The fruitless search for creativity in the brain

My supervisor has been gently hinting that perhaps I should stop talking about my non-existent manuscript so much and actually start writing it. So this week I took myself up to the beautiful Sunshine Coast hinterland village of Montville to get started. I was staying in accommodation a few kilometres out of town, situated at the end of a long and isolated driveway, surrounded by the bush and beautiful views and not much else. It was the perfect place to write - no internet connection meant no distractions. (Its isolation also made it a perfect place to set a horror/thriller, but that's for another story).

And guess what - it worked. I started to write a draft of the story that I will eventually submit as part of my Phd in a few years time. But it didn't come out at all like I thought it would.

I set myself up on the front deck, got comfortable with my views of the hinterland reaching out towards the ocean, and started with some writing exercises (I did number 11 & 12). In the writing exercises I used characters from the story I'm writing for my manuscript. Although up until this point I hadn't written very much of the manuscript (maybe 1000 words) I had done lots of writing about stuff that may or may not eventually end up in the manuscript, so I've got a pretty good handle on my main characters.

The writing exercises immediately jump started my brain. Whether this was because of my location, the exercises I chose, the fact that I had given myself this time just to write and do nothing else or a combination of these things, the words started to flow easily and I gained some new insights into my characters as well as some interesting stuff that may find its way into one of the manuscript drafts at some point.

The exercises took about 45 minutes. Then, it was time to start on the manuscript itself. The first thing I noticed was that the 'voice in my head that tells me what to write' (yes I have one but I'm pretty sure I'm not insane) was being harassed by my inner critic/editor. The 'voice' was telling me one thing; the critic/editor was trying to tell me something else. It took a bit of shutting up. But after I'd started writing what the 'voice' said the critic/editor started to fade.

One of the reasons it was a bit difficult to listen to this particular voice was that it wasn't the one I was expecting. But it was the one that showed up so I had to shut up, listen and write. It doesn't always happen this way. Sometimes there is no 'voice' at all and I have to stumble along and do the best I can. Sometimes I'll be writing for a while before it shows up. Sometimes it's hard to hear and sometimes it's as clear and strong. But up at Montville I got lucky and it hung around for pretty much the whole time I was there.

In her book The Mystery of the Cleaning Lady: a writer looks at creativity and neuroscience, Sue Woolf writes that there is "...an underlying assumption that all that's needed for creativity, or the study of creativity, is a knowledge of the brain's circuitry. That had always seemed to me too simplistic to reflect the enormous complexity of creating."

When I'm doing my research into neuroscience, I enjoy learning about how the brain works (or how neuroscientists are learning about what they think makes the brain work the way it does). The complexity of the brain's structure, the way it develops and grows, the factors that influence its development (both within the brain itself and stimuli external to the brain) are a source of endless fascination for me. I'm big on internal logic within a story and if a character behaves in a particular way I want to know why. Why is a character weak or good or a pushover or a bully or insensitive or blind to what is going on around them? What makes a character do what they do? For me, neuroscience and neuropscychology open up a whole world of possibilities in terms of character creation. But I never, ever think about this when I'm writing creatively. The purpose of creative writing, for me, is to just shut up and listen to the voice in my head that's telling the story. I let my neurons (or whatever) just do their thing.

When I came back from my short break and did a bit more work on my manuscript at home, the 'voice' was a lot weaker. This morning, although I wrote a fair bit, it didn't really turn up at all (but I kept writing anyway and not all of it was crap... I think). Writing was not as easy as it was up at Montville - I was back at home with the distractions of the internet and my daughter and the dog and the dishes and day to day 'life' and all of it quickly intruded in on my writing.

Montville was, in some ways, a 'false environment', as false as sticking a creative person into an fMRI and tracking their brain while they're being 'creative' to see what areas of the brain start firing. While there are no doubt some common elements in the creative process for artistic works, I believe a person's creative processes are as unique to them as their brains. Just as a human brain is a reflection of an individual's genes, body, environment and early experiences, so must our creativity be.  That is, the creative choices I make in my writing are in some ways already set because of who I am.

I think most writers can improve their creative processes by reflecting on them within a neuroscientificneuroscientists could stimulate a particular part of a brain and make a person instantly more creative.  But I think creativity is much more than the sum of our neurons, so I don't see it ever happening.

Besides, I'd rather holiday in Montville than have an electrode shoved in my brain.

The upside of post-viral fatigue

The last few weeks I've been plagued with post-viral fatigue. It's frustrating and boring and it sucks. But if there's any advantage to being forced to do nothing it's that it gives you time to think. Lying in bed, not being able to read or use your laptop or watch tv gives your mind free time to enter a world of your own making. Before you know it, the ideas start forming. New ideas and old ones you've rejected that come back in new clothes with new solutions. A quiet time, a quiet space where nothing else is going on is exactly what my mind needs to not only allow ideas to come to the surface but to take notice of them, absorb them, let them sink in and swim around a little.

Not having enough time to just sit and think is a major problem when you're working full-time and studying part-time. It's an even bigger problem when you're meant to be writing a manuscript. And it's the major conflict of my life, one I run into over and over again. Some may describe it as my 'life lesson'. I'm not going to dwell here on the psychological implications of having to be sick so I can get some time to pay attention to my creative side - no therapist's couch is needed to work out something that bleedingly obvious. But it's a continual source of frustration for me, nonetheless.

In the absence of a rich and generous benefactor, the solution is to stop time wasting activities. But we seem so geared towards always having to be doing something. And even when we know it's madness, we continue to do it. Scanning facebook and twitter for the latest interesting link because we can't bear to miss out on something (btw, people who follow thousands of people - why?). Always being plugged into something. British neuroscientist Baroness Susan Greenfield says our obsession with being online 24/7 is rewiring our brains, not necessarily in a good way. I'm not a huge Greenfield fan but for me there's no doubt that being obsessed with always wanting to know the latest and the newest and the most interesting is distracting and can be death to ideas and creativity. Of course there are the times when something I find online inspires a new idea (like the meat house) or generates a new line of thought or enquiry. But it takes vigilance and discipline to find that balance between exploring and discovering and just wasting time.

Maybe this time I've learnt my lesson. Maybe this time I will stick to my schedule and not try to squeeze in extra things here and there that not only exhaust me physically but take time away from thinking. After all, what is Phd study for, if not to allow myself the time to think. 

The definitive, absolute, undeniable truth about creativity

More reading from Brophy's Creativity this week, which resulted in two decisions:

1. I probably will not read Lacan, Foucault or any literary theorist in any depth during my research, even though Brophy (along with some others) considers it necessary.

2. I'm going to look for Brophy's fiction and read it for pleasure, because the guy is a great storyteller.

I haven't read Creativity from cover to cover, but I've got through most of it and the main point I've taken from it is that I enjoy Brophy's creative writing (he's included a few of his short stories in the text) much more than his writing about critical theorists.

I read some paragraphs of Creativity and wonder what any of it means. I know I'm at a disadvantage because I've never read any of the theorists' work discussed; to me it's just a ten metre high brick wall of words with no way around. Shouldn't this mean I'm not 'Phd material'? No doubt some would think so. But then again this comes back to the main argument behind a creatively-based Phd and its tension between academia and 'creativity' (whatever that means).

Broohy's book is now more than 10 years old and many of the arguments around the place of the creative piece in post-graduate study have well and truly moved on. There is money in 'creative industries', which means that post-graduate study in the field, inlcuding formal study incorporating a major creative piece, is well-established in universities across Australia. I've been encouraged to apply for a Phd based on my Masters (by research) work, which included a 50,000 word creative piece and a 8,000 word thesis. Yet to a degree I feel that my Phd will be worth less than one that uses quantitive research, for example, or provides some sort or practical tool or answer to a problem facing the world, like a cure for a disease.

And yet fiction can be a legitimate tool for at least easing (if not curing) many ills. In an article I read this morning, author Lionel Shriver said something along the lines of fiction being the only place where the big issues of the world can be explored and discussed (and she's speaking as an author of her books that deal with 'taboo' topics).

So clearly the struggle about what I choose to research and the 'worth' of my research is largely an internal one. Of course, I'll eventually have to convince examiners that I am worthy of being awarded a Phd for my work. And along the way I'm sure my supervisors will keep me on track, because they want to see me succeed.

At the end of it all, maybe I'll be writing complex insights into Lacanian theory with the best of them. And maybe I won't. But I'm hoping the quality of my work won't be judged on its familiarity with critical theorists but on its creative piece and the insights into that piece examined in my thesis.

PS. The definitive, absolute, undeniable truth about creativity does not exist. Except maybe in a Sponge Bob episode.