Creativity

Going Big To Go Small

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

Sometimes minimalism requires excess.

I took an interest in “minimalist games” the last few months.  It started with “Vampire Survivors” a simple Castlevaninia inspired game that turned complex adventures into “automatically killing hordes of monsters.”  Soon I discovered games like Gunlocked, 20  Minutes to Die, and more.  All of these games too classic ones and stripped them to basics.

I found that these games refreshed me, taking oft overcomplex games and getting to their essence.  There’s a time I want to wander through a Vampiric castle, but also sometimes I just want to blow up monsters and go home.  Being able to get to one of the core elements of a game was enjoyable and sometimes what I wanted.

“Where were these games earlier,” I wondered.  Then it struck me that we needed excess in games – or any media – to know what the minimal is.  These games were no different that some light novels, down-to-basics movies, and effective minimalist music.

Excess is the key to minimalism.

“Going big” in a game or media means that you’re going to try many different things.  Many may not be needed, not work, or not be the best choices.  But by trying many different things, you have a chance to find what matters – then you can strip away all the excess.

Excess also gives one a chance to find the core of a work.  The true spirit of a work may not be apparent until you’ve played with a concept through a few iterations.  Though the “core” of a game or music may be there, it’s not easy to see – you need to mess with it and add things to find what points you to the heart of a work.

If you’re aiming for the minimal, you may need to look to or create excess.

Maybe you need to learn not from the streamlined but from the overdone, the broad, the excessive to see what lies at the heart.  Perhaps you even need to go overboard and elaborate in one of your creations, to see what points back to the heart of what to do.  Excess is not just fun, it might be what let’s you do less.

Perhaps there’s a larger dialogue here between more and less.  I’m sure I’ll explore it – to excess or to the minimal, depending on my mood.

Steven Savage

A Certain Sustaining Fire

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

As I crawl back to some form of normal creative pacing after the last few weeks, I got annoyed with how I spent some time.  When I found myself too tired to write, I’d do some graphic experiments with photoshop.  Was this a waste of time when I could write?  Why did I do it.

Then it struck me, it wasn’t a waste of time at all.

The creativity for my projects was dampened by being overloaded, but my graphics experiments were expressions of creativity that wasn’t snuffed out.  It wasn’t as demanding, but it was a sign that my creativity was still there and active – it was just playing more than working.

It was a flame that kept itself going, if not as bright as I wanted.  There was the chance it would blaze forth yet again (and it has been, slowly).

I realized that when you’re a creative under stress, any creative output of any kind is probably good.  It keeps the flame of creativity going – and reminds you it’s there.  There’s still part of you being you.

It’s easy to write off things like writing silly stories or making goofy modifications to family photos, but those are creative acts.  They’re just play, and when you’re tired play can both energize you and bring yu back to yourself.

As a creative, give yourself time to mess around – there are days it will be all you can do.  But it keeps enough of you going so you can create what you want to, eventually.

Steven Savage

The Unsolid Self of Creative Works

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

Please note this column includes very limited, basic discussion of some spiritual beliefs. I do not go into fine details as it would distract from my core exploration and involve various interpretations over the centuries.  More may be coming.

Serdar and I often inspire blog posts for each other and today is no different. He posted on how projects don’t always end up where you expect, and it got me thinking.

Serdar notes we often view our works as having a kind of “Core,” a tangible thing that defines the work. We often discover it in the early lightning-strike of inspiration, and it guides our work. But in time, it can limit us because as we develop a story, it changes. That fear of getting away from the seed of our work, the core driving idea, often limits us.

That got me thinking about spiritual doctrines about the non-existence of the self. In Buddhism, we’ll hear of anatta, the (oft-misquoted) idea of “no-self.”  Buddha seemed disinterested in the concept of permanence or impermanence, focused more on the results of action and clinging. Taoists refer to the interaction of Vitality, Energy, and (many-faceted) Spirit from which we emerge and can refine, altering ourselves to become wise or even divine. “There’s no there there” is not an uncommon sentiment among those pondering the nature of life – and if there is anything permanent, a lot of what we identify with is impermanent.

This isn’t a sentiment everyone embraces. We want to think there’s a solid “me” there that goes on and endures. We also watch ourselves grow, age, and catapult towards inevitable death and realize that what we think of as me is mostly, if not entirely, impermanent.

I think the fear of “no solid self” is no different than the fear there’s no solidity in our creative work. We want to believe we’re real and solid – we also want to believe there’s some inviolable core to our creative work. That book we make, that comic we draw comes from us, we want it permanent – maybe permanent in a way we’re not.

But as we edit and revise, replot and reconsider, we find the book or comic or whatever is a process. It’s going to change and evolve, and we can’t fully forsee the future. That core idea is just a spark to light the fire; we don’t know what will be illuminated or how long it will burn.

Neither we nor our creative works have much of solid self. They’re processes and will never be “any one thing.”  To be creative is to face impermanence twice as much, in ourselves and in what we make.

I could probably go on to intolerable length on how to face this, and it would still end in some book recommendations you might not reach out of boredom. Something more may be coming, but let me say this in compassionate simplicity.

Impermanence can be a comfort, for we see how much we cling to and how that causes pain. If I’m not much of a tangible thing, then I neither begin nor end; I’m a process, more or less. Realizing this, I can just get over myself and get on with my creative work because that’s coming from whatever I am, permanent or not. I might as well get over myself, because it doesn’t seem very solid.

So whatever. Go on, create, do the thing you do. It’s all processes and change, so let’s see where it goes.

Steven Savage