Input Much of creativity is made by associating disassociated ideas, mixing up concepts, putting a new spin on an old concept, chasing down curiosities, learning new things, empathizing with different perspectives… or in other words: remixing input.

Without material to play with, we will draw a blank. So the goal here is to input a lot of material, but not in the passive way most of us commonly do.

#peertube

Binging all the seasons of The Office again is a very passive and inactive experience. Most of what we consume is considered “programming.” When we spend all of our waking hours in programmed time, it leaves us with very little material to work with. What we create becomes derivative of the shallow input that we’ve consumed.

The type of input that we’re looking for here is actively engaged with. It takes effort to consume and understand. It has depths to delve. It takes time and focus. And it yields worthwhile results. Buy this design on shirts, mugs, hoodies, flags: https://www.corykerr.com/shop?category=War Buy somethin' from the store: https://www.corykerr.com/store Join the email newsletter: https://www.corykerr.com/email ###############

Some suggestions for your input time:

• Chase your curiosity (dive down and document rabbit holes)
• Read books, articles, lectures, biographies, poems, short stories
• Study the scriptures and ancient texts by topic, make chains, take notes, ask questions, make connections
• Consume old media, paintings, theories, histories (get pre-digital)

• reverse engineer these.
• Deconstruct them.
• Analyze them through different lenses.

• Reverse Engineering inspirational work

• This is more that watching or listening to it
• What makes it good?
• What are the components?
• Why are they arranged that way?
• What isn’t there?
• What principles are being followed and how?
• What rules are being broken?
• Deeply understand why something is good.

• Study natural patterns

• What is the pattern difference between pine tree bark and oak tree bark?
• Draw the pattern
• Articulate your understanding of the pattern

• Ask questions

• Attempt to answer unanswerable questions

• Build “inspiration family trees”

• Find something you like.
• Find the creator
• Find out their inspiration
• Find our their inspiration’s inspiration
• For example: George Lucas is heavily influenced by Pulp Novels, Buck Rogers comics, Westerns, WWII dog fights, and Akria Kurasawa (who was in turn influenced by Shakespeare, Greek mythology, Samurai/shogun culture, and oil painting)... Your scifi story will be much more interesting if you pull inspiration from Yojimbo and Herodotus than if you write a thin knockoff of Luke Skywalker.

So get deep, get curious, get Intentional with some of the things you consume.