Like most college freshmen, my experience in the requisite English 101 meant tackling a 10-page research project that would count for the bulk of my grade. I already considered myself a writer, and I’d had my share of high school success at producing such long-form papers. I was confident I could do the work. The problem, however, was that I had never mastered the art of choosing a topic.
Find something you’re interested in, my professor had encouraged us. Other students tackled topics like sports and fashion and pets. But, for reasons I am still unsure of, I picked Aristotle.
“Ummm, entire books have been written about Aristotle, ” my professor said. “Can you narrow down the topic?”
I pored over the Aristotle entries in the library encyclopedia, hoping to find some curiosity I could research and write about.
“What about Aristotle’s logic?” I suggested, not realizing that entire books were also written about that.
“Maybe you could choose one element of Aristotle’s logic, ” my professor suggested. “Maybe the syllogism?” You know, if A = B and B = C then A = C. At this point, I think she was just hoping C, or worse F, wouldn’t equal my final grade because I couldn’t come up with a suitable topic.
So, with my professor’s blessing, I wrote a 10-page research paper on Aristotle’s syllogism. While it wasn’t the best idea I’ve ever written about, it outshone the topic of my persuasive speech in public speaking class the following semester: why you should have your home tested for radon. As you can imagine, my classmates were riveted and went straight to their dorm rooms to begin testing.
What Determines Whether an Idea is Truly Creative?
Thankfully, I’ve gotten better at idea generation over the years, but new research highlighted in a recent Harvard Business Review article might help even more.
“What determines whether the ideas we generate are truly creative?” ask professors Brian J. Lucas and Loran Nordgren in “Giving Up Is the Enemy of Creativity.” “Recent research of ours finds that one common factor often gets in the way: we tend to undervalue the benefits of persistence.”
In a series of studies, Lucas and Nordgren asked students to predict how many creative ideas they could generate for overcoming a challenge. Then, they had them race the clock to come up with their lists. Once the time was up and the students felt tapped out, researchers asked them again to predict how many ideas they could come up with during an additional 10 minutes. Then the clock started a second time. For anyone who has ever petered out at the end of a brainstorming session, the results were surprising.
“Not only did participants underestimate their ability to generate ideas while persisting, they underestimated their ability to generate their most creative ideas, ” the researchers write.
Additional studies were conducted with people in a variety of creative pursuits—comedy sketches, advertising slogans, charity events—and the results were the same.
One Man’s Writer’s Block is Another Man Giving Up
“Why do we underestimate the benefits of persistence? It’s because creative challenges feel difficult, ” Lucas and Nordgren concluded. “People often have the experience of feeling ‘stuck, ’ being unsure of how to find a solution, or hitting a wall with one idea and having to start over again. … But our work shows that when creative challenges start to feel difficult, most people lower their expectations about the performance benefits of perseverance, and consequently, underestimate their own ability to generate ideas.”
In the writing life, there are many opportunities for finding ourselves stuck in this way. Not only does idea generation stymie us, but so do the conundrums of plot, structure, and word choice. We run out of steam with longer works, and sometimes, because our creative predictors run low, we don’t think we even have what it takes to start. Some people call this writer’s block. Lucas and Nordgren would call it giving up too soon.
We can respond to being stuck in a variety of ways, many of which will only hinder our creative work even more. We could quit, of course. We could also stop early, rushing through an ending or becoming satisfied with work that is unpolished or even unfinished. Sometimes, we even unstick ourselves by cheating, by using someone else’s words as our own or by mimicking someone else’s voice or style rather than sludging through toward our own unique expressions.
But there’s another way.
Two Suggestions when Facing a Creative Challenge
Using their findings as a guide, Lucas and Nordgren offer two suggestions for people facing a creative challenge. To begin, “ignore your first instinct to stop.” We’ve all had that moment in our writing when the first difficulty arises and we seriously consider giving up. I felt that way after writing the first couple of paragraphs in this essay. If we persist through those early temptations, though, if we keep working, keep trying to come up with more ideas, our new material may be better than what we started with. “You may find that your next creative idea was closer than you imagined, ” Lucas and Nordgren write.
Their second suggestion for pushing through creative challenges is this: “Remember that creative problems are supposed to feel difficult, ” the authors write. “Most involve setbacks, failures, and that ‘stuck’ feeling. It’s part of the process.” Creative challenges don’t equal failure, nor are they a sign that you should be pursuing something a little less imaginative, like maybe double-entry bookkeeping. In fact, the difficulty you are facing may indicate you are on the verge of creative success … if you don’t give up.
A lot of us have been doing this writing thing for a while, but really we are just getting started. If we follow the path of persistence, the best is yet to come. It’s as simple as A = C, Aristotle might say.
Photo by Rachel Elaine, Creative Commons license via Flickr. Post by Charity Singleton Craig, author of The Art of the Essay: From Ordinary Life to Extraordinary Words.
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What kind of writer are you? asks Charity Singleton Craig,
as she opens you to a journey of discovery about the art of essay writing that explores both practical and reason-for-
writing concerns.
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Bethany R. says
So persistence could be a key to releasing my creativity? How encouraging. Sometimes searching for a topic and not finding one can leave me feeling a bit fatalistic: “I guess I’m just not one of those creative types.” Done.
But this research is fascinating, my best idea may be the one I have just after “giving up.” Thanks, Charity.
Charity Singleton Craig says
Bethany – I think you are on the right track in imagining how to apply this research to your own life. In fact, the research is very applicable to idea generation. You could almost mimic the research in your own idea generation session. Set the clock for five minutes, and come up with as many ideas as you can. Then, set the clock for three more minutes, and come up with as many more ideas as you can. Then, as Laura suggests below, after that, come up with at least one more idea! If you still don’t have something, try the exercise again later. But don’t give up! You ARE one of the creative types.
L. L. Barkat says
In the field of coaching, one of the things to do with clients is to ask them for 5 more ideas after they give you their first idea for how to solve an issue they are facing. Then you ask for one more. Often, it’s the one more that is *the* idea.
Or, put another way (the way my daughter-editor just shared with a fiction writer), “If a plot point was your first idea, it’s a good chance that it’s cliche.”
I think we get so enamored with our beginnings, the energy it took to even begin and the hope with which we imbued that moment, that we forget (or find ourselves too tired) to find a beginning in stage 2 🙂
Thanks for bringing this issue to the fore!
Charity Singleton Craig says
Laura – I think you are right about our infatuation with beginnings. It’s a big deal to start something. But our most creative work will probably come later, when we are about to throw in the towel. If more people understood this, I think more writer would get finished. I love the coaching tip. That one more idea is the hard-fought one. But as you say, it’s probably “the” one.
Callie Feyen says
I adore this line: “At this point, I think she was just hoping C, or worse F, wouldn’t equal my final grade because I couldn’t come up with a suitable topic.” Oh, man, was that me in high school. Although, I wouldn’t of dared picked Aristotle. I would’ve tried to convince my teacher to let me write something on Michael Jackson or Madonna. 🙂
Also, I love the two suggestions: “Ignore your first instinct to stop,” and “Creative challenges are supposed to be hard.” I sit down to write every day, and every day, about 25 minutes into it, I have to ignore the, “YOU CAN’T DO THIS,” or “THIS IS TOO HARD” voice. That voice never goes away, and she is so damn loud. I’ve been ignoring her for a few years now, though. 🙂
L. L. Barkat says
Or Darius Rucker? 😉
Callie Feyen says
HA! Or, Darius Rucker. I know that’s right. 🙂
Charity Singleton Craig says
Callie – Thanks for your comment. I feel like we are kindred spirits in our inability to pick suitable writing topics back in high school. And I think you are right about the voices that tell us just to give up. I think we do ourselves a disservice when we wait for the voices to stop. There will always be a reason to quit. Instead, like you do, I think we need to ignore the voices and keep working. That might be the only way most of us will ever get to keep writing.
Callie Feyen says
Amen, Ms Charity Singleton Craig. Amen.
Also, I adore your name. 🙂
Charity Singleton Craig says
Awww, thanks, Callie!
Donna says
Persisitence – yes. My biggest problem is that I share what I think I have finished, but it turns out not to be finished yet. One of the hardest things for me to do is resist that seductive feeling of ‘finished.’ This really became apparent to me when I started painting and photographing the process. I was amazed at the difference between my first ‘finished’ version… and the real final piece… four or five versions later. It’s that way with my writing, too. Charity, your post here is really resonating with me and what I need to master right now – the art of waiting. The internet makes things dangerously easy to set pieces free into cyberspace before they are ready. I have gotten into a really unflattering habit of hurrying work up onto the net. Actually, I would edit and change things even after I’ve put them out there, which is probably not the best practice… but I mention it because I guess it’s not the persistence that is mybiggest challenge – it’s the persisting privately that is most difficult. It’s a process. 🙂
Charity Singleton Craig says
Donna – that phrase, “persisting privately,” is an important insight in our day, especially with the temptation to rush publication because we can. I wonder, though, if there is another shade of truth here between persisting privately and premature publication. I am working on a very long piece that will hopefully be a book someday. I’ve nearly quit a hundred times, and most of those were before I actually typed a word. (you see, I’ve been writing in my head for years and only this year began to put the words down) But recently, I shared a small sliver of what I have written with a trusted collection of women in my writing group. They gave me much needed criticism and encouragement, and then I got back to it. I didn’t quit! Maybe the persistence we need doesn’t have to be entirely private. Maybe it just needs to be “unpublished” persistence.
Now, I know there are many reasons that a writer might not want to share her work with anyone until a certain stage. And that requires a great deal of that private persistence that you mentioned. So I am not at all disagreeing with that beautiful phrase. But I, like you, have that “unflattering habit,” as you call it. And I have find that sharing my work with one or two people who will give me helpful feedback really serves to help me in my persistence. Also, once I show the work to them (or even just tell them about it), now the work is real. It’s almost as if the work itself is fighting to exist along with me.
Thanks for helping me think through this.
Donna says
Ahhh… I like that: “unpublished persistence.” Yes. Thank you! What you say about having a few people that you can share with…who are with you, offering feedback and support… it’s very insightful. It’s not always easy to find but it can absolutely make the difference, especially when thinking about persisting. The ‘other’ can offer so much by way of feedback, support, or even just a chance to feel connected if that’s what it takes. It reminds me of an interview I heard recently where Brene Brown said her creativity requires a midwife. HA! I loved that!