The elusive shape of motivation

And how to perfectly concoct it

Hi friend,

Hope you're doing well!

I got asked recently about motivation with regards to creativity, and I had to sit with it for a little while. Do I have motivation? What shape does it take? Is it something that I even think about consciously at all?

After a lot of thinking, I've come to the conclusion that motivation, for me, is a perfect mad scientist concoction.

The first part of this blend is a healthy dose of curiosity. I've always been a curious individual, about everything and anything, and that little nugget of knowledge presented itself while I was working on some of The Artist's Way. I'm now on week three of the exercises, and one of the questions asked me to list five good traits that I had as a child, and immediately, curiosity came to mind. I remembered conducting different science experiments with my dad, who has really helped shape my understanding of the world through asking the question, "What happens if I do this?"

It's taken me a long time to come to understand that I have a natural sort of motivation towards writing and reading stories because every single story, at least for me, comes from the question, "What happens if this character does this?" and goes from there. In part, this is why I have a hard time planning out my novels: a rigid outline robs me of the curious meandering that happens during the draft process. Even while I'm weaving the story to myself, there needs to be novelty (I see you, ADHD!). Sometimes that means that I have no idea where I'm going with them, and while I had a lot of resistance to that through much of my journey as a writer, I now gentle parent my curiosity through crafting. It can go where it needs to go, it just can't get super carried away and change the story so drastically as to alter the essence of it. (If this sounds like emotional regulation to you, you're not wrong!)

The other part of my motivation comes from a potent and more feral component. I have so many names for this deep well of unhinged energy: chaos, ambition, spite. Even anger, at times. I alluded to it a little in my post about making peace with chaos, and though at the time I was still parsing out the words for this wee beastie, I think I understand it much better now. This is my creative element, the more restless part of me that yearns for new adventures, craves creating new things, and above all, wills to contribute to the world at large in some meaningful way.

A lot of my motivation comes as a direct response to throwaway phrases like, "Things just aren't done that way." That's when the little snarling beast gets a little glint its fiery eyes and rumbles, "You wanna bet?"

I used to be ashamed of feeling this strong ambition, this burning bright fire. But now I know, there's nothing wrong with taking the more chaotic emotions and turning them into pure creative energy. As long as it gets the creative engines running and there's no damage to me or anyone else, it's absolutely fine. You're the only one in charge of your emotions, so you get to decide how to utilize them.

Now, while each of these ingredients are powerful in their own right, the magic comes from their meeting. Curiosity is more useful with regards to finding knowledge, patterns, and general narrative of why things work the way they do. Creativity is more concerned with creating something new, out of the bounds of what is already known. When curiosity and creativity work together, though, I get to explore what is possible while simultaneously attempting to see if I can break the system already in place, and thereby, expanding it.

It's really interesting that while writing all of this, I've come to recognize that this motivation is actually not limited to writing. In fact, I draw on this exact same type of motivation at my day job where I perform Quality Assurance for my company’s user interface. Almost all of the bugs I find on a daily basis are found by asking myself, "How is this supposed to work?" while simultaneously attempting to break the programmer's assumptions about how a user would utilize the UI.

If motivation was as simple as chemistry, though, there would be another element that is needed to balance the whole formula: a sense of purpose. Why am I doing this? I constantly find myself in need of persuading my creativity and curiosity to do the heavy lifting of creating motivation. Some days, the persuasion is harder than others. But the "why" has always been the same since I was a child: because this is what I want to do. It brings me joy to write, to tell stories, to discover new things, and to add to the exploration and understanding of humanity. I don't have to have everything figured out, but I can still help figure out the overall story by telling my part of it, my experience.

There's a beautiful line from Kushiel's Dart in which the protagonist is taught that, "All knowledge is worth having." And more than that, I amend that all stories are worth telling.

Much love,

Yasi