The Double-Edged Sword of Creative Acclimatization
Adapting to new artistic challenges can affect your comfort with what used to be familiar. That can be good, but it can be bad, too.
This is part of my “Art of Noticing” series, in which I learn, find, or discover the things around me that usually go unnoticed and turn them into an endless source of creative inspiration.
Today, I noticed that my “heat acclimatization” in Texas has cost me a lot of cold tolerance. It got me thinking about adaptation and comfort zones in art.
(NOTE: I’m going to pretend that this is some sort of “Christmas Edition” because this post, scheduled ahead, will land on Christmas. So, you know, it’s about being cold. Sort of. Christmas means cold. Except where I live. Hey, what do you want from me? I’m an artist and I do what I want.)
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I used to live in Ohio, where winter wanted to eat you and your baby. Then I moved to Texas. I finally got used to the heat here (we had like 80 days in a row this summer above 100 degrees) … but the downside is that now, at even 65 degrees, I’m freezing.
It kind of sucks. It seems like maybe human beings can't extend one end of our comfort range without impacting the other. In the same way, adapting to new creative challenges might make us uncomfortable with what was once familiar … but if you’re not careful, losing touch with what used to be familiar can atrophy those old skills, too.
As a writer, I’m now starting to think about how adapting to a new style might — just like with heat and cold — impact my entire creative range. That’s not necessarily bad, but because it can lead to developing new and also losing the old, it's for-sure something to be aware of.
Here's how this "noticing" can benefit my stories and art:
It’s Good to Expand Into New Ideas and Techniques
Adaptation can be a great thing. If you're a writer who’s just learned the ins and outs of scriptwriting after years of novels, you've added another tool to your creative toolbox. I’ve tried this. I’m far from figuring out scripts, but hey … at least I’m trying.
But I’ll bet that if I really, REALLY got into scripts for a while and got really good at them, my novel-writing muscles would get a bit stiff.
I suppose the key, if I went whole hog into screenwriting, would be for me to keep touch with book-writing. If I keep practicing both, I won’t don’t lose the skills that took me so long to develop coming up. Balance is essential … but so is that wary eye on the potential for atrophy.
Or, Just Discard the Old for Now in a Spree of Creative Reinvention
Or, I could see that my times are changing and I’m okay prioritizing something new. I’m not planning to leave novel-writing behind any time soon, but I could. Because there’s only so much room in your head, and sometimes it doesn’t make sense to keep one foot in the past.
A lot of artists and writers reinvent themselves over time. They might different genres or mediums. The downside to keep in mind is that if you ever do return to an older style, you might feel like you’re wearing clothes that no longer fit. Your past styles won’t vanish, but they will take some time to recover. Or, they will have evolved. If that’s the case, revisiting those old ways after a period of growth might result in a fresh, exciting hybrid of your old and new selves.
Shit, I half want to try it on purpose now, because that sounds cool as hell.
Keep in mind that adapting to new creative styles enriches our artistic repertoire … but it could also screw up your level of comfort with older, more familiar mediums as well. Good? Bad? It’s art, baby, so who can really say?
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As a former screenwriter (Loved the format) I can say the biggest difference is that there is no internal thought process on the page. There is only what you see and what you hear. It's the director's job to instruct the actors on what internal struggles to express in their performance.
I think whatever we get back to, will have evolved. What might look like a weakening of the muscle might simply be our investment in more, other, or broader things. So, in your example, you might be keener to write a more ‚cinematic‘ novel, building in the screenwriting you will have developed lately, rather than a novel your old style, which no longer feels so satisfying (and because of that, you don’t commit to it so fully).