Can rules help or hinder creativity?
Paintbrushes. © John Morgan 2008.
Last week I talked about why having too many ideas can be as bad as having too few, but this week I want to continue the theme of ‘Creativity’ by looking at the value of creative rule systems.
Stop shuddering at the back there.
Rules do not inhibit creativity. In fact, you could argue that they promote creativity through the need for flexible thinking.
For example, I’ve been writing stories to post on my blog every Friday since around 2010 as part of the Friday Flash community. The rules? The stories must be 1000 words or less, and be a self-contained story that is shared with others. You comment on the flashes of others, and they comment on yours. Sure, we all sometimes bend the rules a little to turn a single flash into the start of a serial, but all subsequent episodes will still fall within the 1000 word limit.
The beauty of the word limit is it forces you to prune your writing back to what is absolutely necessary to tell the story. You can use it as a playground to explore ideas that you’ll later flesh out through short stories or novels. By learning how to prune, you’re teaching yourself out to write more tightly, and even edit your own work. Neat, eh?
This is one of my favourite street names. © Icy Sedgwick 2013.
Say you’re an artist, and you want to impose a creative rule. You’ll make a project where every aspect can only be coloured using cyan, magenta, yellow or black. It forces you to think more creatively about what you can or can’t include, which will strengthen the final pieces. So you want to do something green or orange? Set up a separate project for that!
Maybe you want to explore photography – challenge yourself to take a new photograph every day for a week, or a month (I did the #imageaday challenge in 2013). Why not make yourself take a photograph of wherever you are at 8:30am every Thursday? (Actually, I might try that)
I drew my fortune cookie, and the fortune inside it. © Icy Sedgwick 2015.
I’ve been trying to impose a creative rule on myself to create one new drawing every day. I don’t always manage it, but I’ve certainly been trying, and I’m going to make myself do it going forward so it becomes a habit. The benefits are;
I use it as a way to try out a new technique or medium,
If it doesn’t work out, it’s alright because I haven’t spent a lot of time on it,
I can start to develop my own style by learning what works and what doesn’t work.
Creativity is like a muscle – the more you exercise it, the easier it becomes to use it. I certainly want to impose a new creative rule to write something every day. I have lots of commitments but I can easily squeeze in 100-250 words every day – anything more is a bonus. So it doesn’t matter if it’s on an existing project, or just a vignette – I want to fill my notebook with creative writing every day.
If you’re interested in rule systems and how they can help creativity, check out this video by Kate Bingaman Burt on automated directives and creative rule systems! A lot of what she says applies to photography or illustration, but you could easily substitute those for blog posts, writing, knitting, or any other creative endeavour!
What do you think about creative rule systems? Do you use any?
