What can John Lennon Teach Us About Creativity?

Every weekday at 4:35pm, the local oldies station here in Chicago showcases a song by the Beatles. Before the song plays, however, the host tells the story behind the song (without actually giving away the song’s title). These are always very interesting stories that show how the Beatles struggled to create many of their hit songs, and how the group was often filled with a lot of internal strife, especially in the later years.

I have come to look forward to 4:35 for a variety of reasons: The interesting Beatles story, the good music, and the realization there are only 25 short minutes until I can jump into my car and speed home to resume my normal life.

A few days ago, the broadcast really caught my attention. It focused on John Lennon, who I think it’d be safe to say, knew a thing or two about being creative. The song that they featured was Nowhere Man. Although I don’t have an exact quote of what the radio host said, this Wikipedia entry is pretty darned close:

Lennon, however, claimed that he himself was the subject of the song. He wrote it after racking his brain in desperation for five hours, trying to come up with another song for Rubber Soul. "I’d actually stopped trying to think of something," he said. "Then I thought of myself as Nowhere Man — sitting in his nowhere land.

The article continues with this interesting quote from Lennon himself:

"I’d spent five hours that morning trying to write a song that was meaningful and good, and I finally gave up and lay down. Then ‘Nowhere Man’ came, words and music, the whole damn thing as I lay down."

Five hours of racking his brain and he couldn’t produce anything! Then, laying down, the song comes to him, almost like an epiphany.

Creativity isn’t a faucet that can be turned on and off

Sometimes when you want to sit down to write that short story or novel, the creativity just doesn’t seem to be there. I have always advocated that you should just write, whether you feel creative or not, and I still believe that. Even if you write 20-pages of pure crap, at least you got something down on paper. And who knows, maybe there will be a few gems among those 20 pages.

However, creativity itself is a fickle thing. Few people have ever been able to just turn on their creativity at will. The rest of us have to wait for that spark. Yes there are certain activities and exercises one can do to nudge creativity along. A few "herbal" drugs have even been known to spur a few creative thoughts.

In my own experience, I have found that when I sit down and say "I’m going to write a short story", without any specific ideas, the result is never good. I usually just give up after about a half hour and do something else. But when I’m doing everyday things, like the dishes or walking through the cafeteria at my local college, great ideas for fiction, poetry and even blog posts have struck with great intensity - and  in all those cases, I wasn’t even looking for an idea!

Creativity works in the subconscious

Based on my own anecdotal evidence, I have concluded that creativity, in large part, lies in the subconscious and is at work when we’re not even thinking about it. For example, if I’m struggling to think of an ending to a story, my best course of action, is to simply forget about it and within a few days a proper ending will come to mind in one of those epiphanies that we all love so much.

Hard work still required to get the job done

Once you have that moment of creative inspiration, though, it still takes a lot of perspiration to actually get that idea onto paper. This is where perspiration appears to trump inspiration. Think about it: If you only wrote when feeling inspired, how much would you actually write? My guess is that you probably wouldn’t be very productive at all.

What can John Lennon teach us about creativity?

He teaches us that even the most creative people can’t really control when their creativity is on or off. He worked for five hours trying to come up with a good song and nothing came of it. But as soon as he occupied himself with a different task, in this case laying down, the idea he had been searching for came within easy grasp.

So the next time you are struggling to come up with a good ending, a good beginning, that perfect poem or even a novel, remember not to force it. Do some brainstorming and let the idea come naturally. Forcing creativity didn’t work for John Lennon, so I doubt it will work for the rest of us!

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