Nature vs Nurture: Is There a Creativity Gene, or Can You Learn to Be Creative?
Have you ever heard someone say, “Oh, I’m not creative,” and you thought, are you kidding me? Because you totally are!”
Or they say, “I can’t sing/play an instrument. I’m not from a musical family.”
And yes, sometimes it does look as if creativity runs in families.
There are famous acting families, like the Barrymores — John, Lionel, and Drew — or the Redgraves, including Michael, Vanessa, Lynn, and Natasha and Joelly Richardson — and a bunch of others.
Or how about musical families, like J. S. Bach’s? His father and two brothers were musicians, and several of his children were instrumentalists and composers as well. The best known were C.P.E. Bach and Wilhelm Friedemann Bach.
But do these families really have drama genes or music genes that they pass on? Or is it that the children are raised in an environment that teaches them about that particular skill, and makes it easy for them to see themselves as actors or musicians? How about a writing gene?
It’s the old nature vs. nurture argument.
According to this article, creativity is genetic. According to this one, it’s all in the brain chemistry and physiology, and in fact, there are some disorders, like bipolar disorder, which are highly correlated with creativity.
Then there’s the study indicating that children are born creative and non-creative behavior is learned.
So forget nature vs. nurture for a moment. Here’s something we do know: children learn language by hearing it, and imitating what they hear. It’s only later — much later — that they learn spelling and grammar rules. This is the same process by which some children learn to play the piano, or paint, or dramatize. And it’s the basis for Shinichi Suzuki’s highly successful method of teaching children to play musical instruments.
(If you’ve ever seen 100 little kids on stage playing Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star on their scratchy little violins, they are learning to play using the Suzuki Method.)
But there’s no similar process for a child to learn to write creatively. After all, even if Mom and Dad are both writers, the kid doesn’t see anything more than their butts in their chairs as they’re tapping away on the computer, or hand writing stuff on paper. The child doesn’t hear the relentless hours of scales, the practice of a musical phrase over and over and over until - Eureka! I got it that time.
I started learning the piano at a very early age. My mother gave lessons in our house, and after the student left I’d creep into the studio and pick out whatever the student had been playing. I was two or three. When I was four my mother began officially teaching me, but my learning had started shortly after I was born, by hearing her, and her students. Simply by being there. Was it enhanced by some inherited music gene? I don’t know.
What I do know is there’s absolutely nothing comparable for a creative writer.
So if, like me, you’re just starting to write fiction, congratulations on your new adventure!
As for my writing process. . . well, all I can say is, it’s a good thing I finished my first draft faster than I expected, because revisions and rewrites are taking a lot longer than I ever imagined. My first draft was pretty good, but it lacked conflict and tension.
I’ve started working with a book coach — quite a humbling experience initially, I must admit. Right now, I’m learning everything I can about what makes a good scene, since scenes are the building blocks for everything that happens in the novel. I’m learning a ton from Techniques of the Selling Writer by Dwight V. Swain, and putting them into practice.
I’m also starting to feel confident that everything I learn now, in the process of revising this book, will help me write a much better first draft next time, so the revisions won’t be so freaking hard.
What I’m Reading This Week
In addition to Swain’s book, I’m still plowing through the Posie Parker series, which gets better and better (and more and more complicated!)
I also just read a delightful first-in-series by Robert Thorogood. He’s the writer whose books formed the basis for the delightful TV series Death in Paradise, and his latest is called the The Marlow Murder Club.
It all starts when cryptic crossword puzzle creator Judith Potts hears a shout from her across-the-river neighbor, and then a gunshot. Judith is an eccentric 77-year-old widow, and with the help of two equally eccentric local ladies solves a series of murders that have the professionals baffled.
I’ve never met Robert Thorogood, but after reading this passage I was laughing out loud and wondering, “how does he know me so well?”
“The task absorbed Judith all afternoon, but by 6:00 p.m. she realized she was feeling peckish. She’d recently been trying to shift a bit of weight, so she decided she’d have a poached egg on a single slice of toast for her tea. Then again, there was no way one egg would ever be enough, so she had two eggs and plenty of butter on two slices of toast. And a few oven chips to fill in the corners of her hunger, seeing as the rest of the meal was so healthy. And a nice cup of sweet tea and one of those super-tiny bars of specialty chocolate for her pudding, although she’d not been able to find one of the tiny bars when she’d done her weekly shop, so she’d bought herself a family size fruit-and-nut bar. Not that she’d finish it in one sitting, of course. It would easily last her the rest of the week.
Judith was just finishing the last square of chocolate when the local news started on her TV . . .
Notable Quotes
So much of a satisfying mystery lies in the identities of the characters. Are they who they say they are? Is he a good guy hiding under a facade of surly interactions? Is she a villain hiding behind a patina of charm?
So this passage really got my attention.
“And here she was, all these years later, a homemaker, a wife, and a mother. All wonderful roles, and she kept telling herself she was lucky her life was so blessed, but she couldn’t help noticing everything about her existence seemed to be defined by someone who wasn’t her. She was the kids’ mum, the vicar’s wife, and the house’s wife for that matter.
The Marlow Murder Club by Robert Thorogood
Some of the links I include in this post may be affiliate links. What does that mean? It means you pay the same — or in some cases a little less — if you click and purchase, and I get a small commission. It’s not a lot, but it helps me buy a few chai lattes here and there. . . Or if you like what you’re reading, you could buy me a chai.
Tools
Last week, I’ll admit, ever in search of the magic bullet that will make the writing process easier (aren’t we all!), I sat in on a webinar about Scrivener.
Scrivener claims to be the go-to app for serious writers, and I used it some years back. I just could never learn to love it, much as I wanted to. And, although it has more bells and whistles now than it did then, it’s lacking the most important element for me.
Any tool I use must be platform agnostic. It has to work on any computer, tablet, or phone I might own. Right now that includes both iOS and Android — I walked away from PCs forever back in 2014. Maybe I’ll tell you that story sometime. . .
Anyway, because I need to be able to work from anywhere, my tools have to do the same. And Scrivener doesn’t.
That doesn’t mean it won’t work for you, though. A lot of writers absolutely swear by it.
And if you do decide to use Scrivener, there’s nobody better to teach you how to squeeze the most out of it than Joseph Michael, who runs the site at LearnScrivenerFast.com. I took his course when I was learning Scrivener back in the day, and he’s good.
In addition to the Scrivener course, he also runs a 30-day bootcamp-style book writing course (geared toward non-fiction).
If you already use Scrivener, or if you decide to give it a try, I’d love to hear what you think.