• Slides for this talk
• An audio-only version of this talk
• Audio-only Q&A for this talk

I got up in front of people again last week.

The fine folks of the Independent Filmmaker’s Coalition of Kansas City were kind enough to want to hear what I have to say about creativity and how it might matter to them. Since, you know, filmmakers are heavily dependent on their creativity.

This was a very interesting talk for me to give. You see, I used to be very active in this group about ten years ago, and while very few of the faces in the crowd were familiar, the mindsets and desires of the people sitting in that old, musty theater were very much the same. Same as they always were. Same as I was so long ago.

I meant for the talk to be much more of a discussion than a lecture. it didn’t turn out that way. Perhaps I should have left the slides at home and just winged it. Who knows. What I do know is that the Q&A was one of the more interesting ones that I’ve ever had. Mostly from the fact that this crowd seemed to be much more engaged in the overall philosophy of creativity than most college students1, but even more so because of how the tone of the Q&A seemed slightly geared toward poking holes through my theories.

And, I liked that people were trying to refute my statements. It was a rare challenge. The one statement that caught most of my attention was that one person felt that I hadn’t given a talk on creativity at all. I had just given them a productivity lecture.

I think I answered well at the time, but I had additional thoughts the next morning that fell squarely into the “I wish I would have thought of that earlier” category. Here it is:

Having spent many years making a living out of being creative, I can assure you that it’s all about being productive. If you’re not productive, you don’t ship work. If you don’t ship work, you don’t get paid and you starve. Anyone who thinks that creativity isn’t about getting off your ass and working with laser-like focus until you’ve achieved your goal frankly hasn’t ever really done any work.

On the way home that night, thinking of that guy kind of irritated me. He had a bit of that “I want to prove that I’m smarter than you” attitude. Which, is fine. Like I said, I enjoyed the challenge. But I think what irritated me the most was that it almost seemed like he wasn’t listening. But, then I put myself in the mindset of where I was when I was active in the club. I had been laid off from a web design job when the company I was working for got bought out. I was surviving off freelance work that I was picking up from senior management that took huge buyouts from the purchasing company and were using that to seed new companies.

Basically I was jobless, slightly depressed and incredibly bored. I used the IFC as a way to get out of my apartment once a week and interact with people and do something that made me feel creative beyond the pedestrian stuff I was making to get by.

Had someone come to an IFC meeting and told me the things I said during this talk, I think I would have been pissed off too. Not because they were full of shit or trying to sell me an idea disguised as something else, but because deep down inside I would have known they were right and that if I didn’t get off my ass and actually make something that I felt was worthwhile, I would never actually be creative.

Not everybody wants to hear what I’ve got to say. Some people really would rather sit around and say, “Oh, man. That screenplay that I’ve got in my head is going to be so awesome. I think I’ll start writing it tomorrow, but first I’m going to play some XBox.” And then the cycle repeats.

To many, feeling creative (or simply seeming creative to others) is what it’s all about. Those are the people who won’t make anything.

Make stuff. Make a lot of stuff. Fail. Succeed a few times. Then, come back to me and tell me that creativity isn’t about being productive.

Don’t get me wrong. Not everyone there was like that. There were some very engaged people in that audience, and I had a discussion with one guy afterwards that I think really helped him get his mind around a dilemma he was facing in his own creative trials and tribulations. And, that is what means a lot to me. If I can help one person avoid some of the mistakes I’ve made in the past it’s the biggest reward I can receive.