creativity and discipline

Cancer and Creativity

This is an essay on creativity, a piece of prose provoked by a question someone asked me, a question which puzzled me. The question was about the relationship between my creativity and my brain cancer, the lymphoma which had colonized my brain.

"Has it affected your creativity?"

That was the question.

I think that the backstory behind the question is that the questioner assumed that creativity is a very high level function. I was puzzled by the question because, for me, creativity not something ultra special. Rather, it's a set of techniques which are always available, ready to be applied to whatever task is at hand. Creativity is like eating with chopsticks. It's a skill, or a set of skills, something which may take a painfully long time to learn, but which, thereafter, is always available on demand.

Consequently, when I was asked whether cancer damage had affected my creativity, my simple answer was and is no, not at all. At the level at which one eats with chopsticks, I'm still doing fine. And this, for me, is the level at which creativity functions: at the level of ingrained skills.

But there has been damage, certainly.

Brain cancer damages the brain, true, and in my case the lymphoma ultimately left a hole in the brain (or, to use more elevated language, a "partially cavitated area", a kind of partial hole) some four millimeters in size.

Objectively, that alone tells me that I must have lost some of the sharpness to my razor. Add to that the fact that chemotherapy ultimately caused my brain to shrink (or, in more elevated language, caused "moderate generalised brain atrophy") and the term "brain damage" becomes hard to avoid.

However, subjectively I feel fine, and certainly I've had no problems with creativity.

Creativity is the ability to make connections. Sometimes these connections can be obvious. For example, depending on what has been in the news recently, "bus" may provoke the thought of "bomb". (We live in troubled times.) Similarly, "beetroot" might prompt a connection to "blood", on account of beetroot's bloody color and bloody juice.

The passage below features a set of associations. The passage is from the "Bamboo Horses" novel, in which a woman is talking about some uppers she is taking:-

        Opening the delicate little box, Valencia takes out a single capsule and puts it on the lacquered surface of the table. It glistens there, red and yellow. She looks at me, smiles.
        "For me?" I say, with surprise, looking at the capsule.
        "Did I say so?" says Valencia. "No. It's for me."
        "What is it?" I say.
        "Viciousness," says Valencia. "Drive. Ferocity. Ambition. Decisiveness. The pounce of the moment that grabs you by the throat and takes you down. Action, in a word."
        Then the capsule is in her mouth and she is dry swallowing it. She grimaces. Wipes the back of her hand across her mouth. Then speaks of Atakana.

There are a series of words in the passage above which all relate to the idea of energy, a kind of intense and driving energy. The words are "viciousness, drive, ferocity, ambition, decisiveness, pounce, grabs, action".

Making connections of this kind does not require much in the way of intellectual gymnastics. It's a journeyman's skill, a journeyman being defined as someone who can reliably do a job in a competent fashion, usually without breaking through into the realms of genius.

The ability to connect words like "viciousness" and "pounce" is not really a high-level activity. Rather, this kind of associational activity could be thought of as a kind of waking dreaming, an exercise in juxtaposition.

What is dreaming? It is improvisation. From the train wreck of mental items - sounds, colors, vocabulary items, desires, impulses, whatever - an ad hoc reality is extemporized. Lateral thinking comes naturally when order is in disarray.

Dreaming, then, is the product of a kind of mental train wreck, and does not require advanced intelligence. We never say of anyone "He's too stupid to dream". Even cats dream. Dreams, visions, hallucinations - intellectually, none of these are big sticker items.

And when I have no dreams, no inspiration? When it's early in the morning and I'm feeling flat, what then? Well, as a journeyman, a fully qualified artisan, I can make progress on my work. I can always push ahead, without necessarily being at the top of my form. I can press ahead even when feeling uninspired, making the necessary connections, building new structures and making repairs.

Perfection is not required.

If absolute mental integrity were essential to creativity then it would be difficult to explain how so many writers have succeeded in proceeding in the face of alcohol abuse and other ill-advised biological experiments.

As a rule, I don't personally work on anything while under the influence of alcohol. Work and alcohol live in separate compartments, and the alcohol apartment is visited only on an occasional basis.

I've only ever once written anything while inebriated. The alcohol that I had been drinking blurred my mentation, so what I was writing about - a supremely trivial passage about bubbles in a glass of sparkling white wine - struck me as marvelous.

Fully sober, I was unimpressed with what I had written. And yet, the wine had been faithfully described. I had succeeded in functioning at a journeyman level, even though I was not sober. The alcohol damaged my judgment, but I was still able to fashion words into coherent pieces of prose. I was still, if you like, creative.

As far as I can determine, cancer has not impacted negatively on my creativity. It may have affected my judgment. That is something that I, from my solipsistic perspective, cannot know. I cannot pass objective judgment on myself. That's one thing I've learnt from my medical disciplines: when it comes to judging my mental functioning, my subjective assessment is flawed, and there have been times when, although I've felt one hundred percent, I was actually significantly impaired.

From the center of my own universe, I cannot accurately assess the integrity of my galaxies.

But what is objectively measurable is output. Words. Bytes. The metastasizing of files. Thus measured, my creativity, the set of skills for transforming ideas into prose, remains. As testified to by the steady output from my keyboard. This stuff is not being written by random monkeys. It's consciously planned, shaped and sandpapered.

Of course, this is just my personal experience, and I have to say that I think I've been very lucky. Other people might be hit harder by cancer, by chemotherapy or by radiation therapy. And, given a sufficient level of damage, a level at which one's journeyman skills start to falter, creativity must start to suffer.

In fact, I do know of someone who feels that her creativity has been degraded by brain damage. However, this person had brain problems which were more serious than mine - an abscess in the brain which, I believe, required some serious surgery.

It's reasonable to think that, beyond a certain point, brain damage is definitely going to cripple creativity, whether the cause of the damage is a malignancy or the long-term abuse of alcohol, or whatever. But, in my case, I can still write, just as I can still use chopsticks.

I do not, for the most part, rely on inspiration. On occasion, inspiration arrives, and there are the rare spectacular moments when I feel like a conduit to a higher realm, calling fire down from the realms of heaven.

However, these truly inspirational moments are very few and far between. And, if I relied upon such moments, my total output would have been very slim.

Instead, at this stage of life I've had twelve novels published, and the writing of those books relied, for the most part, on the sheer discipline of sitting at a keyboard day after day. The discipline of dragging my bones out of bed and applying a set of skills which have been consolidated by years of effort.

Most of what I do, whether it's working on a novel or working on "Cancer Patient", my memoir of my medical experience, does not depend on gifts from heaven. Rather, it relies on a set of skills which are the intellectual equivalent of carpentry. A good carpenter can reliably produce satisfactory work day after day, regardless of mood, and a writer working in the journeyman tradition can do likewise.

Creativity and mental acuity are not one and the same thing. It is possible for someone to be very smart and yet to be a creative zero.

For me, many of my most creative periods are late at night, when my mind is full of the thoughts of an entire day, when words and ideas collide and merge unpredictably in a kind of recombinant soup. At times of extreme fatigue, my performance may deteriorate in the sense that my fingers blunder at the keyboard, and the number of typos and spelling mistakes escalates. But it is often at just such times that ideas come racing out, and I produce words, phrases and entire paragraphs, spontaneously, messily.

Later, in the clear light of morning, comes the task of ordering this material, and that is something I can do even when I feel dull and flat, working as a functional artisan, busy with my carpentry.

Creativity, then, is not a gift from the muses. Not usually. It is a combination of learned skills and resolute discipline. Consequently, creativity is survivable. My apple may have lost its gloss. It may have atrophied a little. And it may, in fact, feature the occasional cavitated area. Yet it still performs the necessary functions of an apple, nurturing within itself the seeds of growth.

creativity hyml creativity hytml creativity creative writings creativity o creativity o line creativity on creativity on line creativity read creativity oline creativity read free creativity readfor free creativity read forfree creativity red creativity red creativitys were can I read a creativity werecan I read acreativity where canI readthe creativity readacreativity readcreativity readcreativitys get creativity no charge creativity read without chrage creativity read without charge creativity free sample creativity free first chapter online creativity web site creativity website creativity onlined creativity onlines creativity onlline creativity omline creativity om line creativity creativity creativity creativity creativity creativity creativity creativitycreativity creativitycreativitycreativity creativitycreativitycreativitycreativity creativitycreativitycreativitycreativitycreativity creativitycreativitycreativitycreativitycreativitycreativity creativitycreativitycreativitycreativitycreativitycreativitycreativity creativitycreativitycreativitycreativitycreativitycreativity creativity creativity page creativity web page creativity webpage creativity pages creativity essa y creativity stories creativity published online creativity internet creativity inter net creativity web creativity text creativity full text creativity complet text creativity comploete text creativity complete text creativity unbridged creativity unabridged creativity un abvridged creativity un abridged creativity unexpurgated creativity uncensored creativity library creativity book creativity book shelf creativity bookshelf creativity essay creativity essayal creativity made-up essa y creativity created creativity from a writer's imagination creativity creatieve creativity creative creativity creative writing creativity read now creativity read hjere creativity read here creativity fantasy creativity full legfth creativity full length creativity fulllength creativity ful length creativity fullength creativity fantastic creativity with imagery creativity with imagined scenes creativity with imagined action creativity with discipline imaginative creativity fnntasy creativity fantasycreativity imaginativecreativity complete creativity completed creativity finished creativity completely finished creativity fully written creativity professional creativity author creativity author's home page creativity wirter's writer's home pages creativity creative writingist creativity creative writingist's homepage creativity creative writingist's original homepages creativity literature creativity English writer creativity British writer creativity Britisher writer creativity EnglishWrtier creativity EnglishWriter creativity Britishwriter creativity Kiwi writer creativity New Zealand writer creativity NewZealand writer creativity NewZealandWriter creativity Kiwicreativity British fantasy creativity Britishwriter creativity show me a creativity showme acreativity showmea creativity all the creativity all the creativitys all creativity all creativitys exclusively creativity exclusively creativitys I want creativity Iwant creativity Iwantcreativity creativity or short essa y creativity or short stories essay text creativity essay tetx essaytext creativity tetx creativity essay texts creativity essaytexts creativity fic tion text creativity fi ctions creativity techniques realist BAMBOO HORSES creativity mtechniquesal techniquesal realist BAMBOO HORSES creativity Hugh Cook creativity HughCook creativity Cook Hugh creativity CookHugh creativity HughCooks creativity CookHughs creativity Hugh Cook's creativity Cook Hugh's creativity HWG Cook creativity HWGCook creativity H. W. G. Cook creativity Hugh Walter Gilbert Cook creativity HughWalterGilbertCook creativity HughWalterGilbert Cook creativity Japan Hugh Cook creativity HughCookJapan creativity Hu8gh Cook Hugh Cook English teacher Japan creativity 4 free creativity rad 4 free creativity raed 4 free creativity read4free creativity read 4free creativity inventive esay kn creativity inventive essay creativity invented essa y creativity essays creativity essays tales creativity essaytale creativity taleessayal creativity fictiion creativity esay knal creativity essayal tale creativity fict ional creativity fic tional creativity inventive essay creativity writer creativity writers creativity techniques creativity techniquesal action creativity discipline creativity writer's creativity writer's technique creativity writer's technique creativity writer's creativity writer's techniquecreativity technique creativity writ4er lord creativity ne w zeland writer 4 fre creativity 4fre essayal prose work creativity complex tips creativity long tips creativity strong tips creativity interesting characters creativity essa y line essa y lines active essa ylines stori creative writingessa y creative writingstories creativity withlord creativity writ4er lord creativity weaponmaster creativity quest creativity questing hero creativity heroic action creativity sf creativity sci fi creativity sfcreativity read free scifi creativity scificreativity creativitycreativity creativitycreativitycreativity creativity creativity find creativity finda creativity site creativity sight creativity html creativity com creativity .comm creativity .biz creativity .co creativity htmlcreativity htlm creativity asp creativity htm creativity ht m creativity ht ml creativity comcreativity creativitycom creativity com creativityco m fre creativity frecreativity 4 free read creativity for free full comlete text creativity full complete text creativity uncut creativity uncensored creativity for grown ups grownup creativity grownups literature creativity literary English creativity well-written creativity brilliant creativity witty creativity raed online creativity online raeds online exciting creativity unusual creativity different creativity quirky creativity writen creativity good creativity really different creativity reallydifferent creativity create esay kn creativity create essay creativity createessay creativity sience ficion creativity create esay knal creativity create essayal creativity createesay al creativity readfulltext creativity readcompletetext creativity volume creativity volumes creativity tome creativity tomes creativity ms creativity manuscript creativity manuscripts creativity published work creativity scenario creativity narrated creativity narative creativity narrative creativity tale account description creativity chronicle creativity sequence of events creativity unreal creativity exciting marvelous enchanting wondrous monstrous creativity reading creativity reader creativity reader's creativity bibliography original essay site creativity stie very long creative writings essay creativity free prose online creativity freeprose creativity freeproseonline freee creativity freeee creativity ncreative writing creativity ncreative writings creativity creative writingl creativity creative writingls creativity free stories in text form creativity textform creativity creative writingform creativity horro creativity free raeding creativity recent new modern contemporary e essays url creativity address www creativity wwwcreativity www.creativity essay violent essay violence freeoknine freeonline creativity creativityfreeonline lang:en creativity language English creativity onlinee creativity onlinne creativity htlm creativity invented creativity inventive creativity best creativity fulltext creativity pnline creativity pnlinecreativity creative writing web reading creativity webreading creative writings web rreading creative writings web reading ecreative writings creativity free friction creativity archive creativity archives creativity archived creativity store creativity stored creativity file creativity files creativity computer file creativity computer files creativity document creativity documentation creativity essayal prose work in chapters many chapters prosework creativity essayalprose creativity proze published work creativity literary work creativity publishedwork creativity literarywork creativity