Creativity is Failure

This is not a “how to be creative” blog post—it’s a piece on failure and how your relationship to failure is likely what prohibits your creativity. I make this distinction because many people strive to be creative, yet don’t nurture the conditions needed for creative thought to manifest.

We all have seen people who live and breathe creativity. It’s like it just bleeds out of their soul, painting everything they do with a unique character and flare. To the individual who struggles to be creative, this can be quite frustrating and inspire some envy. “Why is it that creativity comes so easy to them? Why can’t I be that creative? Is something wrong with me?”

So, they go and seek out advice on how to be more creative.

They stumble across popular recommendations of “start with a piece of paper and doodle anything!” or “Write down anything that comes to mind!” Hell, I’ve even been guilty of giving this advice myself. And so they follow this advice and hit the wall. “Why isn’t anything coming up? Can I really not think of ANYTHING to put on this page?” Frustrated, they give up. Creativity just isn’t for me, they conclude. If you’ve found yourself in this cycle, keep reading to see if this helps.

A friend of mine recently picked up piano after letting the hobby die quite some years ago, but decided to jump back in after needing an afternoon hobby that wasn’t YouTube and TikTok. Knowing I had just picked up a beat pad, she reached out, excited to have someone to talk piano with.

Through talking, we realized our approach to piano was polar opposite. She just wanted to play written pieces. She loved reading music and grinding through the many trials and tribulations of learning a difficult piece. Me? Well, I got my piano to make music. I knew nothing about piano back then, and I still know nothing about piano now, yet I’m still able to create musical snippets.

(P.S. all music is on the sapoots youtube channel, found here. Albeit, very subpar, simple music, but music nonetheless).

I was curious why she never dabbled in music creation despite her skill, though my questions were answered when I watched her practice Claire de lune, her favorite piece.

She would play, play, play, ERROR, “god damnit, I suck.” 30 seconds later, the process would repeat. It was a constant cycle of striving for perfection, followed by self ridicule when that standard wasn’t met.

That being said, how do I make music? I fail. I press keys in sequences until they sound right, and truthfully, 95% of it is absolute dogshit. Garbage. Literally unlistenable, until it isn’t. Until eventually I track down a melody and the piece comes together.

Creativity is failure, it just is. The sooner you understand this, the quicker you can start approaching creativity in a healthy way. Perfection is not achieved by avoiding failure, it’s born from failure. Just like in biology, genes express their creativity through mutation, although nearly all mutations are maladaptive/useless for the creature. Finally, after an immense number of failures, BAM, an adaptive trait. Lucky for us, we have a brain, so let’s be smarter than mitosis and leverage this fact.

Creativity does not occur by dragging creative thoughts out of your subconcious. It’s like a shy dog. Only when you’ve made the dog feel safe does it come out of hiding. It’s the same with creative thoughts. If you truly allow yourself to fail without fear of ridicule, you’ve laid the foundation for creative thinking.

Think about who ridicules you when you fail. Is it yourself? Are you a true perfectionist, never allowing yourself to fail because of unfair standards you set for yourself? Maybe that needs some thought. Or do you ridicule yourself on behalf of someone else? A parent? A friend? A significant other? An old bully? Whomever you’re speaking for, call them out in your head. Name them. Who exactly is holding you back like this? Why are you letting them do this to you?

Which ever side you stand on, the goal is the same: Learning to be gentle with yourself is the first step towards being creative. You need to let the vulnerable part of yourself that experiences the failure fall into loving arms, otherwise it will never feel confident leaving its shell. Learn to fail in silence. Learn to fail in front of people you feel comfortable around. And then, learn to fail in front of people you care about. If you can learn to fail, you can learn to be creative.

Now go out there and fail miserably, then catch yourself. You deserve to land in open arms.

Til next time,

sapoots