It's just problem solving

31 March 2015 Unknown 0 Comments

image by isu.edu


Someone commented to me that creativity is problem solving. I'm going to disagree … and then contradict myself at the end.

I don't think creativity is problem solving. There I said it. Step one is done.

The problem with that idea is that you assume there is a problem to begin with. When you are creating something, you start with nothing: an empty page, an empty canvas, empty space, or silence. There isn't anything to solve so it can't be about problem solving.

Now I'm going to contradict myself. It could be about problem solving.

Lots of times creativity doesn't just mean creating something from nothing. It also means innovating from something that already exists. So, in that sense of things, sure, creativity is problem solving.

And there's another reason that I'm wrong. Even when you are creating something from nothing, there is almost always a reason for you creating it. You are always trying to either entertain, or enhance people's lives, or change their behavior, or something. There's almost always a goal to your creation.

So, even though Pixar creates a movie from their minds and there's nothing that exists before that, their goal or problem-to-be-solved is "how to entertain people and make them have an incredibly emotional experience." So you could say that they are really just problem solving throughout.

So now you have my double-minded approach to this thought that creativity is problem solving. What do you think?

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A new process for a new book

26 March 2015 Unknown 0 Comments



So I've started writing another book and this one's going to be very different from my first and very awesome.

I'm taking what I learned about the process of writing my last book and trying to improve that process.

I'm more of a discovery writer (I'm also more of a dive-in programmer, if you remember our talk about writing and coding styles). I do have outlining tendencies, but usually by the time I get an outline for the first half of the story—or less—I have to start writing.

I just can't figure out the rest of the story until I've written a large chunk of the beginning. Once I get a feel for the characters and the world, etc. then I can start figuring out the rest of the story. That means lots of re-writes.

But not this time. This story I'm trying something different. Here's my grand plan:

Storyboarding a book


I love how Pixar and animation studios are able to storyboard the whole story. It's not a high level overview. It's blow by blow how the movie is going to go. At the same time, it's very low quality and so quick—relatively—to create.

I'm not good at drawing and so a storyboard for me would be stick figures (although, maybe that's a good idea). So I decided to make a blow-by-blow slide presentation in Keynote with words.

So every slide is one scene and I'm trying to get down to the "he said …, she said …" level of detail. It's not going to look like a cool movie storyboard, but it's going to function the same and since words are the medium of the story, it should be helpful.

This way I can feel like I'm writing the story (thus feeding my need for discovery) and still be making an outline of the whole story. It'll be like a prototype.

Goals for this process


I want to be able to iterate quickly on the whole story. Rewriting the story took a long time last book and that was because I didn't nail down the story very well until I had written the whole first draft.

I need to feel like I'm discovery writing because that's how my brain works. Discovery writing is known for weak endings, so I'm hoping this will be a happy middle ground where I have charming characters and a great ending.

I want something short that I can show to people and get feedback on the low-level parts of my plot without making them read a whole novel.

Progress thus far


So far I think it's better than the process for my last book, but it has it's problems.

I've iterated several times on the whole plot and I've been able to spot and fix major and minor problems with plot, characters, and setting without writing a single chapter. I've also shown it to my writing group friends and gotten good feedback on important issues.

It's hard to get to the low-level detail I want. There isn't much room on a slide and I feel like this is a quick process, so I haven't spent as much time fleshing out each scene as I originally hoped. It's basically an outline at this point.

I'm a little worried at times because it doesn't feel like I'm making progress because the word count isn't increasing. It's still at 0 and I'm a month into it.

Not having a daily word count expectation is great. I'm still progressing towards making a great story and my mind is always tinkering with it during the day, but I don't have to beat myself up when I don't get much done on it in a day. I guess this means that progress is harder to measure and easier to lie to myself about.

Experiment ongoing


I'll keep you updated with how this process works out because I think I'm on to something big … for myself at least.

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Beware: you can't avoid problems

24 March 2015 Unknown 0 Comments

image by chrisoatley.com


I read a great article about art the other day. It's called Why Giving Up Won't Solve Your Problems. Please go read it.

Now that you've read it, I can probably say nothing and you'd have a happier day already, but let's connect what he said to how we think about things here.

Creativity is problems


Sometimes we think we are bad at our craft and because of that we always run into problems. Well, that's just not true. Ed Catmull tells in Creativity, Inc. that when he talks about how there weren't any problems during Toy Story 3, that team usually gets offended. They think they must not have pushed themselves artistically enough if there weren't any problems.

Don't try to avoid the problems. Don't be afraid of them. Don't feel like a failure because of them. As Chris Oatley puts it: 


Problems actually mean you are being creative. You are pushing yourself and the craft. You are being amazing.

So don't give up!

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Jony Ive quotes

19 March 2015 Unknown 0 Comments

image by apple.com


Because of my last post, I had to re-read parts of one of my favorite books: Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple's Greatest Products (affiliate link).

And because of that I was thinking a lot about Jony Ive and his genius. I'll have post something more in-depth about that book or about him someday, but for now I'll just when your appetites with these great quotes from him: jony ive quotes.

If you love design or inventing stuff, these quotes are for you.

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Deviation from the norm

17 March 2015 Unknown 0 Comments

image by amalgama-lab.com

Frank Zappa said:
Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.

And Jony Ive said this when he was asked why the first iMac didn't have a floppy drive:
When you move on, you leave some things behind. The floppy drive, which I will argue until I'm blue in the face, is really antiquated technology. I've heard the complaints, but if there's not some sort of friction in a move forward, your step is not as consequential as you'd like to believe it is

But deviation doesn't necessarily mean progress.
"The thing is, it's very easy to be different, but very difficult to be better" – Jony Ive

You  have to be careful not to confuse being different with progress, but if you always keep the status quo, you'll never be able to progress. So here's to continual progress.

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The master has failed…

12 March 2015 Unknown 0 Comments


The fear of failure has crushed many a dream. And even those that know how important failure is to the process of creation can be daunted by the number of times they must fail in order to become a master.

If you're afraid of failure or it just feels like too much work, you've got to take it one step at a time. Each failure is a step towards becoming a master. Take it day by day and fail as fast as you reasonably can without burning yourself out. Be patient, and fail diligently.

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The 2 things that make engineering important to the creative process

10 March 2015 Unknown 0 Comments

Ouya prototypes 2013-05-16 17-37

I recently was promoted to team lead at work (yay!) and we're starting a new project that is a completely separate app from the huge code base we're used to working on. The whole team is really excited because we get to start over and take what we've learned about how we should have done things, and we get to use new technologies. It's a really great opportunity and really exciting.

So my mind is on the engineering side of creativity lately. And there's two really important ideas from engineering that could really benefit the artistic side.

Prototyping

I don't think I need to explain what a prototype is, but the idea of prototyping is pretty integral to engineering.

In software engineering we make mockups. Those are our prototypes. A designer makes a low quality (read: not interactive, not HTML, maybe just a drawing on paper) version of what he wants the user interface to look like. Often the designer or product manager will show users this version and ask for feedback or even test their ability to "go through the software" as the designer made it.

After feedback, the designer tweaks the design or gives her stamp of approval, the developer makes the real thing and trying to get it as close to the mockup as possible.

In the book world, when I was creating my book I made several prototypes. In this case it wasn't drawings. They started as cardboard that I cut from cereal boxes and a few pieces of paper that I cut to size. After that I ordered prints of the actual book.

In the art world, I bet artists sketch what they are going to draw before they use ink and color, but maybe not. What about sculpting, music, dance, etc.? Do they have a way to make a prototype? If not, it might be a powerful way to improve their craft.

Iteration

I've talked about iteration before, but the gist of it is you try something, test, and repeat. You just keep making it work a little better each time.

In the software world, not only do we do this for the mockups, but also for the code. Before it becomes part of the product, we have people on our team review it and we iterate on that feedback loop until it's good enough to merge into the codebase.

On a higher level from individual, small changes to the code, we also iterate on big features and incrementally make them better each version.

In my writing life, there's the idea of rough drafts. I went through 4 drafts to finish Son of Shadow Hero of Light. Brandon Sanderson goes through 6 I think he said. Each is an improvement on the last—hopefully.

How do artists iterate? And people who do sculpting? I feel like if you make a mistake, you ruin the whole thing. I could see how dancers or music creators can iterate, but some types of art just make it hard to iterate, I think. Maybe I just don't have experience enough with those forms.

Movies though, they don't—excluding Pixar—iterate or prototype. Maybe other animation studios do, but live action movies could really benefit from these principles. Maybe we wouldn't have so many trilogies and reboots if they did.

So, in conclusion, prototyping and iteration are powerful tools in the engineering world that could benefit art. It might not work everywhere for every type of art, but I'd be interested to see how artists could make it work for them and then to see their results and see if they feel like they had more of an impactful product.

What kind of art do you do? And how can you apply prototyping and iteration?

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Give it five minutes

05 March 2015 Unknown 0 Comments

image by oregonlive.com


I read this article the other day by the people at Basecamp. I've respected them for a long time, and the article was really good. My favorite part, though, was this quote from Jony Ive:
And just as Steve loved ideas, and loved making stuff, he treated the process of creativity with a rare and a wonderful reverence. You see, I think he better than anyone understood that while ideas ultimately can be so powerful, they begin as fragile, barely formed thoughts, so easily missed, so easily compromised, so easily just squished.

And it made me think back to Creativity, Inc. and the idea of the ugly baby vs the hungry beast. That pumpkin in the picture above is the ugly baby and it's easy to squish for a giant animal like an elephant.

Don't squish your ugly babies! Give them a chance and nurture them.

What ugly babies have you been working on lately? And how are you protecting them?






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Writing style, coding style

03 March 2015 Unknown 0 Comments

image by Cool Writing Style


I've got a writing club at work. We meet during lunches and sometimes we sit in silence and write, and about once a week we have a more formal meeting where we discuss things, brainstorm, plot out ideas together, etc.

There's probably a lot I could talk about that we've learned during these meetings and interacting together. I kind of feel like it's my version of Pixar's Braintrust. We vet each other's ideas and try to be straight with each other. Maybe some other day I'll post some other things I've learned, but today I want to express an unexpected discovery from this group.

I was talking with one of the guys there (there are 4 of us, so not a very big group) about him just diving in and starting something that he's been planning for a while. That's how I write, and I think a lot of would-be writers get stuck because they want to plan the story until it's perfect and then write. I was worried he was falling into that trap, so I was urging him to just write.

I know there are different writing styles. There are discovery writers who just start writing and discover their story along the way. There are architectural writers who plan out the story and then write it. There are also hybrids and that's me. I plan a little and then dive in. That means I usually end up re-writing it many times, but that's my style.

My friend is not a hybrid. He's definitely an architect.

But I was convinced he just needed to start writing or he would never start. So I tried to give him an analogy with programming. I asked, "When you're fixing a bug, don't you just need to dive into the code and look around, poke some things, and start coding before you know how to fix it correctly?"

He said no.

His method is to look at the code and plan the right move, the right way to fix the bug. And then he starts coding.

That surprised me. I mean, it makes total sense now, but to think that writing styles correlate with coding styles was surprising.

Admittedly, this is just one anecdote with two test subjects, so it's not sound science. We'd have to research more to prove the correlation, but I think there's something interesting there. My sense is that these two are correlated because it has to do with how your brain works.

I just never thought those two would match up. What kind of a writer or coder are you, architect or discovery?

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