Creative Pep Talk #90: Chaos and Control

In Western culture, we don’t often think of creativity as something controlled, but the truth is, there’s a place for chaos and control in our creative process. In this slightly-longer-than-usual pep talk, I give a couple examples of the push-pull of chaos and control, and how they can both be helpful–and detrimental–to our creative work, and why it’s worth experimenting with a little more of one if you’re used to working primarily with the other.

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Transcript: Chaos and Control

Please note: This is an unedited transcript, provided as a courtesy, and reflects the actual conversation as closely as possible. Please forgive any typographical or grammatical errors.

Nancy Norbeck [00:00:06]:
Welcome to Follow Your Curiosity. Ordinary people, extraordinary creativity. Here’s how to get unstuck. I’m your host, creativity coach, Nancy Norbeck. Let’s go. Hey, everybody. Just a quick announcement before we get started. I am currently in the home stretch of putting together my upcoming Make Bad Art group program, which will be starting in about a month.

Nancy Norbeck [00:00:30]:
Make Bad Art is the anti-MBA. It’s a safe place to come unlearn all those things you’re taught you have to have as an adult. Things like stress, perfection, and conformity. So you can reclaim the inner wild, curious, creative kid who’s always been inside you. The one who knows how to play, invent, have fun, and live with abandon and joy. It’s a playground for the liberation of your inner artist and your authentic self, and the effects will go beyond the class container if you let them. I’ll be posting more very very soon on the Spark, my newsletter. So subscribe to get the details as soon as they’re available.

Nancy Norbeck [00:01:10]:
We’d love to have you, and there’s a link right in your show notes. Hope to see you there. Hey, everybody. This is Nancy Norbeck here with this week’s Creative Pep Talk. And, you know, I’ve been doing these for three and a half years, I think. And in that time, it’s kind of amazing to me, the things that I’ve talked about and the things that I haven’t. And this morning, I had a conversation with someone, and we were we were talking about creativity in general. And he mentioned how in Asia, the arts are taught very differently than they are here.

Nancy Norbeck [00:01:49]:
And he gave the example of Asian art classes teaching by having students reproduce the same painting over and over and over again to an exacting standard, which is the opposite of how we in the West tend to think that art should be taught. We tend to think that it should be very free and creative and, well, creative. What’s the definition of creative? You know, but but that it should be very free and free form and flowing and whatever. Now if you listened to my first interview with Domenic Sciortino about his experience in art school, you might think that perhaps the 2 are not so different. Perhaps if you went to art school, your experience may reflect his and a little bit more of the Asian art experience. But the point was the point that he made is that the this person that I was talking to this morning was that the philosophy is that you must protect perfect the technique first in order to have the skill built up, to be able to know how and when to break the rules. And, you know, if you have been listening to this podcast for a while and are familiar with your friendly neighborhood creativity coach here, you might come to the conclusion that she would be against this, this philosophy. And in in initial knee jerk reaction, you might not really be wrong about that.

Nancy Norbeck [00:03:30]:
But the thing is, multiple things can be true at the same time. There is definitely room for that point of view. And if you think about it, many things in life, we learn first by imitation. You learn handwriting by imitation. Your goal, or at least a zillion years ago when I was in elementary school, is to imitate those letters as closely as possible while you’re learning them. So that, you know, when you learn your own handwriting style, everybody can still read it. Right? Everybody’s signature is unique to them, but we can still usually, hopefully, at least in the early stages, read each one. Certain doctors, not so much.

Nancy Norbeck [00:04:23]:
But in theory, we can read everybody’s signature even though they’re different. So so there is some merit to that idea. And this had me thinking today about one of my high school English teachers, because my 1st year in high school, freshman year, I had an English teacher who is, is all right. He had us do some creative writing. I was pretty happy in his class. My second year in high school, 10th grade was my favorite year in high school because I really, really liked my English teacher. He was sort of like a second dad to me in some respects and certainly a writing mentor and lots of lots of creative writing, lots of interesting conversations about writing and reading and all sorts of good stuff. And we’ve stayed in touch for a very long time.

Nancy Norbeck [00:05:13]:
And then then we hit junior year and it was a very, very different year. That year started off with 2 solid weeks of writing about the only summer reading I had to do in high school, which so first of all, that was to strike against this teacher before we even started the year. And the summer reading that we did led to a couple of essays, which then became the basis of the most rigorous grammar boot camp of my entire life. To say that my class was thrilled about this would be one of the biggest overstatements in the history of the universe. And after the last couple of years, that’s saying something. So so we suffered through this, though I have to say to his credit that for the first time in my life, I really truly knew which grammatical terms went with which grammatical constructions. So fair play to him for that. Now how useful is that in the real world? I don’t really know.

Nancy Norbeck [00:06:24]:
I’m the kind of of kid–was the kind of kid, maybe still am–and the kind of writer who just kind of instinctively understood how these things worked. So knowing the difference between a gerund and a predicate nominative didn’t really make much of a difference to me. Knowing what it was called. Didn’t help me use it any more or less effectively. Now, if you had told me back then that one day being able to use all of those things was going to mean that not only did I become a really good writing teacher and eventually end up being hired to and being a very good copy editor and proofreader. I don’t know if that would have impressed me when I was 16 years old, but it’s true. But that year we did no creative writing and boy did it wrinkle. I mean, to say that I hated that year’s class would be a gross understatement.

Nancy Norbeck [00:07:35]:
I mean, I hated that class. You know? When I think back to that class, I just imagine myself shooting invisible daggers out of my eyes the entire time I was in that class, which is why I will not name this teacher to protect the guilty. But, but, yeah, you know, it it it was it was a jarring experience, I think, for most of us in my class because that’s not what we were used to. And what I remember hearing from an older student who had had his class previously, because previous classes loved this guy, was that he didn’t want us doing creative writing. Why? Because we would use it as an excuse to break the rules. So was he actually going for the idea that we had to learn the technique first before we would know how to break the rules? I don’t know. It’s been a long time, 30 odd years. So I couldn’t say.

Nancy Norbeck [00:08:48]:
Given the experience that we had, where we had ample evidence that he actually really didn’t like our class, I’m not particularly inclined to give him too much of the benefit of the doubt, but maybe I’m wrong. I don’t know. But the fact remains that there’s a level of chaos that is inherent to creativity that you need to bring to k to creativity. If you try to control creativity too much, you’re gonna kill it. You just are. You’ll take all the joy out of it and and you take all of the experimentation out of it. And at that point, it’s no longer creative. But if you let the chaos run too rampant, then you’ve got other issues.

Nancy Norbeck [00:09:40]:
So it’s kind of like you’re trying to drive, you know, a cart or a stagecoach or some, you know, pre internal combustion engine vehicle with 2 horses. And you gotta have the 2 horses in sync. You have to balance the horse that is the chaos with the horse that is the control. 2 things can apply at the same time, even if they seem to be polar opposites. And you have to have just enough of each of them. And it may not be an equal amount in any given situation. Think about it. When you’re gonna turn, you have to have a little bit more of one than the other in order to successfully turn your vehicle.

Nancy Norbeck [00:10:24]:
But you have to have the right balance in order to make it go, in order to make it work. And in order to make it happen without either grinding your vehicle to a halt or turning it over in the middle of a street or over a canyon. Right? So so they’re both part of the equation. There is a merit to the idea of being meticulous about learning your technique before you let in the chaos. And there is merit to the idea of being completely chaotic and learning how to reign in the chaos, the chaos with a little control. It really depends on what suits your personal style best. If you’re a more chaotic person, you may need to let it run wild and then figure out how to tame it. And if you’re more of a controlled person, you may need to learn the basics and the technique and all that stuff first, and then slowly learn to let in the chaos.

Nancy Norbeck [00:11:26]:
I suspect in the writing world, we call the more chaotic people the the pantsers, and we call the more controlled people the plotters. It may not actually map out that that neatly. I don’t know. I’ve never studied it, but it’s possible. But my point is you need both. Don’t be afraid of either one. So if you’ve been afraid to be a little more controlled, maybe give it a try. If you’ve always been super controlled and you’re afraid to be a little bit more chaotic, let a little chaos in and see what happens.

Nancy Norbeck [00:12:02]:
It’s probably not going to be the end of the world either way. And it’s always good to try something new and see what it brings to your process and what you can learn from it. And it may be that you’ve done a little too much and that’s okay too. You can always scale it back. You can always try just a little bit more. It’s why we talk about small steps and we talk about learning from failure. So give it a whirl. 2 things can be true and even necessary at the same time, even from opposite ends of the spectrum, And they will enhance your process as long as you don’t let them get too out of hand.

Nancy Norbeck [00:12:42]:
So let me know how it goes. And with that, I’ll see you next time. If this episode resonated with you or if you’re feeling a little bit less than confident in your creative process right now, join me at the spark on Substack as we form a community that supports and celebrates each other’s creative courage. It’s free and it’s also where I’ll be adding programs for subscribers and listeners. The link is in your podcast app, so sign up today. See you there and see you next week. Follow Your Curiosity is produced by me, Nancy Norbeck, with music by Joseph McDade. If you like Follow Your Curiosity, please subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

Nancy Norbeck [00:13:23]:
And don’t forget to tell your friends. It really helps me reach new listeners.