Creative urges

[mrissa]

ellarien said something in comments a few days ago that made me want to respond in more than a comment, and then lj went down and I didn't end up doing it. Here's what she said, in response to something I said about leaving physics:

That resonates with me, in an odd way. About ten years ago, I was getting far more satisfaction out of writing than I was out of my research job, and I seriously considered giving it all up and trying to write full time. I actually spent six months doing each half-time, and then found a new research job where I was much happier. I've done less and less writing since then, and found that I can more or less pacify the creative urge by crocheting instead. It's interesting to hear from someone who took the other fork, as it were.

And what I want to say is: I don't apparently have a creative urge. I believe that some people do, that some people have the need to create something, and can pacify that need by creating a wide variety of things. I am not, however, in that category. I have a writing urge, specifically a fiction urge. Occasionally I also have a baking urge and a cooking urge. But not a generalized creative urge: if I have a fiction urge, making a pan of muffins won't help, and painting won't help, and I'm fairly convinced that other things wouldn't help, either.

I keep thinking I should learn to knit or crochet because, or so my hindbrain tells me, then I would know how to do something useful. (More likely then my hindbrain would reclassify knitting and crocheting as non-useful.) I have no intention to learn, however, because I don't want to give my brain another set of urges and another set of projects to fuss about finishing.

I'm wondering: how many of you have a need to make stuff and find it can be handled in a wide variety of ways depending on what you have readily available? And how many of you have one specific or a handful of specific things you feel the need to make? Does it feel significantly different to you to do one creative task than another, in terms of what it satisfies in your head?

Comments

[ellarien]

Thanks for bringing this up. I've been thinking about it some more, and it's complicated. The crocheting isn't a perfect substitute for writing, but it does work to fill in the gap where my day job isn't totally fulfilling for me. I need stories in my life, but I don't necessarily have to write down the ones that turn up in my head, though it was very satisfying when I could. I need to explore and solve problems, and the job gives me plenty of that; in so far as writing consists of putting words on a screen in coherent form, I get to do that too. Lately, thanks to the wonders of PowerPoint and HTML, I even get to express myself in shape and colour in ways I never knew I could. What's left over is what I classify as the 'creative urge', and crochet does seem to help with that. I even find myself trying to design patterns in boring meetings, rather than telling myself stories. It helps that it's something I can do that doesn't involve sitting in front of a computer.

I haven't completely given up on writing fiction, but I'm so rusty now it's hard to get started again, and in the meantime I've read so much advice and discussion of process that I don't trust my own instincts any more.

Right now, I have to do some useful domestic stuff.