[MUSIC]
Well when I was in undergraduate school as a writing major I was kind
of forced to write a certain amount of pages for class.
[LAUGH] And I'd had this idea a couple years before after seeing
an album cover and then, you know, about three seconds of a music video.
And I really wanted to write it down and make it a story.
But other than those three seconds I had no idea what it was going to be about.
And once I got this assignment I sort of had to write the story because
I needed to fill forty pages and I had nothing to write.
So I kind of went back into that idea and
just brought out the story that I had been waiting to write for however many years.
And at the end of it I ended up submitting it and getting it published in a magazine.
Well the interesting thing about this one is I was really under a lot of pressure.
And I know that there is a lot of research about intrinsically
motivated people being much more creative but
at this point I was forced to do something that I had been putting off for a while.
And it was just, I felt like I was in crunch time.
And I felt really invigorated, and I really felt everything.
You know, at first I started saying, I'll write this many pages a day, but
after a couple days I was just writing and writing because I had to and
because I wanted to.
Well, [LAUGH] it started a couple years before I actually wrote it like I said.
Just kind of getting the idea.
And I'm sure I could say that it was incubation period, for about three years,
where I just didn't write anything, but it wasn't.
I think it was probably just kind of laziness where I knew I
didn't have to write it.
But ultimately, you know, I got that you have to do this by this date,
and I started writing.
You know, I'll write two pages a day, I write five pages a day.
And I started off forcing myself to do it.
And I, you know, I would show it to my mom who's always been my biggest
critic in writing because she's not afraid to tell me this sucks.
[LAUGH] But after a while, you know, she started giving me really positive feedback
and I started writing more, and more, and more just because.
So once I started getting really into it there wasn't really a process anymore.
It was just, I'm on a roll, I have to keep going, or I got an idea,
I have to sit down and write this down.
I had 40 pages to write and I didn't have anything to fill it with.
I think one of the main ones was I didn't how it was going to
end until I wrote the ending, so it was a surprise for everything.
And I think that's a huge thing about creativity, is when you can make something
that surprises yourself that's when you know it's completely cr, creative,
because if you didn't see it coming, most people wouldn't have either.
Well originally it was just kind of driven.
Here's what I have to do, may as well get it done.
That's how I approach a lot of, well, that's how I