A Formula For Creativity?

How Would That Work …?

You can find ways to increase your productivity, and ways to put your work in front of people. The idea though, of creativity being shackled to a formula seems paradoxical.

I remember cringing when Chad Kroeger, lead singer of Nickelback, talked about having discovered a formula for his song writing that he was going to stick with from that time forward. If only it had signalled the death knell of that band, but they still seem to be crawling along.

A lot of people used to have a very visceral reaction to Stock Aiken Waterman, and their brand of manufactured pop. There was a notion that punk should have killed a lot of these kind of enterprises.

When you look at someone like Elvis who sang songs people wrote for him, and you look at some of the other studio managed stars who have had big hits, repeatedly, and you wonder — maybe, just maybe there is something approaching a formula.

The notion that there is irks a lot of creatives; reducing creativity to science seems antithetical to the whole enterprise. It’s almost as frustrating as the notion that being creative is some kind of mental health issue.

I think the key to creativity is simply to be creative. Sounds too simplistic, right? Like tautology. But the thing is, it’s like that old notion that the only way to get great as a wine taster is to taste wine. When you start to overthink these things blocks tend to come in on you.

The other thing to consider is that a formula is going to have a tendency to produce formulaic work. Having a system that creates the space to be creative isn’t a bad thing, but even then, if it becomes something you are dependent on, then you can get yourself into a situation where you can’t be creative without certain criteria being met, and that can be a trap.