Quantity Is the Path to Quality

One of the funniest writers I’ve read is Tim Dorsey, who writes novels about the only-in-Florida escapades of a lovable serial killer named Serge Storms. Yeah, you read that right; it takes a special ability to be able write something hilarious about murder and violence and depravity, but Dorsey does it beautifully, and has kept it up for 21 Serge books so far.

I mention Dorsey to make the point about creativity, and the amazing ability that some people seem to have to consistently produce high quality work. I once attended a book-signing he did here in town, and I told him that I only showed up to find out what kind of person thinks of these things.

I didn’t get an answer to my question that day, and I still wonder about it, but I also know that my question was a bit misguided. It was misguided because it assumed that creativity is a trait, one that you’re either born with, or not. By the same token, humor seems to be a trait, or the ability to deliver an inspirational speech, or so many other activities that the really good people seem to be able to magically produce. Or are they actually skills?

I don’t pretend to know the exact answer, and despite all the studies psychologists have done, I’m not sure anyone knows. It’s a little bit of the old nature v nurture or talent v deliberate practice debate. But I do believe that each of these creative activities depends on some mixture of both, and skill is no small proportion. So, no matter how much of the good stuff you’re blessed with at birth, it also depends on a lot of repetitions to produce good quality stuff.

But don’t just take my word for it. In his book, Hook ‘Em with Humor, Ricky Olson says that you have to produce a lot of jokes to find a few that are any good. Double-Nobelist Linus Pauling said: “The best way to get a good idea is to get a lot of ideas.” Lincoln and Churchill and King delivered thousands of speeches for many years before they produced the works we remember them for. As Kurt Vonnegut said, writing is “a lot like inflating a blimp with a bicycle pump. All it takes is time.” They all knew that quantity is the path to quality.

Let’s come down a few notches to ordinary individuals like you and me. In my own work, I’ve learned that you have to churn out a lot of stuff—a lot of it bad, at least at first—before you start getting better at anything. Like when I started podcasting earlier this year; I thought it would be so easy. After all, I know the material, I know how to talk, so how tough can it be? Well, my dozens of false starts and re-starts quickly showed me that wasn’t the case. I’m a lot better now…but not nearly as good as I know I can get.

But be smart about it

There’s no way to get around doing the work, but that does not mean you can’t be smart about it. Here are some suggestions:

Block off enough time. You need to go deep into your own mind to find the good stuff. When you first approach a topic, you’re going to produce the usual stale connections. That’s because “neurons that fire together wire together”, as Donald Hebb said, so you have to break through that stale crust to find new connections within your own brain, and there’s no quick way past it. For myself, I find that it takes at least a half hour of undistracted work to get into that zone.

Carry a journal. When you think deeply about something and then leave it to do something else, your subconscious still keeps working on it, so new ideas will pop up at the most random times. If you don’t write it down, it will sink back to the bottom of your mind, possibly never to be thought of again. Or if a story or quote or factoid catches your attention and you can’t think of how to use it at the time, wrap it carefully in the written word and store it away in your mental basket; it will be there when you need it.

Get feedback. If you can afford a good coach, that’s the best, because a coach has been over that territory before and can suggest shortcuts on the path to quality. But even if you don’t have a coach, the best way to get feedback is to try out your ideas with others. Find every opportunity you can to speak; or share your thoughts in a blog; or talk about your ideas with your peers. Don’t wait until it’s perfect, or it may never come out.

Remind yourself that it gets easier with time. The great thing about creativity is that it’s a self-reinforcing phenomenon. The more ideas you generate, the faster the new ideas come. Just in the mere act of writing this post, for example, I’ve already jotted down two new ideas for subsequent articles.

But you DO have to get started. If the path to quality is quantity, the sooner you get on the path, the better. The best way to be “creative” is to just start creating, and keep going.