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Riding the Hype Cycle

The cliché goes that one must suffer for their art and, try as one might to bracket this observation as stereotype, it seems the creative process is fraught with emotional pain.

As artists, we experience an idea that dominates our imagination and we are moved to make something with this idea. The making is often accompanied by invited (and too often unsolicited) criticism which makes us realize that what was in our head hasn’t been realized. We wallow. And for many, this is where the story ends but, for those with luck and providence, a new experience occurs—one’s failures evolve and the original idea matures into a vision that sparks greater ideas.

an abstract repeating illustration of two intertwined bodies.
Original illustration by Skye Murie.

Otto Rank, the existential psychoanalyst, in his work Art and Artist, put it this way in distinguishing between a neurotic and a creative:

The neurotic, in the voluntary remaking of his ego, does not get beyond the destructive preliminary work and is therefore unable to detach the whole creative process from his own person and transfer it to an ideological abstraction. The productive artist also begins . . . with that recreation of himself which results in an ideologically constructed ego; [but in this case] this ego is then in a position to shift the creative willpower from his own person to ideological representations of that person and thus render it objective. It must be admitted that this process is in a measure limited to within the individual, and that not only in its constructive but also in its destructive aspects. This explains why hardly any productive work gets through without morbid crises of a ‘neurotic’ nature.” (emphasis mine)

It seems that the pursuit of art can make an obsessive demand on the artist, which can resemble madness. Those who have faced a real or figurative blank canvas have felt their mind twist when they’ve had to consider disappointment bleeding towards despair.

Rank summed up art as, “. . . life’s dream interpretation. . .” and his method towards understanding its practice is stated well by Anais Nin in The Diary of Anais Nin, Vol.1: when she describes the doctor by, “. . . his curiosity, not the impulse to classify . . . relying on his intuition, intent on discovering.” The psychoanalysis Rank practiced with Nin deviated from his fellow Freudians, in that he lived through the author’s “writer’s block” with her (to the point of a sexual relationship), rather than removing himself from it towards diagnosis, and emerged as a character within her work, “The Winter of Artifice.”

Rank practiced a more active and egalitarian psychotherapy focused on the here-and-now, real relationship, and conscious mind and will, rather than past history, transference, and the unconscious. He, therefore, used empathy as a means to insight, which in turn made the creative process, and its inherent anxieties, real.

The words used to describe the creative process seem to validate the observation that creativity and crisis are inevitable partners.

We speak of great works being “wrought” with “painstaking” attention and “born” from “vulnerable” places that can be “raw,” “tender,” and “fragile.”

But, why is this?

The creative cycle seems to follow a predictable path of awareness, introspection, self-criticism, despair, back to awareness. Each new idea seems to come with a mix of enjoyment and angst.

My writing process often goes something like this:

A. I get excited about an idea I consider ambitious

B. I share this ambitious idea

C. People don’t get it

D. I get upset at their confusion

E. Embarrassment follows when I understand and agree with the confusion

F. Despair strikes, I want to give up

G. I start over

F is usually the point where my inner-critic tells me to run from the embarrassment I’ve brought and suggests a scheme to do something else that has lower emotional costs.

A sort of Rankian empathy from a fellow creative person (usually my wife) accompanies G with a call to improvise.

It seems that the pain of creativity is related to the loneliness of disappointment and the cure for this pain is to consider that I’m not as terminally unique as I might think.

I’ve made a recent discovery that has accelerated my ability to get past my disillusionment.

My “day job” is in the world of communications strategy and recently I’ve been doing some reading on an idea known as the “Gartner Hype Cycle.”

Considering the Hype Cycle has given me a better idea of how my creative process is not an anomaly, but rather a standard experience for any new idea that looks to be meaningful to other people.

Gartner is an information technology research and advisory firm located in Stamford, Connecticut, and their Hype Cycle was developed to show a visual path for the maturity, adoption, and social application of specific technologies.

It’s easy enough to read. You consider a new idea against the visibility it engenders (e.g., sharing a play concept with a variety of friends) relative to the time it takes to make that idea meaningful to others.

It isn’t necessary I understand why I feel the way I do but rather what my feelings tell me about where I am in the process.

Hype cycle. Source: Wikipedia.

There is an initial peak of inflated expectations, and this peak is followed by an inevitable crash when the new idea doesn’t seem to live up to its expected importance (e.g., Microsoft’s Zune® as a competitor to Apple’s iPod®).

Recently, The Hype Cycle has been used to better understand how “old” media (e.g., TV and print) has become secondary to “new” media (e.g., Twitter feeds) and the resulting analysis that is needed in the face of strategic confusion and/or disillusionment (e.g., the inability for companies to monetize the attention their Facebook page gets, where the anticipated instant groundswell of “customer created” grass-roots campaigns has not resulted in immediate profitable product sales, despite the campaigns “branding” success, evidenced by the “likes” their Facebook page has received).

For my creative discipline, playwriting, this cycle seems to approximate my creative process.

I refer you back to my A through G experience above.

I find it difficult to persevere sometimes while working on a play because I worry that the struggles I have evidence my illegitimacy as a writer.

My wife is a choreographer and she has shared the same struggles.

And while we are only a sample of two, it seems that the angst we experience is similar to that of fellow creative friends.

These struggles have made me keep asking, why is that?

But when considering the Hype Cycle, I’ve started to think that asking “why” is less important than asking “where.”

It isn’t necessary I understand why I feel the way I do but rather what my feelings tell me about where I am in the process.

If I am filled with certainty that my new idea will create a revolution within the concept of say something like, how exposition works, then it might be good to check my Hype Cycle and at least consider that I am riding a wave of inflated expectations.

If I am in despair that I am dried up and no ideas can come to me after another scene in my writing group has failed to communicate my intention, then I might need to see that I am resting in a trough.

And whatever my feelings might be in a given moment I can recognize that if I provide myself the charity of time there is a probability given the Hype Cycle that I can ride towards enlightenment and productivity.

The Hype Cycle and more specifically learning to ride my personal Hype Cycle seems a good navigation device to get through the emotional storms that crop up in the creative journey. I’m seeing how it can be a model for me to better understand that the despair I often feel when trying to create something has little to do with my personal failings, it might just be the creative pursuit’s objective nature.

Disillusionment stops being an abusive parent and instead becomes part of the process where the slow climb out of it towards future productivity is enjoyed over time.

To reiterate Rank, considering the Hype Cycle puts me, “in a position to shift [my] creative willpower,” and seems to offer a partial answer to the question of creativity’s suffering.

An artist is not that different than the “idea generating technology” Gartner has mapped.

I shared this hunch with my writing group and we seemed to agree that a writer grows as a writer when she identifies a process that brings her enjoyment or, as Rank puts it, when the artist can detach from their work and, “ . . . render it objective.”

Letting go in this way helps new ideas to happen.

The question remains, why do creative pursuits hurt sometimes?

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I really loved and appreciated this article, and it made me wonder if I am no longer involved in the arts precisely for the reason that I have fled the pain and agony of failing to be able to bring to an audience the inner work of my work.

I would encourage another psychology on avoiding sharing works in process, however - and I believe it engenders one with greater confidence and strength in approach to their creative life. If I'm not mistaken, I am stealing this concept from Dorothea Brand's "Becoming a Writer." What makes us pursue writing, dance, theatre, music, etc. is a desire to share a thought, feeling, story with someone else. By doing this too early in process, we satisfy that urge and prompting. I firmly believe that sets up that despair when response doesn't match our creative zeal. Of course, there does come a time when the work must face the scrutiny of an editor or mentor or critic, but we won't feel that it is a delicate infant, about whom we have great emotions but of whom we have very little understanding. Once our understanding and commitment begin to match our creative impulse on a certain work, I believe we are in a much stronger position with that precious child, and more able to shape it's adaptation.

Whew! Sorry - much more than I had intended to say, and surely much more than anyone will be interested in reading.

Jay

I'm totally on Monica's wavelength. A new work (especially in writing) should be treated as fragile as if its a baby. Yes, it may grow up to lead a country or throw a 90 yard pass but first it needs to be nurtured, kept away from germs, strengthened. Once it learns to walk and talk THEN it needs exposure to germs.

When I submit work I think of it as though its my own child going for a job interview... "do your best, be yourself, but if it doesn't work out, come on back home and we'll work on getting the next thing."

The time elapse between A and B should be long and filled with the hard, daily and caring work of a parent. It helps to survive the Trough.

Thank you for that graph. I'll refer to it in the future.

While not exactly the same topic, I just listened to a great TED talk that supports the idea of continuing to work on something, and NOT to trust one's first concepts as being the next wonder of the world. This "artistic neurosis" should be encouraged in fields that influence society like medicine and politics, where many have the opposite problem, a god complex (belief that the inflated expectation is spot on, and thus will stop working on the concept). Thanks Chuck!

http://www.ted.com/talks/ti...

Loved this theory. Loved the term Trough of Disillusionment. Hope to attach less to it in my own process.

This column made me so happy. (And not just because there was a nice geeky graph included.) I know so many young artists who share their ideas as soon as they have them, or share a scribbled fragment of a first draft (which should never be shown to anyone!), then present them to someone for evaluation (!?); then wither at the response (which in my case, is usually "It's great that you're working! Keep working. This isn't a finished work"), and give up before they've even started. I protect my ideas for a VERY long time--akin to protecting a newborn from germs, or cow's milk, or shellfish--or at least refer to them only in the vaguest terms. When I do share an idea for any reason, it's either with someone I really trust, or because I feel confident enough in the idea that it can withstand those confused looks.