“Creativity is always collaborative, even when you’re alone.” Keith Sawyer
“Artists work best alone.” Steve Wozniak
Different kinds of creative expression have different needs in terms of solitude versus collaboration.
In my post Creative collaboration, for example, actor Keith Powell of the TV series ”30 Rock” comments about the atmosphere of the writers room for the show – a common example of collaboration in the creative development of many art and entertainment projects. Movies and TV shows involve dozens, even hundreds of people at a time.
In the same article, I note that Professor Keith Sawyer writes in his book Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration that “creativity is always collaborative, even when you’re alone.”
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Thanks Douglas,
I enjoyed reading your Blog on Creativity. I agree with you that Writers work best in a collaborative context.
As a full time writer, I do spend the majority of my time alone behind a laptop BUT it’s all the collaborations during the week that actually boost my writing ideas and creativity.
http://karentyrrell.com/?p=2881
cheers,
Karen 
Discussions such as this of creativity puzzle me. They treat creativity as a real thing, when it is largely epiphenominal, as much in the eye of the beholder as in the act itself.
So it’s important to understand that neither solitude nor collaboration produce what we choose to call creative. A person working alone may tend to behave in a way that we deem to be creative, but if we don’t understand the behavior itself, we’re no better off than a cargo cult. The same can be said for creativity in collaborative environments.
I wouldn’t presume to call myself creative, but I definitely think more clearly in a context of peace and quiet.
I gave away all my TVs and radios in 2005, and I haven’t missed them at all. (I do watch a few interesting news events live over the internet, but none of the screaming loonies on Fox News.)
Recently I began turning off my cell and home phones, and now I just check messages every few hours.
And when I dine out, I try very hard to find quiet restaurants without a lot of noisy folks.
Antisocial? Maybe, in the view of others. But happy? Definitely.
I’m an artist and author, and as much as being with others inspires and can generate new ideas and viewpoints, I can’t create – that is actually concentrate on painting or writing – unless I’m quite by myself. It depends on the individual, I’m sure, but it seems that most of the serious artists I know have this in common. Enjoyed your article, Douglas. Thanks.
I agree with Karen, above, to some extent — one of the hardest things for me after graduating from college was the feeling of suddenly working in a vacuum, with no new ideas pouring in and no one to debate with, hear critique from, etc. It wasn’t until I found a group of artists with similar ideas and began trading books, links, thoughts, feedback and so on that I really felt I was making anything interesting again. I think Keith Sawyer’s quote is absolutely true, in the sense that almost nobody can create without SOME sense of all the things have come before; we’re always wallowing around in the great soup of Stuff That’s Been Made in some way or another, and that’s a kind of collaboration, even if a subconscious one.
And yet — I have a MUCH harder time writing or creating if there’s anyone else in the room. In terms of everyday, pay-the-bills kind of work, having friends around can keep me on task, but when it comes to the deeply creative stuff I get hung up by another presence, even if they’re sitting quietly across a table doing their own thing. So I’m with Laura, above, on this one.
Thanks for this post, Douglas! Always a nice entrance to thinking about what leads to creative zest.
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