“That embracing of messiness and understanding its contribution to the creative process is something that writers and creative types, artists, whatever have got to cultivate, have to learn to be comfortable with. Because it goes against a lot of our … instincts and training as … educated people.” — Malcolm Gladwell, author of Blink, Tipping Point and other work.
Well said, Malcolm.
I couldn’t resist talking about messiness and chaos while we here in Chicago are in the middle of a nasty winter blizzard. I only need to look out my front window to see a whole lot of messiness and chaos.
But I do resist the messiness of creation, even as I long for creation. It’s quite the conundrum. I want my words to all flow out perfect from the get-go and move gracefully from page to page of beautiful output. Yeah, right.
So I have to force myself to stay in the chaos and confusion to create something worth creating, and reading. It’s not just you. It’s all of us creative types. Although I suspect Malcolm may not suffer as much as the rest of us.
Take a listen to Malcolm’s quote and the entire interview it came from on the Big Think website.
Photo © Maya Kruchancova via PhotoXpress.
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