2.6

[This won't be creative, but instead an essay upon creativity. Therefore:]

[I am annoyed by works such as Twilight. However, I am also annoyed by nay-sayers who never have anything positive or constructive to add to the general knowledge or awareness of our society. I must add something. I must make a constructive observation, otherwise my annoyance at Twilight is as useless as Bella's meaningless, consumer-driven life. My main complaint of the series is that they are lazy: Stephanie Meyer has taken the culturally powerful idea of "vampires" and repurposed it in order to add power to her novel, without doing the creative footwork of making her own idea. In order to really explicate my thesis, I think I have to do the impossible. I must define creativity.]
[Creativity, when set aside and dissected to find a definition, evades me. It should be huge, overarching, unattainable, and yet it's not. It's tiny. Exact. Certain. And saying so feels wrong. Let me say that this is riddled with holes, but Creativity is the production of new ideas or, as is more likely, the purposeful change of old ideas for use in a new way. A few caveats:

• Ecclesiastes 1:9 says there is nothing new under the sun, and Solomon was wiser than me.
• Creativity doesn't have to be communicated, or even captured linguistically, pictorially, musically, sartorially, socially, or metaphorically. It doesn't ever have to leave the head of the creator.
• The first half of my definition, Creativity is the production of new ideas, is far easier to use, which is why I hate it more. The second half is so enticing with all of its vague lines and easy loopholes. How new must it be? How old are the ideas we're using? How much change is too much? How much change is not enough? What if the ideas are my own? Is it still creative?
• The first half is probably more correct.
• No one is creative. Possibly ever.

[Hopefully, my flimsy, squeamish definition will hold up long enough under fire to service our needs. Therefore, I want to ask the question: what makes Stephanie Meyer's work so much less Creative in my mind than, say, Peter Sellers' Pink Panther? Twilight uses vampires as a quick cultural touchstone. Pink Panther uses James Bond. Why do I think Meyers is worse? Again, I fear I must resort to an aside.]

[I must define what I mean when I say "touchstone" and "taken the culturally powerful idea" and "borrowed" and "stolen." When I was in high school (words which I almost perpetually desire to capitalize, probably either due to my German language teaching, or high school's monolithic presence in my psyche) I learned all the facts that govern my existence. Nearly all. And "facts" must be said flat, pat, and matter-of-fact. The word itself is no-nonsense. In high school, I learned the parts of all stories. I learned that there must be characters, setting, and plot (I paint with broad strokes) in any tale, and that any which lacks even one element was not, in fact, a story. But the major problem is that not everyone has the time or energy to actually create (that sticky word again) the characters, setting, and plot anew every time they set to work. The first third of the book (or more) is dedicated almost wholly to establishing the characters and setting in order for the plot to do its work. Each author must craft each world for each character so the reader is likely to believe and trust and desire. The writer must craft each nuance. It is a pain. These beleaguered authors look at the daunting creative task set before them and then think, as any normal human would, "can I reduce this massive pile of work?" The good news is yes. It can be done. The tendency of human beings to remember has led to a crisis of information. Everything is written down, recorded, duplicated, and stored for later. We don't just value the past; we worship it. The stories of Homer and Virgil are valued above those of Crichton and King, whether or not the style or pacing were technically proficient, the characters were well-developed, or the setting was believable. So, authors of today are left with a tremendous amount of slag. Scrap. Free-floating material to which no formal claims are made. Olympian gods, large-eyed aliens, anthropomorphized animals, evil robots, and living dead litter the stories of yesteryear and creep, imperceptibly, through our own. Authors who are crushed and dejected may borrow freely from these old creations because literally no one will stop them. Do you have characters, but no setting to allow them to live in? Borrow an ever-popular space station from countless science fictions. Let them romp through the streets of old London or along the garrets of a Medieval castle. Do you have a setting, but no characters? Pilfer the Greek mythology or native American tribes or even Dracula, if need merits it. No plot? That's a larger problem, but, as Avatar shows, nothing that can't be extremely lucrative. Borrow the story of the Christian gospels or the story arc from a Victorian novel, or the moral question from Star Trek. This way, authors can (of course unconsciously and innocently) get away with being incredibly uncreative. It's as big a conspiracy as passive voice sentences, which only require the writer to dredge up the verb and the object from a potentially interesting sentence: "the President and terrorist walked the dog" turns into "the dog was walked." All that vigor, excitement, and joy: lost in the winds of time as surely as the settings, characters, and plots of the overburdened authors of the world.]

[But, according to my definition, the work of the author is no longer creative. Exciting? Maybe. Well-written? Possibly. Creative? Well, that remains to be explained. You may be begging me "Robby, how can an entire story be rendered uncreative by the introduction of one, tiny, eensy teensy, microscopic borrowed thing?" Well, despite all your hedging, the fact that the author took the easy route of theft for the setting, hero, villain, supporting cast, or, God forbid, the plot does actually render the entire work uncreative. I don't mean to say that an author can't have a sentence on page seventy two which reads "And then the purely created protagonist and her boyfriend sat down to watch a borrowed tv show." That sort of grounding is entirely different. And that necessarily leads me down what I hope will be the last rabbit hole of the evening.]

[We've now entered the twilight zone--the black ether between definite and plausible. This is the question "How much is too much?" Well, allow me to suggest a measure which is undoubtedly completely wrong. If the story would collapse with the removal of the borrowed item, the author has crossed the line. That seems open to a lot of interpretation, so let me hedge my bets by phrasing it in a completely different way and through a great many more words. There are borrowings, and there are borrowings. The differentiation is subtle, but easily definable if you are inside the author's head. Otherwise, it's impossible to know for sure. The line is drawn by intent: did the borrowing fill the purpose of reference, timing, believability, or taste? Or did the borrowing relieve the author's struggling? These two can overlap to an observer, but the truth is in the author's head. Did the poor writer decide "the castle will be made of grey rock because it is placed in an area with a great many granite quarries" or did the writer decide "the castle will be made of grey rock because that's what I saw in Monty Python, so it's believable?" The difference is subtle, and probably completely indistinguishable, which makes it useless here. I merely include it as a measure for myself, an author, to use for my own work.]

[Back to my main point, from which I have wandered more often than a child who has just learned to walk. Creativity is the creation of new, or the new adaptation of old ideas. The use of old ideas must be strategic, and not for laziness' sake. Finally, I believe that Twilight and other works like it are uncreative. Here is my incredibly imprecise reason why: Meyers stole vampires because they're dangerous and sexy and she had not the time nor skill to create her own group of dangerous and sexy creatures which would thrill and terrify the minds of preteens and soccermoms. The mythology of vampires was a labor-saving device, and it appalls me that society hasn't picked up on it yet.]

[And yet, Homer borrowed the mythology of his day. And Bram Stoker did the same thing in his monolith Dracula. The incredibly famous works on Arthur by Tennyson are thefts. The work of the ever-growing Wheel of Time series are rife with borrowings from history and popular culture. This is not a new problem. In fact, I used the time honored tear-jerker of a rape victim in a story which I consider to be my highest work of art. So really, where is the line?]

[I suppose it's wherever you decide to draw it. As for me, I draw it here: right behind my feet. Good night everybody.]