The Points of the Creative Artists’ Code: Zero - There are no hard and fast rules when it comes to creativity
August 6, 2007
This is the beginning of a series of explanations of each of the points of the Creative Artists’ Code. This series is meant to help others to grok these principles, so they can use them effectively to create and manage their own careers. Any questions, comments or contributions anybody may have about any point of it, are welcome. Without further ado, or preamble…
The first point of the Code of a Creative Artist states:
The first principle of creativity is there are no hard and fast rules or principles. Use any rule or technique so long as it is workable and produces the effect you intend. If it doesn’t work throw it away (until you need it again) and discover or develop techniques that will create the effect you wish to create.
There is really one hard and fast rule or principle: Create. If you do not create then you can not be a Creative Artist. It’s that simple. Creative Artists create, what they create is covered in other points of the Code, which will be examined later. But even “Create” as a principle is not something that many individuals can constantly maintain, the mind requires rest. The labor of creativity is an energy burner, and that fuel needs to be replenished.
Creativity is about invention. When it comes to the creation of original works of art & entertainment one is never confiined to formulae, and it is not helpful to the process of invention and creativity to entertain the idea that all is known and all is already done, and nothing can ever be fresh, or new. Such ideas shut down the imagination, drain the inspiration from the spark that ignites imagination and devalue any attempt to create something. Extreme cases of this devaluing process can and do cause suicide, for they reduce life, and living, to meaninglessness.
In art & entertainment creativity is also about communication and the creation of effect. Until the advent of special effects using computers in film it was not easy to create a realistic dinosaur, or a giant that is so realistic it is totally believable. The technology to create massive worlds of fantastic nature was limited, though cleverly realized with clay figurines, painstakingly animated in a laborious process that took hours to produce a process or movement that took place in seconds. The blurring of the lines between reality and fantasy was difficult to achieve.
The purpose of blurring these lines is to bring the recipient of the message into a reality that does not exist in fact, that exists only in the realm of imagination. It is necessary to blur these lines in order to create a believable circumstance, a context or situation that enables the recipient to step away from the real world and look at reality from a completely different perspective. Why? Because only then can the creation of the desirable and intended effect take place.
Creativity has a great deal to do with invention, and invention is not just about creating, it is about discovering and discovery is an important part of the process of creativity, because it illuminates fundamental principles and enables them to become realizations that belong uniquely to the individual who has embarked upon the process of invention in order to create a specific intended effect. When you discover something, it illuminates your understanding in a unique way that is not gained by instruction, and that process is a process of realization, not at all unlike the process the recipient of a work of art & entertainment will go through when they have experienced a work for the first time, providing that the work itself is structured in such a way as to permit that discovery to occur.
Why is this so important? Because knowledge does not become your own unless you discover its value for yourself. Second-hand knowledge is just knowing about. It is not knowing. The gulf between knowing and knowing about is a chasm so dark and deep that it is only when one hits its rocky broken bottom that one can finally appreciate the full truth of this. Discovery includes the process of consideration and evaluation, and today, this is one of the steps that does not receive, as it should, the degree of time and care that is necessary to achieve such an understanding. But it is vital that it does.
The Creative Artist who finds themselves faced with having to invent something that did not exist before, in order to create a specific effect is faced with the journey of discovery that will, on the path of discovery, lead to realizations that are as important to awaken in the eventual recipient of the completed works as they are for the Creative Artist to blaze a trail through.
Every age of man has involved the evolution of new methods of communication and discovery that modify our understanding of that which we already know something of. It is the Creative Artist’s function and purpose, in part, to consider, evaluate and communicate anew about these things, for the age in which they exist, those things that have altered an age. Their consequence, their effect upon the future, and the ways in which they change mankind’s history, as well as the possibilities they open up for the future are vital to observe, consider and communicate. These things drive new invention and creativity across the spectrum of human endeavor. They are a vital service to mankind, they are the work of intellect and imagination, the projection of ideas into the future.
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[...] I always, always, always, check the work. Always. And I consistently find errors and things missed. The business of creativity is extremely demanding work, often underrated. This is one of the few times you can get away with using one word more times than it should in normal circumstances appear in close proximity. There are no hard and fast rules. [...]