Psychology

True Creative Motivation

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

Motivation is critical to an artist.  Motivation is what drives you.  Motivation is about what you want to do and why you want to do it.  When all goes dark, motivation is the spark that can light your way – or light a fire to burn down obstacles.

Thus motivation and understanding your motivation is critical to any creative effort.  Being “in touch” with your motivation can drive you and guide you – and help you set and reach goals.

Of course we’ve also felt lacks of motivation.  Of having our drives vanish.  Of not knowing “why.”  Loosing motivation is equally dangerous, but there’s something worse.

There’s finding your motivation isn’t your own.

Many times friends and I who are writers, artists, and other creatives discuss why we do things.  The funny thing is, we often have very different goals and reasons.  This takes us all in different directions, but also helps us know where we have common ground or learn from contrasts.  However, now and then we find our motivations to feel wrong, or encounter fellow creatives whose motivations seem shallow and unhelpful.

Something that came up in a recent conversation was this – some creatives are motivated by other people’s motivations.  They’re doing thier work, driven by what drives others, having assumed “I do X so I should be motivated by Y.”

A few examples:

  • Writers who think they must make a living at it.  However, there’s many ways to make money, so why use writing?
  • Artists who want to work in a specific industry because “that’s where everyone goes” – missing the many other options.
  • Cosplayers who assume they have to follow in the footsteps of the Big Names.
  • People who assume that liking games means they should be in the games industry.

Now and again me and my friends find people motivated by what they think their motivation should be.  It rarely goes well for such people – they’re not driven, they’re not embracing their creative lifestyle, they’re not engaged.  Hell, in many cases they just stop caring.

As a creative, find what really motivates you.  It may shock you.  It may disturb you.  It may not even be there, requiring you to do some hard thinking or go on a kind of vision quest.  But having real motivation means you’re really engaged in your work.

Don’t operate off of stolen motivation.  Creativity is unique, personal and intimate – so your own motivation will unique, it will be part of who you are, and it will tie deep into your life and experiences and goals.

 

Steven Savage

Writing Fiction By Ignoring It

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

Serdar and I are always discussing where our inspirations come from, and as we’re both Death Star-laser-focused on our current novels, that’s foremost in our minds. We’re fired up to know where our ideas come from, how to improve them, and of course understanding them so we can share them. Fortunately, we have a common conclusion.

The best way to write fiction is to read, watch, and listen to anything but fiction.

I’m aware you’ll probably want an explanation for this, so take my metaphorical hand and let’s wander into the weeds.

When you’re reading fiction you’re getting lessons in things like how to write. There are examples of portraying emotions, plotting a tight story, and so on. You may be inspired by some of the ideas, but inspiration from someone else’s fiction can only take you so far because those ideas come from that given author.

If you only take inspirations from fictional works that you are at best A) deconstructing them (worthy but at times limiting) or B) imitating them (which we have enough of, thanks).

So where are the best fictional inspirations? Simple.

Anything outside of the fiction you’re reading, and preferably radically different.

Seek ideas from other sources.  It can be music or video games, it could be the history of state parks or a cookbook.  Expand your horizons in any way but reading fiction.

Here’s where a lot of my ideas come from for fiction:

  • Richard Florida’s research into cities and megaregions. If you’ve ever noticed I like inventing big cities and complex social arrangements, this is where it comes from.
  • My work in psychology and psychobiology. Pay attention to my fiction and you’ll notice a major emphasis on social and political structures that may seem a wee bit organic if you will.
  • A fascination with maintenance of society and culture. How any human institution, culture, or nation survives and prospers is of great interest to me, and I have a “thing” for tales about “how some group of weirdos keeps it from going to hell.”
  • An interest in positive religious and philosophical experiences. This comes from my personal studies but also M.A.S.H. – Father Mulchahey was a huge inspiration, and he can be seen in my past and present work. There’s almost always one humane philosopher or cleric in my tales.
  • Buddhism and psychology. How people work interests me, of course, as does the impermanent nature of our minds and how we affect ourselves and others.
  • A love of culture and all the little things like where toys come from or the history of fonts.
  • Food. I love food and cooking, and you’ll always find it mentioned in my works because food tells you a lot about a setting, and exploring food in a setting helps you worldbuild.
  • A fascination with worldbuilding, of course. How you make a setting come to life has obsessed me for years.
  • Music. I often find songs that inspire me, in various styles, and those energize me. I know people who make whole playlists for their works.

So there’s a smattering of my (mostly) non-fictional and (sometimes) non-written inspirations. Now, a challenge for you.

What are your inspirations on written fiction that aren’t strictly fictional and/or aren’t always written? I want you to write them down, post them, and link back to me. Then go challenge your other friends to do the same.

Let’s learn from each other.

-Steven Savage

Psycho Mobs 100: Fandom Is Neutral

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

Serdar and I have been having an on-again, off-again discussion on fandom and it’s value.  I offered that it could be limited, and he responded with a deeper analysis of fandom that included speculation on pathological fandoms and our inabilities to identify them.

Eventually I found out pretty much any fandom you could name was rife with this sort of insularity. Many folks cared more about the label, about what belonged inside it or not inside it, than they did about the possibilities that could be awakened by whatever was tagged with the label. I know now, full well, that a lot of circles of fandom are not like this. But I find the best way to defend against that is to start with the person rather than the interests.

No fandoms are perfect.  I can pretty much find a wank battle anywhere in fandom with a bit of surfing, and between reddit and Tumblr it’s probably easy for anyone to do so.  But I think we still consider fandom a good thing overall.

After Serdar’s comments, I began thinking of my own fandoms and interests.  I realized that I treat a fandom as a good thing by default, as long as it’s not a fandom of something obviously bad.  I did this due to my own positive experiences in fandom, often ignoring my own experiences that were negative.  Sure my experiences were on the whole positive – but not entirely.

Thus, I think we should consider fandom a phenomena.  It is something that happens, and it is not necessarily good or bad.  Often it has been a good thing – I think it’s been more a good thing or bad – but that’s because we made it into something good, often without thinking of it.  It can easily be misused and messed up as we’ve also seen.

This may seem a bit sad to say as many of us have had positive experiences, and because it reinforces the cynciism we often see about enthusiasm.  But it’s more a reminder to be responsible for what we do and take this pheomena and make it into something good.

Fandom can be a good thing.  It often is because we’ve made it such.

It’s up to us to figure out how to make it good, keep it good, and make it better.  It’s up to us to take this human phenomena and make it work for us.  There’s no magic to fandom – just what we make.

– Steve