Quantum Storytelling

In my experiences in the creatosphere, there seem to be two types of creative people; Those that enjoy tools, new processes, structure, planning, challenges, and those that like to work purely free-form without any constraints whatsoever, leaving their creativity purely to the muse.

I’m one of those pesky sort that love learning how to use new tools. I love new ways of organizing my work, or constraining it in the spirit of creative challenge. The reason why I enjoy such creative challenges is that they force me to learn and do new things, and to consider new ideas, new ways of doing things. The idea is that through this constant evolution of process I will find the ‘optimal’ way(s) that I create, and become more efficient over time.

“Well I learned X, and found a way to use that for story Y.” That’s a simple, discreet measurement of progress.

It raises an obvious question about the more free-form folks which baffles me; Without tools or the use of new structures and challenges, how do you measure your own creative development? How do you measure your progress? Do you measure at all? Do you even care?

Do you think a creative person’s awareness of their own development and progress is important? If you have no interest in storytelling techniques, principles, or tools, how can you measure? Or is measurement simply not an issue? If not, why not?

There aren’t many books on creativity. Well, there are if you count all the touchy-feely ones punted from the ’spiritual’ angle. I’m interested in the psychology and science behind creativity, and welp… oddly, there just hasn’t been much until I found a somewhat obscure textbook on the subject called the Handbook of Creativity. Within the first few pages there is an explanation WHY there aren’t many solid approaches to the study of creativity:

(a) the origins of the study of creativity in a tradition of mysticism and spirituality which seems indifferent or even possibly counter to the scientific spirit;

(b) the impression conveyed by pragmatic, commercial approaches to creativity that its study lacks a basis in psychological theory or verification through psychological research;

(c) early work on creativity that was theoretically and methodologically apart from the mainstream of theoretical and empirical psychology, resulting in creativity sometimes being seen as peripheral to the central concerns of the field of psychology as a whole;

(d) problems with the definition and criteria for creativity that seemed to render the phenomenon either elusive or trivial;

(e) approaches that have tended to view creativity as an extraordinary result of ordinary structures or processes, so that it has not always seemed necessary to have any separate study of creativity;

(f) unidisciplinary approaches to creativity that have tended to view a part of creativity as the whole phenomenon, often resulting in what we believe is a narrow vision of creativity and a perception that creativity is not as encompassing as it truly is.

In my experiences, all of these are true. Among writers and other creative types however, the lack of interest seems to be points A, D, and E. Most of the creative people I know gravitate towards a mystical view of creativity. This is evident by the popularity of The Muse, originating from the Greeks as an explanation for divine inspiration. If I was to wait for the muse, the divine inspiration to strike, I might be waiting six days or six years. I’m sorry, but I don’t feel the creative process is all that mystical or unknowable. Insisting it is unknowable is tantamount to plain old-fashioned ignorance. We’ll have none of that around ye Quantum Storytelling, thank you.

The other issue is those that who would normally take creativity seriously, such as scientists or psychologists, don’t. To them there is either an ordinary explanation (e) or because of the traditional ‘mystical’ viewpoints (a), science treats creativity with the same amount of circumspect as religion.

It’s high time we end this nonsense, and devote a little study to a facet of human nature which is responsible for most of modern civilization. Who’s with me?

You’d better believe there are more excerpts coming from this goldmine!

I’m finishing up The Spike: How Our Lives Are Being Transformed by Rapidly Advancing Technologies. It’s interesting, but more in the trivia kind of way. For a book about the singularity and future technology, it doesn’t cover very many of its subtitled ‘Rapidly Advancing Technologies.’ I would expect the gamut from quantum computing to cloning, and while the book does briefly cover those it spends most of its chapters talking about nanotechnology ‘minting’ and A.I. that could possibly control the minting process. I expected a little more diversity of coverage.

Perhaps the reason why I am most disappointed is I was looking for ideas to mine, and nano minting or self-automated A.I. controlled manufacturing has already been covered in sci-fi, and is relatively well tread territory. Off the top of my head I’m thinking of a couple Philip K. Dick short stories: Autofac and Second Variety.

Something the author Damien Broderick brings up which I thought might be good fodder for a story; The biggest threat to a future society might be boredom. If it were even remotely possible, what would people do to fill their time if the cost of living was zero and everyone had every minute of their waking life to use however they please? Would chaos erupt out of sheer boredom? Would the irrationality of some belief systems only find more fuel for violence in the absence of meaningful life? Or would everyone become a couch potato?

Aside from a few tiny nuggets, I didn’t get much out of Spike. So much for research… but then you can’t win them all. Sometimes digging only gets you dirt!