creative process is a superpower
why learning the creative process will help you do anything
per my intention to acquire many new languages, last night I started reading this book — Fluent Forever — just before bed, and I was so excited about it that it was like my body went to sleep, but a part of my mind stayed awake all night to continue reading it. so I woke up this morning at 5:40 am and stayed in bed for an hour or two, swallowing the book whole.
why did it excite me so much? it is more than a book about languages. it is a book about process. and you know how much I love process. it completely sidestepped the “traditional pedagogy” of learning a language, broke it down, and started from the ground up. what is learning a language, if not simply the process of acquiring a new system of sounds — to be stored in your long term memory, and used upon recall?
I’m 100 pages in, and will report that the book is well written, funny, engaging, intelligent, thoughtful. but deeper than that — this meditation on process excited me so much because, having undergone (am currently undergoing) the long, mysterious, treacherous journey that is the creative process — of making art — the cognitive process of acquiring a new language felt, well… (this will sound overconfident but oh well) — easy.
easy. because studying known words in a given system of language is far easier than creating poetry, meaning, and beauty out of nothing. having the daily discipline to review vocabulary is nothing compared to having the discipline to write for half an hour every morning — even if you feel like shit — or paint a picture every morning, even if all your demons are screaming at you, and telling you it looks like shit.
what are the blockages to learning a new language?
lack of discipline / structure / accountability
insecurity
fear of failure
fear of embarrassment
fear of judgement
inattentiveness
laziness
mental resistance
does this list not look familiar? these are the same blocks that impede people starting out on the creative journey.
here’s what I realized today / and have always believed:
mastering the creative process will give you the confidence and the skills to learn anything, do anything, be anything you want in the world.
because the ingredients are all the same. you need a deep motivation. you need daily structure and discipline. and then, you need to keep doing it. I will write about this in my next post.