to just give basic life advice.
But I’ll concede, I don’t understand the purpose of offering general life rules under the guise of writing well. I really don’t. Is it an exercise in authority, or flexing a mandate, or what exactly is it? It sure as hell ain’t any real insight into writing.
But to get your ass to sit on the chair and bang those keys, that does not come from the sky, anyone who has actually tried will tell you that.
Writers block, right? Or, when the sky stops talking to you. Now that’s a phenomenon that’s worth describing.
But alas, pace yourself, got it. I’ll try not finish the entire burger, and save the rest for later. Shocked they didn’t mention a small walk, or coffee with an old friend.
I think there are pretty valuable things in the generics in there too, like:
Start before you feel ready. Stop before you feel done.
This is a surprising antidote for a lot of behaviours I struggle with (that come from a mix of definite OCD and likely ADHD. It's absolutely a tool for rejecting waiting for inspiration and focussing instead on control of inner drive.
I personally don't believe a lot of remarkable art came out of any real healthy routines. I think these people were nutty when they made a lot of the stuff. I don't think they had a good sleep schedule or diet, I don't think they controlled their impulses or anything in the realm of don't obsess, don't overthink, don't neglect, and I don't think there was any eat right, sleep right, think right ... at all.
I think they were fucking nuts when the sky hit them.
The advice they give you is for the life they managed afterwards, which you can get from any reasonable person on earth.
But hey, I never wrote anything worth a shit. So, I have no credibility.
I grew up in a family of artists, and while I don't universally agree with your take about nutty artist sky conduits, it rings true in my microcosm. The people I'm familiar with seem driven to create, sleep be damned.
I don't believe in writer's block. Yes, there are days when you don't want to write, or you can't think of what to write. Still, if your job is to write, you sit down and write. Maybe you write crap. Maybe you can find a nugget in that later. Steven King (not a writer I like very much) writes every day. It's said that George Lucas (who hates writing) locked himself in an office with legal pads and a pencil for eight hours a day, every day for months, until he finished the first draft of A New Hope.
You're right, there really are no rules, except for the one that says WRITE. Everyone's process is different. There are many techniques, many suggestions, many methods. But none of them work unless you write.
Have you tried to write every day and complete a story?
What is it? It's good rules to write consistently. This is one of the ways to beat writer's block, and there's myriads of other rules and advice for that too, it's not that mystical a phenomena.
I didn't downvote it, but I also don't agree that a set of rules that amount to "pace yourself to avoid burnout" is a post-hoc rational justification of mysterious otherworldly guidance from the sky.
Since the actual rules from the article are about keeping yourself mentally healthy during the process of writing, the comment is obscure: does it refer to some other set of rules about art? (In which case it's off-topic.) Or is it making the claim that you could work in blocks of multiple hours and never socialise with other writers and see the same results? (In which case, why not clearly state a position so it can be discussed?)
It's not my little ruleset and I agree that a writer doesn't have to hang out with other writers to get work done, or work in blocks of exactly 10 to 50 minutes; I just think you were very vague and never gave a specific objection to the content of the rules, which is quite a spineless thing to do. Prof. Robert Boice may be wrong, but at least his positions are stated clearly enough that we can see they're wrong.
> Yep. There were some writers that were straight up bed-ridden. They would laugh at your little ruleset.
C'mon, we all know exceptions just prove the rules :)
I'm sure there's many coders out there who write their code with only one finger in each hand. That does not render "learn to touch type with all 10 fingers" as invalid advice.
I can't really know what you mean based on this one sentence (or the parent comment from that one sentence), but the really good artists I know absolutely lay down rules for themselves.
All art, fundamentally, emerges in part from creative constraints and from practice of communicating within them. And good artists absolutely know this (whether they would express it in this generalised way or not).
Good artists can switch from medium to medium by exploring the constraints (beyond just the physical limits of charcoal or clay or stacking stones) and then figuring out how to communicate with them. But you don't really get very far without imposing additional restrictions on the work that help frame the message you're trying to convey.
Artists who invent new mediums of expression do this same thing implicitly; the medium at some level is its constraints.
So experienced artists usually do make up rules for themselves (or at least positive schemes and negative no-go areas) whether they write them down or not.
I write every day and make music. I didn't downvote but there's a clear misunderstanding on this comment's part. The stuff does "come from the sky". The sitting down and getting the stuff done, that does not come from the sky. These rules apply only to that second aspect.
Supported. It is survivorship bias.
I do sometimes learn something through reading that stuff that makes my life a little easier. But it won't make me more successfull. Pretty sur about that.
>> Stop when you get to the end of your time limit, preferably in the middle of something (a sentence, paragraph, argument).
Anyone know what the rational for this is? I understand the not-rushing aspect, but would have thought if your enjoying it and "in the zone" it would be good to see it through
Oliver Burkeman explained this in his book Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals:
“One critical aspect of the radical incrementalist approach, which runs counter to much mainstream advice on productivity, is thus to be willing to stop when your daily time is up, even when you’re bursting with energy and feel as though you could get much more done. If you’ve decided to work on a given project for fifty minutes, then once fifty minutes have elapsed, get up and walk away from it. Why? Because as Boice explained, the urge to push onward beyond that point ‘includes a big component of impatience about not being finished, about not being productive enough, about never again finding such an ideal time’ for work. Stopping helps strengthen the muscle of patience that will permit you to return to the project again and again, and thus to sustain your productivity over an entire career.”
Another reason is that writing and other creative work happens deliberately as well as unconsciously.
If you stop mid sentence, it is likely that your mind will nibble away at it while you are not writing. The next time you sit down, not only do you have a clear starting point and next step, but also tons of unconscious prep work for the next burst of deliberate writing.
It's less about the stopping side than the picking-up-the-next-session side.
If you're in the middle of a sentence / argument, or in software, a function or module, it's going to be easier to pick up where you were previously.
I'd suggest sketching out the general shape of the concept before you start, so that you don't find yourself looking at the half-written page wondering "what the hell was I thinking?", but instead at least have a framework of the structure which you can fill in and detail.
Another possible upside is that you'll come back to the concept rested and refreshed, and might see aspects of it which haven't weathered well over your break, and might use shoring up or restructuring. Though that can lead to the editing-whilst-writing conundrum, which can be something of a swamp for some writers and/or programmers.
This is a common recommendation for writers and across productivity guides.
Ernest Hemingway and Roald Dahl both recommended it..
The idea is to stop when when you know what you'll be doing next.
Maybe write a short note to yourself as a sort of place marker.
There are at least two advantages to this.
First, when you pick it up at your next work session,
you can jump right back into your flow,
or at least have a better chance of re-achieving flow.
Second,
cognitive researchers discovered the brain is less likely to forget if the task is left unfinished.
Overnight,
or between work sessions,
the various parts of the brain will maintain some task awareness.
My recommendation is to not work right up to a hard stop.
Look at the clock (or have a reminder) half an hour before the hard stop,
then take the next 20 minutes to outline the next steps and properly suspend the tasks.
Another way of putting this is,
"never keep working until you have to stop because you don't know what to do next".
On the rare occasions you mention of being in the zone and enjoying it it's acceptable to continue working beyond the time limit,
but it's still best to stop at a point where the next step is clear in your mind.
You'll find that instead of spending 20 minutes trying to come up to speed on what to do next,
the next work session will start smoothly.
This works for programming, too. When I have a green build and know my next task, I can commit and go to lunch or go home for the day, then continue when I get back.
From the explanations I've read, it is meant to get you "in the zone" quickly when you start your next writing time. Additionally, you will be (perhaps unconsciously) mulling over the completion of the segment and perhaps its continuation between sessions.
A shirked task eats at you in the way the dishes you cleaned last night never do.
But by the same token, a fruitful creative nugget left unpicked can quickly evaporate, and won’t be there when returned to.
I’m sure we’ve all been there when a document or piece of writing has been lost to technological failure - it’s essentially impossible to replicate by writing it out again with exactly the same spirit. Almost maddening in fact.
I don’t agree with hard and fast fixed rules like those listed by the professor. They work for him but extending them into a universal generality for all writers is a huge fail from my perspective. Useful rules of thumb perhaps, and emphasising good discipline, but there’s no way I could stick to them.
> But by the same token, a fruitful creative nugget left unpicked can quickly evaporate, and won’t be there when returned to.
This is true but if you've done creative work for a while, it becomes less true, and the coinciding of "I've spent a full hour writing" and "I have this magical sentence left in me" is not frequent enough to render the rule completely moot. In fact, breaking that rule because you have a freight train of paragraphs left in you after the timer is done is one of the greatest feelings, and that alone makes the existence of the rule justified. It's really a win-win situation, and in the long term it encourages consistency and commitment.
I mean more the train of thought and perspective I’m in - if I’ve spent the day reading and thinking on an angle of an academic project I’m engrossed in condensing and referencing, then hard limits in terms of clock time just don’t work for me, I’ll instead just stick with it if I can and keep grinding.
Some days I’ll have totally lost the thread and instead do nothing.
I agree with the discipline and daily practice though, but think that his is an angle on that. I’d personally prefer a word count and a target to hit and then try and hit the word count and flex toward the target. But my days are often variable - I’m not a professor running on a similar clock every day.
I used to be scared of this happening with creative writing. But I find, consistently, if I leave myself a brief note, like a sentence in length, about what I envision coming next, I have no problem picking it up the next day. Yes, it may evaporate if you let it sit for days and days, don't think about it, etc. but in the heat of creation, when you can't wait to get to it again, the idea doesn't disappear.
I understand this as a recommendation related to maintaining a consistent writing habit. Also, stopping in the middle of a thought provides a place to resume.
“Watch particularly for thoughts about what you "should," "ought," or "must" be doing as a writer and recognize them as the irrationalities that they are.“
A huge one being what every writer should do based on this list of rules that work for me and now must be applied to everyone else.
If writers block is procrastination, that still doesn’t automatically help you get unblocked. Like if you’re stuck coding a feature, just forcing yourself to write code isn’t the answer, you need a set of strategies for getting unstuck, solving problems, and getting restarted afterwards
Many creative writers I've read say that this kind of issue isn't block, it happens because you're not "ready" to write this bit yet, for any number of values of "ready". It can apply to coding as well, I expect. In writing, it often happens because you've failed to plan. You don't know what to write next because you have no idea where the story is going next, and you'll be able to carry on once you've figured that out. There are exercises to get through this, which include going off and writing something altogether different. Letting your subconscious work on something for a while can work wonders.
