Intergalactic Frankenstein!

Regarding what I'm about to tell you, there may be a thousand examples strewn around the world wide web, but I have not any of the patience to collate, sort through and distill their faces and their intentions. I don't have the patience not because I don't have the time for it but because I believe that what I'm about to tell you is the reality of a nagging truth that I'm sure any of you face when you create. It is the truth about the les misérables of all that garners attention.

Creativity is the state of being creative, creativeness is the tendency of being able to create, and when you create, you don't do it without the knowledge of all that is bad, insensitive, and/or tasteless. If you didn't know what was bad, how would you know if what you create is not bad? When you create, you not only bring to life but also add some flavour along the way, a flavour that is the reflection of your intentions as well as the encouragement to keep going at it. When the plot of a story you think is going to be interesting comes to life in your head, it's definitely not a wireframe. It's a single idea, a grain of dust in a constellation of possibilities, that you want to work outward from, inward into. For every word after, you remain desperate not to lose track of the inspiration, the seed, and when you do, you are desperate to kill off what you created.

And when you kill it, where does it go? It goes into the back of your head, a place that doesn't exist when it's empty but, all the same, a place that you take for granted because it's yours to marshal into existence. When things go into the back of your head, they are robbed of their faces and assume the skin of everything that isn't, shouldn't, wouldn't but could—in other words, the skin of your failures. Your every attempt at excellence is your every attempt to be at peace with them... but your every attempt at perfection is your every attempt to never hear from them again. When you pick up your pen to write the next story, they are all the things you want to avoid, and when you're satisfied with your work, you are fatigued from the effort.

Let me give you a good example to understand this: I loved the movie Van Helsing and I know that every 6 out of 10 people disliked it. You see, however, I'm not 1 of the 4 who like it, but 1 of the improbable 5 who like it that much. The hackneyed representation of evil, the unabashed and total reliance on the legend itself, oversimplification of concept, the trivialization of chivalry and romance, all of them come together so seamlessly to neither reward nor taint my imagination but only to remind it that neither luxury nor poverty is the mark of creativity. Can any of you laugh while watching Saving Private Ryan? Can any of you cry while watching Bean: The Ultimate Disaster Movie (and not from laughing so much)? My answer is the same as yours, but I can face Van Helsing and feel the way I want to and that is why I like the movie more. Van Helsing, to me, highlights the other aspect of being creative: you just don't bring to life, you let it breathe and toy.

Every time you attempt to reach out to the reader, you hope to have your work attach itself onto the reader's mind in a way that is unobtrusive as well as memorable, and for that to happen, you can't afford to rely on your work being the only one the reader thinks of when he's only feeling good or only feeling bad. Place your faith in what will continue to threaten and disparage the frail organization of his/her belief system: the folk from the back of the mind. If you fail to make him/her disagree, then you have not tried at all in making him/her agree, and that is just how it works with ideas and thoughts and trains of thought as well. Imagine a gargantuan muck-raking monster that traverses the Universe destroying planets and stars for no reason whatsoever, an Intergalactic Frankenstein put together with the les misérables, and let it encroach upon your brilliance every once in a while lest it one day conquers and commands all of your stupidity as well.

When writing about pure and romantic ideals, call that man a pimp and call that woman a whore; when speaking of the dignity of a martyred man, don't be afraid to call him a coward for not choosing to face his life instead; when eulogizing the life of an old man, don't be afraid to claim that he betrayed the dead soldiers who fought beside him; all that stops you from being creative all the time is entombed in that wall of false sanctity. Just as you choose to invest in your sense of righteousness and then work hard with it, so also do you thieve from your sense of impiety and then work hard without it. Be not afraid to call upon the miserable minions!