We have to stop pretending creativity is "magic."
Manifesto Part 5: Demystify the Process
Hi,
This is the fifth piece in a series of deep dives into the Everyone's Creative Manifesto. You can read the other parts by following the linked headings here.
Demystify the Process
Remember that how you work is not what gives you value - your value is inherent to your being. Secrecy leads us into obscurity and isolation. When we're separated, we're vulnerable.
Seeing how things are done lowers barriers and opens doors - that's the life cycle of art. Creativity isn't magic, so don't treat it that way. Let others in.
I'm most frustrated with creative professionals when they pretend that there's something special about their creativity. We all tend to chafe at big egos, but I find it simply wrong to claim that there's ever something unique about being a creative person. Everyone's Creative. So why do we lie about this?
There's an insidious feeling of scarcity that can creep in when you make "making things" your profession. The work of artists is often seen as a luxury - a "nice to have" - that is the first thing to be cut or streamlined when the budget doesn't add up. That leaves a lot of working artists wondering when the well will run dry. Sure, you have some work today, but how long until the phone stops ringing and you need to give up the dream?
Fear and impostor syndrome drive us to make ourselves seem essential, and the easiest way to do that is to claim you have something special that nobody else has. Your secret recipe means that while other people may fry chicken, only you know the 11 herbs and spices of your trade that will yield the work people really want. How could they work with anyone else now?
This obviously completely ignores the reality of how creativity and making things works. There is no secret recipe, only smoke and mirrors. And while some artists may outwardly claim that they have something nobody else does, the more common form of elevating yourself against your peers is through obfuscation and obscurity. Rather than saying you can do things no one else can, you can just feel that way by developing methods that you keep for yourself.
When we let ourselves get overcome by this fear of scarcity and we try to hide the way we work, we isolate ourselves from the people we should be building community with. To take it to the extreme, you can become someone like Anish Kapoor, who will go so far as exclusively licensing pigments to attempt to preserve his elevated status in the arts. Demystifying process is about community and mutual benefit. Creating legal barriers against other people's creativity is the antithesis of that.
Not everyone is a self-centred, egotistical piece of shit, though. Many artists "mystify" their practice for the exact opposite reason. Their fear may partially emerge from worries of scarcity, but it's also motivated by a deep, ever-present self-consciousness. Impostor-syndrome that has consumed them to the point that the only thing they're willing to share is the finished product. I've been in this position myself, where any hint of how I was creating something felt like a risk of being found out. While we may grow confident enough to share what we create, how we create is always subject to being "wrong" or "unprofessional" or "cheating."
This fear of being found out manifests itself in artists who never show you the reference they use, the artwork they're inspired by, the tools that streamline their process or the systems they have built to automate repetitive tasks. All we get to see as the audience is a finished product, with the implied story behind it being one of divine inspiration and miraculous creation.
Fear perpetuates fear. When we give in to our fear of being revealed to be a fraud, or of losing all our work, we create new structures to offload that fear onto others around us. Younger, less experienced people who want to do what we do can easily become discouraged if they come to believe that there's something you have that they don't - whether that's because you pretend you're a creative genius or you fucking license paint colours so no one else can use them. Validating our own fears by perpetuating them does nothing to make the world better for artists, and makes creativity more and more alienating to people who think they aren't creative.
On the other hand, demystifying process means resisting your fears. It means believing that your value is inherent to your being and not to some trick you have for painting or playing your instrument. When we share how we do what we do, we bring our work back down to earth - our common humanity can be seen. Others can relate to who we are and what we do, and understand it more completely.
The ironic thing is that this approach often creates more admiration for the creator than in obscuring what we do. I'm personally more impressed when Penn and Teller show me how much effort goes into a trick than when Chris Angel pretends he can actually fly like a freaky goth Christ. Similarly, when I see the time and energy that goes into hand-crafted furniture, I tend to value it more than when two tables sit next to each other, one from IKEA and one made by hand, and I can only compare their price.
Demystifying the process also builds solidarity. It contradicts the fear of scarcity by creating community and support. The biggest risk to our industries isn't an oversupply of motivated, generous, collaborative creative workers - when we outnumber the corporations and elitists, we have more say in how we work, not less. But you don't build solidarity and community by isolating yourself and refusing to share with others. You might think that makes your work more valuable, but it makes you less.
Demystifying the process means elevating your creativity and thought. It highlights the idea that, no matter what you're making, you bring value to your work. If your tools or techniques are the thing that gives your work value, then what value do you bring to the table? If someone "figures it out," are you not just confirming that you aren't important to the work after all? I don't believe that's true. Do you?
Demystifying my own process.
This whole idea was the driving force behind Everyone's Creative.
I taught graphic design briefly and in that time I found it really staggering how many people who were new to creative work considered themselves lacking in some fundamental way. I would constantly be asked what tools I used, whether they could use certain digital brushes or if there were special tricks to drawing fundamental shapes or having good ideas. It all betrayed this sense that, until they had that thing, they wouldn't be able to break through and actually be creative. The truth is that we come with everything we need, everything else is just adding to the essentials.
Later, working in marketing for clients with widely varying experience doing creative work, I found the same thing. I would repeatedly have clients tell me they "aren't creative" and then, minutes later, share an idea that dwarfed everything I could have come up with for their work. That disconnect gradually made me realize that the thing people think is "creativity" is actually just a practiced skill or trade. You may not know all the shortcuts in Photoshop, but you do have ideas. You do have opinions and you can make something with them.
I also saw the way people I admired most practiced this demystification of what they do. There's a generosity to being open, offering up knowledge and answering questions. Revealing where things that seem complex are simple, and vice-versa, helps build admiration and respect that flows both ways. Sharing mistakes you've made and lessons you've learned doesn't just make you seem more humble, it takes the pressure off of the rest of us to live up to an unrealistic standard.
I've been taking notes on "demystifying the process" for the past few years now. I made a note last year called "Black boxes make people less capable of understanding" that is part of this idea, too -- how when tools we use or things we interact with hide the way they work, we all benefit from them less. It's still a fragment of an idea, but it makes me feel like part of how I want to make things is in a way that indicates that they were made. Similarly, I relate this "demystification" to the "crystal goblet" philosophy of design -- one which may occasionally have merit but that, when we treat it as dogma, alienates us from the creator behind creative work.
When I write a piece like this, I try to give myself a structure to follow. For this post, I reviewed my previous notes on the subject and gave myself these points to build the final piece out of:
- In a way, demystifying the process takes the "magic" out of our work, but by doing that we *humanize* it.
- But these all sound like rules. I hate rules. Especially around art. So I think the better question is *why* demistify the process? Other than "because it's a moral imperative."
- It's such a unhelpful instinct and it even perpetuates these unrealistic standards - I imagine some artists do this to "protect their IP," sure, but I'd be willing to bet that a bigger part of the motivation comes from being self-conscious and having an imposter-syndrome instinct to hide their mess.
What's my point?
- our instinct to hide our process comes from fear -- fear of being found out, questioned, copied or put-down. It's self-conscious and it's antagonistic. Artists are some of the *worst* offenders for lacking in solidarity with each other when we try to lean into artificial scarcity by hiding how we do what we do.
- When we share our process, we both remove the "magic" from it, but also elevate everything that is a part of it. If anything, it adds perceived value to what you do to show someone how its done.
- Sharing process gives you the chance to learn new things, too.
- Growing the community of people who do what you do is beneficial, not a risk. Your comrades in creativity aren't competitors, they're supporters and champions for your value. Sharing how you do what you do increases the likelihood that more people will want to do it.
- Atomising ourselves -- splitting up and isolating ourselves -- only serves the powers that be
- Failing to demystify process elevates tools and process over humanity. If there's a "trick" to everything you do, then what value do *you* add to the work?
I'm trying really hard to share more of my work, lower my standards and avoid trying to make things "perfect." In this kind of writing, that means all I do next is start writing, and see if I can follow the structure I set out. Notice that "talk about how you wrote this" isn't in my notes... I only came up with this part near the end of writing the main portion.
My writing here tends to be like that - the first attempt at synthesising ideas that have been floating around in my head for a while. I realize lots of what I write on Everyone's Creative could be more refined or edited, and I have multiple unfinished posts where I tried to refine and edit them into something more polished, but honestly, this work isn't something that I think benefits from being perfected. I prefer it being immediate and off the top of my head, so that's the way I write it.
The hardest part is starting to do it. I've set aside most of my day on Friday to write these newsletters and, with the exception of this post (I'm writing right now on January 24th, it's 10:40 am) I have very consistently procrastinated the day away and ended up writing on Sunday or Monday instead. Once I start, though, I tend to finish the post right away. I also find it hard to pause these pieces halfway through and pick them up later. They're such a stream-of-consciousness that if I do stop, it's usually easier to just start from the beginning later, as my ideas and thoughts and feelings on the subject have usually moved on.
Writing is a weird process to "demystify." You don't really gain very much from watching a time-lapse of someone typing. It's such an internal process. I think most creative processes are internal like that, though. I appreciate watching people like Frank Howarth because, while it's fun to see the work he does and a time-lapse of wood turning is always interesting, he does such a wonderful job sharing that internal process. I particularly like when he admits that he doesn't really remember what his plan was, or that he thinks he followed-through on an idea in an unsuccessful way. It makes me feel better about the way I write.
Does anyone come to mind when you think about demystifying the process? Someone you've learned from through them sharing how they work, and not just the finished product? And how can you demystify your own process? I'm genuinely interested. That's kind of the point of this whole post, and I like when people comment on these and I feel less like I'm writing into the void (though, the void is undoubtedly one of my bigger supporters).
Have a wonderful day! I hope you can take some time to make something and tell someone about how you did it.
Lots of love,
Simon 🐒
🔗 Links & Thinks 🧠
I didn't feel like it fit into the actual text above, but in the name of demystifying my process, I'll add the tools I use to write these newsletters.
I usually start an idea in my brain, just thinking about it, and then make a note on paper to capture it. After a lot of time (and money) spent trying to find the "perfect" pocket notebook, I've recently picked up these A7 sized notebooks from the great local shop, King W. Books which fit in basically all my pockets so I always have a notebook on hand. I also carry a Fisher Space Pen with that, because they're small and because I'm a space nerd. I often forget about these and make notes on my phone, too.
I make most of my digital notes and write all these newsletters in Obsidian. I've been using it for a few years, I pay for their "sync" service so I can get my notes on my PC and my iPhone, and I've liked it more as a program as I've tried to make it less complex. I don't use a ton of crazy productivity plugins, and the less YouTube videos I watch about it the more I like it. Just my two cents on that. The notes app on your phone is probably just as good. The one thing I do like about Obsidian is that I can link my notes together easily, which is how ideas like "Demystify the Process" emerged.
I use a bunch of different tools to make the artwork for the newsletter. Most recently that's been Procreate, Inkscape, Photopea and the Affinity suite. I rely a lot on Archive.org and The Public Domain Review for the art and visual assets I include in the art, too. The drawings in the banner of this post are from old magic books I found on Archive.org.
Finally, as of the time of this writing, the newsletter itself is hosted on Substack. I don't really like Substack, for a lot of reasons (more on that later, I'm sure), but it's where I thought I wanted to be at one point, and I'd rather keep writing here than repeatedly change platforms. I don't expect to be on Substack forever, and if I were setting this newsletter up from scratch today, I'd probably use something else like Ghost, ButtonDown or micro.blog.
Most importantly, none of these tools feel essential to what I do because I force myself not to think of them that way. I try to embrace experimentation and flexibility so I can change things up if I need to or want to without leaving the core of what I'm doing behind. If Fisher Space Pen refills become $200 each, I'm pretty sure I can still write with a pencil, if I need to.
Finally, if you want to see me put together the banner artwork for this piece, here’s the timelapse Procreate made: