There are creators in all fields who prefer creativity itself to be something unexamined, for fear that looking under the hood of what they get up to will disturb their ability to actually do it.  Not a theory I subscribe to: I’m very much of the opposite inclination, happy to look at the processes which may underpin my ability to write.

I like to see my attitude as part of a lineage which includes seminal creators such as Miles Davis and Brian Eno (and no, that doesn’t mean I believe I’m as ‘good as’ them).  Miles started off as a sideman in the bop era, before pretty much inventing cool jazz, and then reinventing himself a few other times.  He did so out of a desire to keep moving forward, not getting stuck in his or anyone else’s cliches.  As a result, it’s hard to hear the connections between, say, Kind Of Blue and On The Corner.  The former sounds accessible enough, a masterpiece of melodic group interplay.  The latter baffled people on its release, and only in recent years has it been reappraised in the light of its twin influences: experimental composer Stockhausen and funk maestro Sly Stone.  Personally, I love both disks, but even if you don’t it’s hard not to be impressed by Davis’s determination to keep his sound fresh.

Brian Eno takes that determination to experiment one step further with the Oblique Strategies cards he co-developed with Peter Schmidt.  They’re designed to keep the recording process alive when things get stale, giving gnomic instructions such as ‘What would your best friend do?’ and ‘Honour the error as a hidden intention’.  OK, maybe hard to imagine such processes being employed now that Eno is working with Coldplay, but listen further back to his solo albums or collaborations with Robert Fripp and David Byrne and you can hear a restless intelligence at work, navigating uncharted territories that would later be marked out as whole new genres of music.

What this has to do with writing is my conviction that writers should look in any and every possible direction when seeking inspiration and guidance.  Read Steven Pinker on language and thought.  Study Tarot for interesting ways to look at character and structure.  Pore over graphic novels for new possibilities in visual storytelling.  Talk to people outside of whatever social circles you usually move in to keep your antennae alert to difference.  Your job is to output writing, and its uniqueness will be determined by the range of your input.  There’s no shortage of writers out there who’ve studied with Robert McKee: how about instead soaking up all you can about hypnosis, anthropology, scuba diving, the tattoo business? 

I’ve not done a screenwriting MA and am perhaps stubbornly proud of the fact that whatever I’ve learned and accomplished I’ve done by doing it my way.  Perverse maybe, but it makes a difference.  OK, it’s taken me longer to make some connections than it otherwise would, but the particular path I’ve taken has been fascinating and absorbing, even on its darkest days, and I wouldn’t swap it for anything.  For me, perhaps the biggest lesson I’d pass on about writing is simply captured in the phrase ‘be where the difference is’.  By which I mean stay restless, tune in to what is most likely to take you off your own map and into the bit that reads ‘Here be dragons’.  History tells us that dragons are unlikely to have existed, but the pursuit of them - well, that’s a grand tale…