The plague of non-creativity

As the great former leader singer of House of Pain once uttered, ‘I am fed up.’ The latest in mind numbing lack of creativity from the publishing monolith is yet another technological solution to a social problem. Presenting Kindle. I am using this to demonstrate with I think is a discernable lack in creativity of an industry that is increasing going up it’s own pipes. So why is this so uncreative?

This is not the problem it’s part of the problem

A few years ago the great Stephen King attempted to sell his Plant novella (still unfinished I might add) online through what many thought was a clever system at the time. The problem? The honor system. Apparently it wasn’t worthwhile to write something for online audiences. In plain English, you can’t take what people expect to be free and sell it to them. The problem: the publishing and writing world is notoriously unfair. It’s dog eat dog eat publisher eat author eat audience. We needed a different way of doing things.

Authors are no different

I recently read about the Sobol prize being cancelled for a lack of interest. Even more evidence of a lack of creativity. Sure, there are probably other reasons for the prize being canned. But for a lack of interest? Where are the next generation of writers? Blogging, reading their ‘e-novel’ on their ‘Kindles’… I doubt it. Whatever happened to writing a few good short stories and having them accepted and moving on from their. Hardly none of the publishing industry have done anything about the way it operates (including the authors who are a part of the system) for over 100 years. I haven’t seen one single non-technical innovation from the publishing industry. So now we have Kindle… great we can read the latest novels on an e-reader that feels like a book. Wow. How’s that going to sustain a failing industry? How’s it going to feed forward to the next generation of creative writers? It’s not.

What we can do about it

I have no idea. I am guessing that the majority of the 1/10 of 1% of authors that write books make money and don’t want things to change. The creative thinker says: ‘what can we do differently that we haven’t done before that would attract new talent to take the torch forward.’ How can we address the imbalance so that people who are considered to be unpublishable, at least have a shot at making it. The same goes for the film, art and other creative industries as well.

The non-creative plague

Think of the countless movies, television shows, books and the like that are the same old same old. Whatever happened to making new things that were interesting or being innovative. See, this is what happens when you put the dollar ahead of the art. You wind up with an imbalance that gives precedence to formula and spits on creative endeavour.

What to do about it?

I am not sure anything can be done. Have we gone too far in the wrong direction? I can shoulder the blame at the university level and say… yes we should be teaching the next generation of creative people instead of feeding them into the meat grinder. I am still amazed at the amount of movies that are released last year that you can predict point by point. I think I am well and truly alone on this. Never mind… that’s why I took up blogging!

Start being creative today.  Burn your CUBE!  Get out there and create.  If your boss stops you… do it anyway.  You must do something.  The world is in a very non-creative state of affairs.  For the love of God… do it!

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