Rough Cuts: Creativity - Yellow Dog

I meant to read through Rough Cuts: Media Design in Process today while my son was napping in order to learn about various academics? thoughts on the creative process. Unfortunately, I spent some of that valuable time (I only have a two hour window at most while he?s out of school) drinking coffee, reading a few Facebook status updates, wondering if my wife had any new tweets, basking in my Ratebeer Star4aDay status,? submitting materials for promotion to full, and quickly sketching next semester?s Wired course (since we, the co-directors, need to submit a full Wired schedule shortly). Then, just as I was about to read the Rough Cuts pieces, my son awoke.

Whatever thoughts I might have had in relation to the Rough Cut issue were interrupted by my son and his need to have lunch. I enjoy writing about and speaking about the creativity process, though not from the position of being a ?creative writer.? I?m not. I?m also not an artist. And I?m also not interested in art or creative writing. Instead, I think of my academic writing as creative. At home the other day, I compared my work on a new book project about social media and craft beer as being like a musician getting back into the studio. I have a project in mind. I have a concept. I want to create it. I need to get into the studio. I don?t think this is a romantic view of academic writing, but rather, a desire to create. That is, I don?t claim the process to be inspired from above, artistic, or generated by some muse or locale. Instead, I enjoy the labor and work of creating. Sometimes it works out. Sometimes it doesn?t. The Rough Cuts intro hints at romantic narratives regarding creativity:

There?s another set of metaphors I wish to draw attention to, which revolve around the twin concepts of progress and evolution: we often speak about the ?origin? of an idea or the ?growth? or ?development? of a poem or performance.

An origin can be explained as metaphoric (i.e., eureka!) or merely the banal (I saw a poster the other day?.a dog took a crap and I thought about?my kids? smelly feet reminded me of?.). I seldom have origin stories beyond the casual: While in graduate school, I noticed that American Graffiti and James Brown?s Live at the Apollo are both situated around 1963, for instance.? Or I grew tired of Detroit narratives of rehabilitation and destruction. There is nothing in either observation that strikes me as an ?origin? other than a casual observation or thought that eventually became a book.

A great deal of my writing lately has been about creativity: ?Noetic Writing: Plato Comes to Missouri (Composition Studies),? ?I am McLuhan (Enculturation),? ? Twenty-First Century Literacy: Searching The Story of Billy the Kid ? (was supposed to be in print Digital Debates book and now I guess will be in the online version if not bumped again for no reason other than it doesn?t fit traditional Digital Humanities narratives), and a forthcoming piece ?Occupying the Digital Humanities? (College English). Even Digital Detroit is really a book about networks as the creative act of rhetorical production (as Rhetoric of Cool was really about the temporal juxtaposition act of creativity for historical reflection).? Often, readers of this type of work reject it. ?Noetic Writing? was rejected twice before being published, for instance. John Schilb, then editor of College English, called it ?personal writing? and claimed the journal doesn?t publish such writing. Most of my writing performs and explains an act of invention, which, in essence, is a fancy word for creativity. I am part of that process, of course. In that way, I suppose my writing is personal writing, though I had not thought of ?Noetic Writing? as personal other than the fact that I included photographs of my daughter eating in St. Louis restaurants.

I find Roland Barthes? descriptions of creative work mesmerizing: get up, check the radio, go to the dentist, have coffee, write, listen to the radio, etc. The banality of activities stresses a process of creativity hidden in many told narratives. Barthes excels at personal writing. There is no grand gesture in Barthes. My favorite Barthes personal writing moment is in the Roland Barthes book where he proclaims his love for pissing in the garden.? He dismisses any grand meaning in the gesture; he merely likes it. At one point in The Neutral, Barthes reads a student response to a lecture he delivered a day earlier. The student chastises him for getting Buddhism wrong in his lecture.? Who said I was an expert in Buddhism? Barthes responds. The lecture ? or book, or essay, or video, or blog post ? need not cater to expertise to be creative. Buddhism, for Barthes, merely served as a point of departure or reflection in an otherwise banal moment of invention. He could care less if expertise played a role in the process. My writing often takes such a stance. I am no expert on Detroit. I am no expert on the Digital Humanities. I am merely interested in invention.

Last night, I watched my daughter coloring in her activity book at West Sixth Brewery here in Lexington. We were there because Jenny, as composition director, was hosting a reception for new TAs. The TAs will largely be responsible for exposing first year students to the creative process of academic writing, and they do so as they, as well, work to understand such struggles (dissertation writing, trying to publish, etc.). They are on dual tracks of expertise searches: as students and as teachers. My only observation on this experience comes as one who has directed composition programs, taught the TA practicum many times, and, of course, been a TA many years ago. It?s a pity we fret so much over expertise. Expertise is ethos, but it also can shut down invention entirely. A typical composition program devotes endless energy in trying to be expert. It can?t, of course.? TAs and young student writers can only explore their creativity. Maybe later I can read through the Rough Cut approaches to creativity as well and see where expertise fits in to these academic narratives, whether they are personal or supposedly in-personal approaches to invention.

My son has since finished his lunch of supposedly organic free range chicken hot dogs. And grapes. If he eats anything other than pasta with butter, I consider that a parental victory. He?s now chasing the cat around.? I?m sure he thinks he?s some kind of cat chasing expert.

Source: http://ydog.net/?p=1485

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