The Rules of Creativity

The Renaissance lie, improv comedy, and building fences

The Renaissance masters—Da Vinci, Donatello, Raphael and Brunelleschi— are all widely considered creative geniuses. What made them so remarkable was their ability to weave together geometry, chemistry, architecture, and anatomy with unmatched grace. But all of them where outdone by a single man. One who stood tall about above the rest.

At 23, he sculpted Madonna della Pietà. At 26, the David. Then at age 37, after five years of back-breaking labor, Michelangelo finished painting the 343 figures that adorn the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

Creativity flowed through him like a river from the divine. It was if he lived in a state of inspiration, creating hundreds of works with no reference. “I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free,” the young genius would be quoted as saying.

It all seemed so effortless. But it was all a lie.

II.

While Da Vinci was known for taking extensive notes and sketching his works hundreds of times before completion, Michelangelo has no such reputation. And that’s exactly how he wanted it.

Michelangelo worked hard to conceal the process of his genius. The labor, the toil, the failures, and false starts. Until recently—with the discovery of lost sketches and anatomical studies—it was believed that Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel unaided. But that was his plan, he wanted to conceal how creativity really works. He wanted to cultivate an air of genius.

The truth, however, was that he burned at least 1,400 sketches and first drafts, that we know of. One can only imagine the countless others that were crumpled up and thrown away during the conceptualization of the David or the painting of the Sistine Chapel.

There’s an Italian word for this kind of deception, Sprezzatura— taking great pains to make your genius seem effortless.

For centuries, we’ve been misled with stories of unaided genius. Stories like Michelangelo’s deception fooled us into believing that some people “just have it”, and that the rest of us do not. But the truth is that all Creatives are using the same recipe.

They’re all sketching, and planning, and tweaking. They all start with first drafts.

II.

“The way to do a piece of writing is three or four times over, never once,“ explains author John McPhee. “For me, the hardest part comes first, getting something—anything—out in front of me.”

McPhee, at 92 years old, has been writing for The New Yorker for the past 60 years. As a veteran author, he admits that the pains of writing never ease. After meticulously crafting over 100 articles for the magazine, and publishing over 30 books, he knows a truth about the creative process that many of us have yet to find out.

McPhee always starts his writing with an ugly first draft. It’s littered with mistakes, and misspellings, and half formed ideas. But this first draft serves an essential purpose. It gives McPhee the scaffolding for his thoughts to develop. It gives his creativity a place to bloom.

Once this mental scaffolding is erected, McPhee gets on with his life. He’ll do errands and chores. He’ll go for walks or a long drive. “On the way,” he says, “your mind is still knitting at the words. You think of a better way to say something, a good phrase to correct a certain problem.” And that’s the magic of it. After the very uncomfortable and very conscious effort of writing a first draft, McPhee has offloaded the rest of the creative task to his unconscious mind.

In this way, his creativity acts as vine, not a tree. It can grow, and weave, and climb to magnificent heights, but it first needs a structure to adhere to.

Without a first draft, McPhee explains, “you obviously would not be thinking of things that would improve it. In short, you may be actually writing only two or three hours a day, but your mind, in one way or another, is working on it twenty-four hours a day.”

For writers, a first draft acts as a fence for the unconscious mind. In the safety of this container, you’re free to wander, and search for meaningful connections. As a result, serious creative work is made effortless.

III.

I’ve been to dozens improv comedy shows in the past few years, and what I’ve learned is that they usually end in one of two ways. Either I’m red-faced and gasping for air, or I’m squirming in my seat watching an hour-long bomb.

But I was curious as to why.

Why did some people have the natural ability to turn a random situation into a silly, and theatrical display, while others shut down, and became clumsy and awkward? After a show one night, I decided to find out. I went up to the most senior member of the troupe, and asked how improv really works.

As it turns out, improv—like all form of creativity—has rules.

The first of which is called “creating the base reality”. Since anything can happen in an improv scene, it’s critical for actors to determine the who, what, where, and when of the scene from the outset. Are they in outer space? Are they time travelers? Are they seagulls on the Jersey shore, pulling apart a slice of stale pizza? Without this foundation, nothing quirky, or surprising, or terrific can happen. The scene is dead without a base reality.

“You have to teach people technique,” says comedian Ian Robertsand, “principles and rules that they can practice that allow inspiration to come out.” Robertsand is a comedy legend and the founder of the Upright Citizens Brigade. The group— which was also co-founded by Amy Poehler in 1990—dismisses the notion that improv is about releasing your inhibitions, and being a free-flowing vessel for comedic inspiration. They dismiss the idea that meaningful creativity can be summoned without structure.

“In reality,” the group writes in their Improvisation Manual, “no matter how much fun they are having onstage, great improvisers are working together while adhering to a clear set of guidelines.” They’re building a world together, a container in which comedy and creativity can thrive.

IV.

Rick Rubin, the music producer behind Eminem, Adele, and Jay-Z, has been a student of creativity for the past 40 years. He’s observed the idiosyncrasies of dozens of multi-platinum level artists, up close and in the studio. Through this experience, Rubin has a developed a unique full-spectrum perspective on creativity.

“If you’re holding a center puzzle piece in your hand and staring at an empty tabletop,” he writes, “it’s difficult to determine where to place it.” Instead, what he suggests is to start with building the outer ring, then let your creative mind fill that space.

By creating an outline of where we hope to go, we give bounds to our creativity. These bounds, paradoxically, make solving any creative challenge that much easier. As Rubin puts it, “If all of the puzzle is complete except for that one piece, then you know exactly where it goes.”

Which implies an order to the creative process. First, we must gather information, and collect our puzzle pieces. Then we must assemble the edges, building the container for our work. In this way, action is the precursor to creativity. Not the other way around.

We must act our way into creativity, not think our way in.

—Zac

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