WWN25 : Creative Constraints

I am slowly working through the biography of one Theodor Geisel.

Better known as…

Dr Seuss!

Ben Settle recommended it to me recently and so I ordered it.

Now, dear reader, when I say “slowly” I mean I ordered it in April…

…started it immediately…

…got distracted by life…

…remembered “Oh I’m reading that one” and dipped in again…

…got distracted again…

…and so on until in October I’m maybe one fifth done.

Such is the way of life and the fun thing is that my experience of reading the book is going to dovetail perfectly with the point of this newsletter, which I’m going to illustrate with an example from Dr Seuss.

But before we unpack that serendipitous Seussian significance…

…let me just quickly flag up an incredible piece of FREE training for anyone who wants to write better and make more money online.

(Which ought to be all of you, c’mon.)

Note: This was a limited time offer which has now expired. Subscribe so you never miss another.

So I’ll remind you about that in a moment, but first…

…we have to talk about tying yourself up.

Because I sit here typing this in my cabin, watching the rain beat down like it’s day three of Noah’s forty, and I’m working on a few projects as always.

The main one is a series of “Reader’s Guides” for a new Crossway ESV Study Bible for kids.

These “Reader’s Guides” have serious constraints on them. There’s a specific format they have to take, and they’re all 150 (±15) words long. And believe me, taking the essence of a deep chapter of Colossians and writing 135-165 words on it is a challenge.

But I’ve kicked it up a notch.

The guides have a 10% margin, so anything between 135-165 words is fine.

So for each draft, I aim for that ballpark. And then when I come back to edit it:

I edit it to exactly 150 words.

I’ve also set deadlines long in advance of when they need done by.

Why?

Why make it harder? Why add constraints that I don’t need to have? Surely this writing game is all about making it easier?!

Dear reader, most people get this wrong.

They think that creativity is about casting off constraints.

But that's bass-ackwards. Creativity cries out for constraints. Forms, restrictions, discipline - those all give you the container into which to pour your thoughts. To make order of the chaos.

No container and like the rain in Aberdeen today you can have enough of the stuff to flood the earth and it'll be done and gone by tomorrow. It all just washes away.

Like having a free day and before you know it it's nighttime and nothing's done but when you only have half an hour to tidy up you get everything done with ten minutes to spare.

If I just sat down every day and thought "what shall I write?" I would get nowhere. I'd stare at the blank screen for days at a time and type nothing. But instead, I sit down and think "I have to write a newsletter teaching an aspect of writing”.

Then I think “it should relate to the writing I’ve been doing this week” which are these highly-constrained Reader’s Guides.

I think of the editing trick I’m using and boom.

I have a topic. I have a box to pour my thoughts into.

It’s the same with all kinds of writing. Poetry has meter and rhythm and rhyme. Prose has sentence structure and rhetorical flourishes. Social media has memes and strategies and post formats that work.

And by using those you can be more creative, not less.

Because you have a focal point.

The lack of this focal point is exactly why I’ve never gotten that Dr Seuss biography finished. I have no constraints, it’s not part of a plan. I can just read whatever I want whenever I want to read it.

And so I never get it done.

But that’s not even the main benefit of constraints…

The main benefit is that those constraints

Force you to do something different!

If I have to hit exactly 150 words and I’m sitting at 149, then I have to think where I can rephrase it to be one word longer while still improving it (i.e. not just randomly adding a word into the sentence).

Likewise, I can’t just say “155, good enough” I have to carefully cut five more words.

That forces my brain into another gear. It makes me look at each word carefully, do I need it? Can it go? Is there a simpler way to explain it? Is there something else I can add? A nuance I can explore? A digression I could cut?

It’s not about showing off and handing in 35 manuscripts all with exactly 150 words.

After this editing pass I’ll do another, and I’ll not worry about the constraint that round.

But doing it this way forces me to think about every single word.

It makes it harder.

Challenging constraints are creative crutches.

Look back at Dr Seuss.

He wrote Green Eggs and Ham in response to a bet that he couldn’t write a story using only fifty unique words.

He wrote The Cat in the Hat in response to a challenge to write a compelling story using only the basic words in reading primers.

And in both cases he created a long-lasting childhood classic and propelled his writing career sky-high.

Would it have been easier to write the stories without those constraints?

Yes.

Constraints make it harder.

And that’s the point!

If you’re a writer who takes their craft seriously, you’re not trying to make things easier.

If that’s what you wanted, you’d be a Content Creatooooor hack posting about famous writing routines and the one secret you learned from studying fifty-seven writing books.

But if you’re a craftsman writer you want to create the best possible words you can.

And one powerful way to do that is to impose constraints on yourself.

So give it a think.

What can you do to constrain yourself and encourage creativity?

More ideas on that in Craftsman’s Corner for those that are subscribed, but meanwhile may your tobacco be constrained by your pipe and your prose constrained by whatever makes it better,

James Carran, Craftsman Writer

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