Carnivores, herbivores, and your creative process

The other night my aged mother-in-law made an innocuous comment about the Assistive Felines™, something along the lines about what they ate and wasn’t it interesting that different animals eat different things.

Yes, it is interesting how the evolutionary process has created a gazillion different things to eat and a gazillion different ways to eat them. Cats are obligate carnivores, i.e., they have to eat meat or their bodies will not continue to function; dogs, on the other hand, are opportunistic omnivores — they can eat anything and survive.

Some creatures can eat only one specific organism — and that pertains not only to their mouthparts, but their very digestive system and cellular engines. Others can be less picky, but we all have our limitations. We humans are not so good at lignin, for example, while termites would have problems with a cheeseburger.

So what does this have to do with Making the Thing That Is Not?

Recently on Twitter some writer posted something about how interested he/she was in the way writers’ processes differed. I replied that I wasn’t sure it was their processes that differed so much as it was their RITUALS. (No one jumped on it, so either everyone agreed or I’ve been blocked.)

I’m pretty sure that every writer, every composer, every painter follows the same process: ABORTIVE ATTEMPT —> GESTALT —> SUCCESSIVE APPROXIMATION. But what we do in order to provoke the process, to accommodate the process — that’s RITUAL, and that’s evolutionary. In other words, each of us has developed our own way in to that space where we do the work in response to our personalities, our work days, our circadian rhythms.

For a great overview of the idea, see Daily Rituals, by Mason Currey, which details the working habits of all manner of artists — and they’re all different.

So, pro tip: Evolve. Listen to what your brain, your body, your universe is telling you is going to allow you to do your work. Do that thing. Create your RITUAL. (In other words… ABORTIVE ATTEMPT/GESTALT/SUCCESSIVE APPROXIMATION.)