Reading to Write
How space-warfare helps me in business
This week started a little rough for me. We had a really fun weekend by the seaside as a family. Unfortunately I got sick. It started with a scratchy throat on the way there and quickly ended in a full blown respiratory thing that made breathing an act of painful bravery. We still made the best of the time together but as a result I started into this working week a little.. strained.
Monday was really busy (which is fantastic, I like productively busy), unfortuntely I could really quickly feel my energy levels drop. Late this morning, as I tried to write a semi-important email, I realized the words just weren’t coming out of my fingers.
I gave it a few honest attempts, it wasn’t meant to be. That email had to wait.
So I did what any ambitious business owner would do: made a cup of tea and sat down by the heater with a good book.
No, not some sort of business book. A Scifi novel by James Corey, I am currently completely obsessed with. I just sat there and read for maybe half an hour. About spaceships and intergalactic warfare. The Martian Super-Army and the Resistance of the Belters. People disappearing out of airlocks into the infinity of space. Fascinating stuff!
After a few chapters of this literary-mind-cinema I decided to give this email another try.
You guessed it - not only did the words pour out of my fingers, they also came together in witty ways, I only recognize from my best times.
This surprised me.
Was it the tea? The relax-break? Reading? Probably a combination of it all.
Somehow my intuition says that it’s really deeply related to reading something that captured and engaged my mind. Those words transformed into a mental movie and somehow stuck with my short term memory in such a powerful way, that they allowed me to apply them to a totally different area - a business email.
I’ve experimented a little more with it yesterday and can report similar results. There seems to be some strange power in reading before writing. Maybe akin to listening to your favourite musician before playing your own music. Or indulging in the work of Henri Cartier Bresson, Vivian Maier & Gary Winograd before picking up your own camera.
Maybe this is a well-known phenomenon, something other people understand deeply. But to me, it was a revelation.
What about you? Have you experienced this before? Do you have any rituals for harnessing your own creative mastery? I’d love to hear them.
Paul McCartney, one of the most successful songwriters and creators of music ever, once was asked „HOW do you do that?“, i.e. writing songs by the dozen (or rather by the hundreds...) and simultaneously using different styles, instruments, etc. to create unique gems over decades. He answered something like looking at himself as having some „hard disk“ in his head, that was filled up with music from his early childhood on. His family were singing and playing music themselves many times a year, at anniversaries or just family meetings. So, he said, this HD was always growing and he was always interested in learning more and more about all the music there was. Which later helped him as he started to create his own catalogue.
OK, I am not Paul McCartney, but a creative guy as well. And the same way Sir Paul grew up with music, I grew up with painting, photography, design and literature. I also feel like having a gigantic „archive“ in my head and I am also still eager to add more and more to it. I have designed more than 1,000 logos (the number of my own collection, including variations, if I count „similar“ ones as a „family“ there are still about 600 different „families“) and would always be happy to start the next layout. I am writing a novel (literally: I am writing two different ones simultaneously) and of course all that I read from early childhood days on until now influenced me a bit (some books a bit more, some books only a tiny bit, but even the worst influenced me).
So, yes I believe, that creative or inspiring INPUT will definitely enhance the OUTPUT you want to achieve. That need not be directly, but the „coils“ in your mind get „warmed up“ and the whole systems starts running smoother.
And, to add a bit of humour at the end of this text, another quote by Paul McCartney: As he was asked, why a song like „Hey Jude“ still attracts even the youngest fans (the Korean guys of BTS mentioned, it was their favourite Beatles song) he replied succinctly „Easy lyrics?“