A method for staying in the zone

IT IS SAID BY THOSE IN THE KNOW that creativity is a lot more work than everyone thinks. That it’s not so much the result of an inspired moment wherein some mysterious form of genius blossoms forth, but is instead mostly the result of reworking an idea over and over, with variations explored and the best one selected. It turns out that good artists (or engineers, or writers) are just very good at being able to recognize the best option. You’ll see this going on in the world once you’re hip to this idea.

I was watching the excellent HBO documentary “Six by Sondheim” when I saw an example of this. Stephen Sondheim’s mother had befriended the family of Oscar Hammerstein when Stephen was a boy. As a result, young Sondheim ended up hanging out with the Hammersteins throughout his youth — a remarkable alignment of cross-generational songwriting talent in the universe of musical theater. Among the many things that Hammerstein shared with the budding songwriter was a memory Hammerstein had of Jerome Kern sitting at a piano in the next room working on the melody for “All the Things You Are.” Kern took hours to explore every possible note that might come next in that melody, methodically considering each choice, one after the other, until every note was decided upon. The end result of this labored process was an unlabored song that flowed and soared.

Beethoven’s notebooks show examples of him trying up to 70 different variations of a melodic passage. This should come as a relief to us regular blokes who are keenly aware that great art doesn’t just flow from our inner souls. Instead, we’re faced with the need to revise again and again to build a piece of work into something we are willing to share with the world. (Lord knows this very piece of writing you see before you has undergone rewrites and the shifting of paragraphs and abandoning of unworthy tangents. Not to mention the “killing of darlings,” which, come to think of it, probably should have included this very sentence.)

On top of this, there is a sort of handicap that comes with age. People working in fields requiring creativity will often become less creative the older they get, because all their years of experience finding solutions results in a set of techniques for solving problems that become standard responses. This “bag of tricks” is a resource that makes these veterans valuable, but, sadly, a creative edge is lost when this happens. According to Jonah Lehrer in his book “Imagine — How Creativity Works,” inventiveness peaks when we are at that age when we know enough, but not too much, and are highly resourceful with our solutions. After that, there is a risk we will become “cynical with expertise.” Poets and physicists are notorious for reaching their peak in their youth. Rock musicians, too.

Thankfully, there is a way to prevent this loss and stay creative throughout one’s life. It is this: Find ways to get a fresh take on your subject.

I saw a clip of Bob Dylan saying that to stay creative you must constantly find a way to become a beginner. This sounded vaguely interesting, but not very specific. Then, months later, I saw what he meant when I was watching a documentary called “Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers — Runnin’ Down a Dream” (directed by Peter Bogdanovich and worthy of a big thumbs-up from me). It included scenes of Petty and his band serving as Dylan’s backup band for two years of touring. There was Dylan with his guitar at the front microphone, changing the arrangement of the songs right there on stage, using hand gestures and eye contact to signal to his band that changes were coming. They were recreating these songs anew at each performance, requiring the musicians to bring all their skills to bear to stay on top of what was happening.

Later, in backstage interviews, the players can be heard expressing amazement at what that process did to them and the wonderful, spontaneous moments that broke out.

“You’re on your toes playing for your life,” drummer Stan Lynch said. “It’s the real deal.”

So that was one way to become newly creative — find a way to become a beginner. I wanted in on that.

I knew I wanted a fresh take on the design of my own house. Designing a house for myself had become my favorite hobby, and I was happily taking way too long to work on it in my spare time. But I found that I was falling into a rut and revisiting old ideas. I needed a way to break out. That’s when I saw the Tom Petty film and started to develop an idea.

In the world of building design, the floor plan is the master drawing — it’s the “map” of the project, and it tends to receive much of a designer’s attention. So I decided to try a session where I ignored the floor plan and tried a different viewpoint. I would instead design by dashing off a series of cross-section sketches that approximated the experience you would have as you moved through the house.

I would be devoting all my attention to what could be happening with vaulted ceilings and light wells and balconies. It was a valuable exercise, and downright fun.

Later, when I returned to designing in plan view, I had new insights as to what I wanted to do with the design. My thinking was now informed by my goals and the insights I had into the possibilities that came from my visit to the vertical realm of the cross-sections.

When I wanted to further stir my juices, I would do little studies such as a “bird’s-eye view” sketch that kept me more in tune with big-picture issues. It was helpful to do “doodles” of new ideas. These were best done when I was not looking at the same old drawings I had been working on for months, but instead had a clean “slate” (or the back of an envelope!).

It all came together one fine day a couple months ago when I found a way to reconcile all my wishes for my house and everything seemed to practically tumble into place, all in the confines of one fantastic hour that I’ll always remember. It was the best design day of my life.

It was sort of like a muse had visited and creativity had blossomed forth from within me. Sort of.

Really, though, there was a lot of groundwork laid to get to that moment. I had saturated my mind with so much of this sort of fertilizer that it couldn’t help but finally grow a good idea. I’m just glad I was able to recognize it when it happened!

Steve McKee is a Benicia architect specializing in residential design. He can be reached on the Web at www.smckee.com or at 707-746-6788. This piece originally was published in 2009.