Can things which seem unrelated to each other be in some way a yin and yang binary? We set up arbitrary systems where we have the energy run off of one action spill into the self-created engine of another action. Could we let them all collapse and still carry on?
Haven’t we had these house of cards blown apart before? They are the loosest of tarots, bound only by a flimsy balance. Sometimes though, they seem so substantial, that if we are asked to knock them apart because someone else considers it to be necessary, we are reluctant. Why? It has worked for us in the past.
I like to play games with myself to distort the shapes of the things that I create. Why? Because otherwise everything that I create might end up being exactly the same, and who wants to keep trotting out dead communications? Not me.
Different types of writing really do use different muscles. I know some people would disagree with this, but it seems to me an idiotic notion that writing something I can freely make up is going to require exactly the same discipline as crafting something that is fact based and is constrained by that. Being able to let loose with imagination really does loosen up the muscles I use for writing non-fiction.
If someone argues that having this kind of system in place is some kind of dodge, and that it sets up a mental mechanism that cannot be replicated and taught to someone else, I would not disagree. How are you ever going to write something that I would write? You aren’t me. Forgers aside – I would say that a close approximation is not the same thing. Why do I care to make these distinctions and observations about my own process? Because it means that when it grinds to a halt, either because of my own failures, or because of outside influence, I need to be able to debug it and get the train rolling again. I have always been very self aware and able to observe what is happening with the work I am doing – in order to not lose that, I have to guard against outside efforts to derail it. Produce what is asked for, and do it in the way you are asked, as much as you can. But when it comes to your creativity, is it ever a good idea to let someone else determine what that is and how it manifests? I would argue that it is not.