About last night...

Last night I once again had the pleasure of sitting in on a Zoom call with Prof. Gary Gute’s creativity class at the University of Northern Iowa, which uses Lichtenbergianism: procrastination as a creative strategy as a textbook. This was my third semester being able to do this, and as usual it was a lot of fun.

I thought I might do a blog post about the most interesting (and challenging) questions I was asked last night. Full disclosure: I went to see if there were a recording of the meeting, but there’s not one I have access to, so I’m doing this from memory.

Which is the most important Precept in your life?

ABORTIVE ATTEMPTS is the most important, I think, for my life in general, not just my creative life. The whole concept of getting things started without worrying about getting any of it perfect is incredibly freeing.

What’s the hardest Precept for most people to understand?

RITUAL for most people, because — as I say in the book — ‘ritual’ means either people dressed in black robes doing scary things around a bonfire or an empty set of steps to follow that mean nothing to the practitioner. I was also asked which chapter was the hardest to write, and it was the one on RITUAL; I wrote it three times.

What would be the impact of using the Lichtenbergian Precepts in schools?

Prof. Gute asked this one, and for once I was ready with an answer, based on a blog post over at my other site: Rejiggering classroom instruction away from memorization and testing towards exploration and knowledge construction — the learner constructs knowledge — would produce citizens who are curious, self-motivated, and able to learn and adapt. The entire framework of Lichtenbergianism, paired with the Big Six and Burning Man’s Ten Principles, is geared towards what we laughingly used to call problem-based instruction. (It’s like I’ve been blogging about this forever.)

If you were working on second edition, what would you add or take away from the first edition?

Another one I had actually been considering! The concept of shinyperfect is too… perfect?… not to include in a second edition. I think it has the right amount of pop psychology to help people get why that idea in their heads doesn’t look like that when they try to Make the Thing That Is Not — and it never will!

I’d also beef up the concept of the newly-named Beethoven Blueprint, which has become a much more solid idea over the last month: An extension of the ABORTIVE ATTEMPTS >> GESTALT >> SUCCESSIVE APPROXIMATION cycle, it provides a linear framework for creating, especially for writers. As I brilliantly summarized the concept last night, it formalizes the process of vomit >> organize >> polish.

I was also asked if I were to add a chapter to the book, what would it be about? After some thought, I said I’d probably go with a summation chapter, focusing on the practical ways to get started despite your fear of failure.

What are you publishing next?

Besides Young Person’s Guide to Lichtenbergianism, you mean? I had not really thought about it, but two ideas arose from the questions and answer last night. First, I could do a brief book, à la Austin Kleon, about the Beethoven Blueprint. (I’m already not liking the term as not euphonious enough… Beethoven Cycle?) It’s a quick plunge into the world of Lichtenbergianism, and useful.

The other one sprang from a question about whether I was aware of the book’s popularity with the ADHD population — I was —and a question about the Precepts’ usefulness in non-artistic fields or areas in which deadlines are more important than for most artists. A version of Lichtenbergianism specifically for the coders, the entrepreneurs, students, etc., might be productive.

Next question!