THE CREATIVE PROCESS

Or, We’re Gonna Murder a Shitload of Sea Turtles

Feb 08, 2024

The real world is a terribly cruel place. Take sea turtles. In a year they will lay up to three hundred eggs. And even if all those eggs hatch, the odds are none of those baby turtles will survive to adulthood. In fact, most of them won’t last an hour.

The most optimistic estimate of sea turtle hatchling survival rates is 1 in 1,000. But some estimates are as low as 1 in 10,000. So, it is reasonable to assume that a turtle must produce eggs for more than three years to produce ONE successful offspring.

While man is not a positive influence on this process, it’s important to note that this number hasn’t changed much since the evolution of turtles, 220 million years ago. This is just how fucking cruel nature is.

If you want to do great work, the first thing you need to know is that the creative process is also cruel. But the good news is it is far less cruel than the ocean is to baby sea turtles. Work as hard as you can to come up with the best idea you can and you will have a 1 in 12 chance in being right. That means, when you are at your most excited about an idea – when you are absolutely certain that you have come up with something great -- you have an 8.3% chance of being right.

I first learned this percentage by trying to win awards writing ads. And the campaigns I had came up with 12 Ideas for every one that got produced I won awards for. In fact, this isso true in the industry that the standard copywriting exercise is to take your favorite headline and write it 12 different ways. Do with a great line of dialog. Take sheet of paper and write your line at the top. Then fill the page with 12 variations. You will come up with a new, better idea every time.

Since then I have learned that this ratio applies to everything.

Want to write great sketch comedy, you’re going to write 12 bad skits for every good one. (30 Rock, SNL)

Want to write great songs, you’re going to write at least 12 bad songs for every good one. (Paul McCartney)

Want to be a great screenwriter/or TV writer? You’re going to need 12 good ideas for new ways to do the same scenes everybody has to write. (John August)

Want to come up with a great business name or book title. At least 12 bad ones for every good one. (My own painful experience)

The trick is to find the thing that you love even when you suck at it. Sure, you’ll love it more when you are crushing it, but you have to love it even when you’re getting your teeth kicked in. Otherwise you’ll never last. Nobody has enough willpower for that kind of abuse. In competitive cycling they say you have to love the climbs most of all.

If that’s too depressing for you, go work in insurance. It’s a great business, with great pay, filled with wonderful people. C students with a little bit of extroversion and drive make A money in insurance. But they don’t get to be creative. When they go to bed, they dream of being artists. Maybe when you go to bed, you dream of money. What can I say? Life is tradeoffs.

None of this is because anybody is mean. It’s because coming up with great ideas is hard. No matter what genre you’re in, the smartest people who have ever worked in it have already come up with a great idea for the kind of thing you’re trying to do. But if you look at it the right way, the fact that there is an 8.3% chance of coming up with a great idea should EXCITE you. Because that means two things:

There’s a chance
It’s a process.

The best book ever written on the creative process is “A Technique for Producing Ideas” by James Webb Young. It is 46 pages long and $4.99 (paperback, full price) on Amazon. And if that’s too long a read for you, don’t worry, I will summarize it.

You understand the problem as best you can. (What would a great idea be like?)
You generate the best ideas you can. (Some of them will seem okay)
You hit a wall (and it’s all shit)
You do something else
You come back
You have more ideas
Then, maybe, you get to a really good idea

I have come to believe that the harder I hit the wall in Step 3, the better the idea in Step 7 is likely to be. The Muse rewards those who work hard and sacrifice part of their lives to do the best work of which they are capable. As Stephen Pressfield put it, “The Muse likes a working stiff.”

If you don’t get to a really good idea in Step 7, you either generate more ideas, or deepen your understanding of the problem. And that’s it. Every creative process that works involves these seven steps.

But enough philosophy (and baby turtle slaughter) let’s put this into a list of actionable tips.

Don’t take it personally when your ideas get killed. Most ideas are destined for death.

For anything important, you need more than one great idea. Because even the ideas everybody loves right now, probably aren’t very good.

The Harder You Work, The Luckier You Get. It’s so true, you should repeat after me – “The Harder You Work, The Luckier You Get.”

Learn to Be Fast at Generating Ideas. This last one is interesting, because I don’t believe that anyone can become directly faster at generating ideas. Ideas take time. But what slows inexperienced creatives down is holding on to ideas too long. You can get faster at releasing ideas that don’t work. And you can get faster at moving on to the next idea. Lavish your ideas with all the love and affection of a mother turtle. Plop it out and make the next one better.

Outlast the Idiots. If you are coming up with ideas for someone else, they’re going to kill your “best” idea. So be it. Come up with a better idea. And if they kill that one, you come up with a better idea. If you can fully embrace this philosophy without feeling sorry for yourself or your ideas you will become unstoppable.

Have as Much Fun as You Can While Working Hard. If the process isn’t its own reward -- if you can’t find some way to bring joy to yourself and those around you -- you’ll never last.

Getting Paid for Great Ideas…

…is not part of the creative process. Is exogenous. It’s orthogonal. It lives in a totally different dimension. Ideas must be successfully executed so that someone, somewhere will be willing to pay money for them. Many businesses have a great idea at their core, or sell ideas that have been made real, but if you are worry about money in the creative process it falls apart. It’s like worrying about whether you left the oven on in the middle of driving a Formula I race: you’re guaranteed to hit the wall.

Never Finished, only Abandoned

Of course, there is a great deal more to say about the creative process and making your living from it. My suggestion is that if you want to do truly great work, you should get a steady job. Vice President of a large insurance company worked well for Wallace Stevens, one of the best poets of the 20^th Century. As Flaubert said, “Be neat and orderly in your life so you can be violent and original in your work.”

Patrick E. McLean

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