The creative process is about much more than the “aha!” moment.
If there is a part of the creative process that captures people’s imagination, it is the moment of inspiration. Stories of creativity via a sudden spark of inspiration abound; I am sure you, dear reader, can think of some as you are reading this. These stories trace the emergence of some fabulous invention or discovery back to a single fundamental insight—some breakthrough idea that grows out of a serendipitous, revelatory moment that others could not imagine. Not to be a killjoy (for we so love these stories), but it turns out that this fabled “aha!” moment is more reality TV than reality. But on the positive side, there is a better alternative—one that may be more useful if you actually want to take the creator’s journey.
Kepler—a case study in creativity
An example that illustrates the journey, and how it can be overlooked, was astronomer Johannes Kepler’s seventeenth-century “insight” about planetary motion. At the time, the universe was all about circles, which were both perfect and heavenly. Orbital paths were modeled as “circles-within-circles.” Once Kepler had had his say, however, he had literally changed the universe, or at least how people saw it. His insight could be summed up in a single idea: planets moved in elliptical orbits at a varying speed, not in circular orbits at a constant speed. But while Kepler’s journey may have ended at an idea, it did not start there.
The fabled “aha!” moment is more reality TV than reality.
When Kepler started, he didn’t even have an idea, he just had his own sense of dissatisfaction with the poor fit between the circles-within-circles model of planetary motion and Tycho Brahe’s data on planets’ orbital positions, in particular that of Mars. He did not go look for odd combinations or chance encounters to find inspiration, he used knowledge he already had to look deeper into the data to build a new perspective on how planets moved. That journey took him ten years. It required more than an isolated moment of insight, it required an exploration into the void where knowledge did not yet exist and where it had yet to be built.
We are not arguing that people don’t have moments of inspiration where they suddenly realize some useful insight. In fact, these are a necessary part of any creative journey. One needs to deviate at least once from the well-worn pathways, otherwise one winds up where the predictable, non-creative, solution is known to be. But such insights represent steps on the journey, not the journey itself.
The journey starts when people realize that there is a problem with the usual pathways, and it ends when they create a new kind of solution that solves their problem—in Kepler’s case, this consisted of developing a model that fit the observed data. Likewise, we are often confronted with the need to find some creative approach to problems we encounter in our own lives, albeit for far less grand problems—such as how to buy a house when we lack the funds or credit score; or how to achieve a better work-life balance as we ascend the corporate ranks, and more of our time is continually demanded by work. But no matter the problem, if you need a solution that does not yet exist, then there is a creative journey that awaits you, one that cannot be realized in a single step.
What is to be learned
Seeing the creative journey as a more extended process has its benefits—we will have more realistic expectations and may even learn how to navigate the processes more effectively. We know it is possible to learn to do better because, after conducting extensive interviews with a diverse range of creators, that is precisely what we found. Everyone that we spoke with who made their living being creative had been able learn the mechanics of the creative process. So, what is there to learn?
Seeing the creative journey as a more extended process has its benefits.
First, you have to realize that creativity is a journey. Even if you have a vision of where you want to arrive, there are probably going to be more insights that are needed in the future. An example of this that we discuss at length in The Craft of Creativity is the Pungo—a device that lets people “open” a bottle of wine but that will preserve the wine indefinitely. The insight for how it would work took fifteen minutes (according to one of its inventors, Burt Miller). Making it exist in working form took another two hundred insights and six years of experimentation.
Second, you have to realize that the journey will build your skills. Craft is the raw material for creativity and creativity builds craft. It is a virtuous cycle. To make insights work, you need domain knowledge and skill. This might fly in the face of conventional wisdom that novices are more creative, but it aligns with what we learned from every expert we interviewed—creative ideas have to work, and they don’t work if you have no ability to make them work. Miller could not have produced the Pungo double needle had he not learned how to braise tubes together and invented a way to manage that process. The bonus is that with each new invention, Miller’s knowledge expanded, and his skills were advanced. The solution follows from insight.
Third, you have to realize that the journey takes you into uncharted territory, and so patience and persistence are required to get one’s bearings. We often think that good ideas are self-evident. But what we discover on our way may seem uncertain for far longer than we imagine, especially when it contradicts conventional wisdom. Even if it is a very clear idea, even after it has been proven, its value is not always certain. Dick Fosbury, the athlete who pioneered going backward over the high-jump pole, had his technique called, not lovingly, The Fosbury Flop. Even after he won the Gold Medal in the 1968 summer Olympics he said, “I don’t guarantee my results, and I don’t recommend my style to anyone. All I say is if a kid can’t straddle, he can try it my way.”
The final realization with which we must all reckon is that the journey does not really end. We come back from our journey with new skills, new knowledge, and new inventions, and we use these to take the next journey (should we realize there is more to explore). Sometimes others take what we bring back and go on their own journey. In fact, every mundane object you use, from the computer you are reading this on to the language in which you are reading it, was at one point invented by someone and then used to invent other things by someone else.
Obviously, there is more
Each of the aspects of the journey—starting, exploring, finding a way back, going out again building on what was found—has its own set of issues. These are learnable too. Kepler’s journey may seem esoteric and grand, but it fits the same basic process that we heard from artists, lawyers, mechanics, and everyone else who spoke to us about creativity. The journeys are unique, but similar to all others, and they reveal that we all have a lot to learn.
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