Dave Wirth
I'm starting to clarify the ways creativity can be approached. For me, there is a point of where I am comfortable sharing my music with others, and I don't often end up there. Up to that point there is a necessary amount of trial and error. These days, I have been skipping the trial-and-error approach in favor of waiting for the "big idea." I think this is a very bad habit to slip into.
Waiting for the "big idea" is like waiting for a steaming pile of s**t to stop smelling. It takes too long, and it's hard to polish a turd anyways.
Just about everyone has been in a relationship they didn't want to be over. When this happened to me about ten years ago, I wrote about 20 songs in 24 hours [anyone with insomnia and likes to write music can testify. This happens]. It was just a creative regurgitation. Not a single one of those songs will be heard by anyone! However, that point was a start of something new. I started writing more and more music. At least to my ears, the songs were slightly more interesting. I ended up writing some of the material that ended up being satisfying enough to share [...]. How much development went into this? A lot. I certainly threw a bunch of material out. Most of it is just embarrassing. When I think back, around 5% of what I created made it on an album. 95% of that time was spent in trial and error.
Everyone is creative. It just a matter of putting up with the majority of unsatisfying crap to reach the stuff the heart is satisfied with. It might not be the most awesome thing in the world, but it's good if our hearts are happy about it. I have found that trial and error is what it takes to get there, and that this is not a process most people are fond of trying. Deal with the 95% or so crap/turd/s**t, and the 5% left over feels nice enough to try the whole thing over again. Smells nicer, too.
