Creativity through exhaustion

Some of the most interesting things I've written were written when I was tired, exhausted, ready to fall into bed and... well, not sleep instantly, because I can't do that, but as close as I get to that (which is for me something like twenty minutes).

When we're tired, our conscious mind gets slow and lethargic, just like the rest of our body. We start to rely on instinct and gut reactions rather than logic and convention. Our internal censor takes a breather.

(The same thing happens, to a much greater extent, when on drugs, I imagine, which is why they have been utilized so much by artists -- in addition to the fact that drugs are a cheap short-term escape from the pain most artists try [and fail] to otherwise exorcise through art.)

Thus, when we're tired, our unconscious mind -- the part of the mind responsible for the core, I think, of all artistic or creative endeavors -- gets a better hold on us, and our creativity increases, our art gets-- not better, necessarily, but-- more real.

(This is of course the reason dreams are such a fertile source of artistic/creative inspiration as well, as [when we can remember them] they are essentially a direct conduit to the unconscious mind, even if what it's saying is gibberish.)

What comes out is raw and unrefined, a diamond covered in dirt. We have to clean it up before it's presentable to others; but nonetheless, the diamond is there, waiting to be found.

So, for me at least, the schedule is this: create at night, edit it in the morning.

(This has the added benefit of keeping a lot of time and a night's sleep between the initial writing and the first editing, which allows me to put some necessary distance between the two and get a fresh look at the writing. Sometimes I don't even remember what I wrote the night before, which is always an... interesting experience, to say the least.)

Kudos to Stephanie (Hall) for making me think about this in a conversation yesterday.