George Bernard Shaw talked about the “field theory” of creativity, borrowing a term from physics.
Good ideas do not exist alone but in a larger field of imagination.
As a young man Shaw wrote five novels. Can you name one?
Shaw had to work through his novelist phase before he could arrive, in his late thirties, as a playwright.
Shaw believed in productivity — just keep writing, was his advice to everyone.
Norma Jenckes, a Shaw scholar at the University of Cincinnati, says Shaw’s attitude was that “you had to write yourself through all sorts of things, and then something might become your masterpiece.”
Geniuses work hard. They’re prodigious. They can’t stop themselves from churning out work.
Thomas Edison couldn’t stop inventing. Joyce Carol Oates can’t stop writing.
Shaw published 55 plays.
Milton Avery spewed paintings by the museum-load; when asked how he got inspiration, he said by going to the studio every day.
No piece of writing is wasted. Even if you don't like it when it's finished. At least you wrote it. Now it is no longer clogging your brain. It is out there; it made room for the next idea to surface.
You have cleared the way to write something else
When I wrote my first play in the 1990s, I showed it to the great playwright, EDWARD ALBEE.
He was teaching in our department and we had become friends,
He read it and said, "Good NOW WRITE TEN MORE."
Then he added "But this will get you into YADDO and it did!
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