YHK - yet another hacker news clone

You might want to try being less creative

29 points bryantwolf 1 hour ago 14 comments

herbertl 49 minutes ago | parent

While I like the punchy title, I'd suggest the often invisible role of preliminary work IS a part of being creative. In music it's "demos," in art it's "sketches," in writing it's "drafts," etc. I write in my book, Creative Doing:

> This stage is far too early to demand perfection; it’s best to keep expectations low, to refrain from self-criticism, and to support psychological safety (the feeling that it’s okay to make mistakes) to allow every single detail of the idea to flow out.

It's related to the original post's mention of scarcity, and how "the path to writing a great song really is through hundreds of mediocre songs." The most reliable way to good work is to allow it to emerge through a lot of preliminary work (e.g., lots of drafts, demos, and sketches).

More on preliminary work here: https://www.holloway.com/g/creative-doing/sections/draft-dem...

schiffern 35 minutes ago | parent

Maybe the word "creative" would be better replaced with "novel" or "original."

bryantwolf 9 minutes ago | parent

I agree. It's all part of the creative process. I guess I framed it this way because I think it's what my younger self needed to hear because I definitely wouldn't have considered that part the creative work then.

I think there's something here that's a little different from just "refrain from criticism" that I needed to hear which is something like "you can spend a lot of time trying to find the perfect way to do something, or you just do it many different ways and see which you like better" and frankly, I spent so much time noodling, it might have been _less_ overall time if I'd just forced myself to record some very formulaic versions I was averse to, and seen if any of those inspired me to actually get the thing done.

I liked "Instead, it’s about creating one version of a project that will likely either be improved upon in the future or serve as inspiration for something else. The key is to cultivate the commitment and conviction to declare that something is done, for now." from your piece. I think that's what I'm trying to get at.

Ancalagon 49 minutes ago | parent

Why does every article have to start with a biography these days?

andai 43 minutes ago | parent

[flagged]

dang 28 minutes ago | parent

No personal attacks, please.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

windowliker 32 minutes ago | parent

It's the NPRificiation of everything. I had to stop listening to BBC Radio 4 because most documentary programmes have basically just become This American Life with British accents.

carefree-bob 28 minutes ago | parent

You might enjoy this Portlandia send up:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsufMtUOXtI

andai 43 minutes ago | parent

Started having way more fun (and making better music) when I released the "need" to make everything from scratch and just started dragging and dropping loops.

Now it's like I'm back in 2003 when my feature phone had a little music composer thing on it. You'd just slap together some presets.

Life is good.

bryantwolf 3 minutes ago | parent

Where were you fifteen years ago! I'd love to hear more about your process if you're interested!

computerdork 24 minutes ago | parent

Am an aspiring composer. We often say we have no qualms about "stealing" from other composers. Yeah, if we see an idea or technique used in piece of music we like, we won't hesitate to try it out in our own pieces. Of course, we don't actually steal to the point of plagarism, but it's pretty common to do, and the ideas we take are often modified for your own needs or just taken in parts.

pdonis 20 minutes ago | parent

When Brahms was told that his Symphony No. 1 sounded like Beethoven, he said "Even a donkey knows that!"

https://note.com/apt_crow7500/n/n440c1a6cfb63?hl=en

bryantwolf 7 minutes ago | parent

Yes! I find that whenever I try to steal something, I end up taking some of it's essence, but I end up modifying it so much that it's not really that thing any more anyway.

So I want to be less afraid to do that. Because at the end of the day, if I decide it's too stolen, I can always just not release it.