The hopeless Dreamer is a staple of the creative stereotype. Head in the clouds, wishful thinker, not allowing reality to ground his vision. As romantic as this may sound it is ineffective and prone to failure. These Dreamers quickly become Cynics as they see their vision constantly shattered by an inability to achieve their goals. These stereotypes hinder creative folk by shackling them into roles they feel must be played in order to be creative. I’m not a fan of the starving artist routine and there are others that share my opinion. It’s amazing to see how many creative types will accuse you of “selling out” just because you’re not only shunning the “starving artist” path but actually attempting to make your work commercially viable.
Realizing that the Dreamer alone will not help you achieve success is an essential part in taking the quality of your work to the next level. Lateral Action, a blog where creativity meets productivity, has an excellent post regarding this. Using Walt Disney, a true visionary, as an example they discuss how balancing out the three roles inherent to the creative process is the key to reaching those lofty visions. To paraphrase the article, the three roles are:
- The Dreamer - the visionary who dreamt up the ideas.
- The Realist - the pragmatic producer who made things happen.
- The Critic - the eagle-eyed evaluator who refined what the Dreamer and Realist produced.
The Dreamer alone will crash and burn without the support and refinement of the other two roles. If one was solely a Critic, the work would never get off the ground being constantly torn to shreds by hyper critical claws. A Realist cannot produce anything if there are no Dreams to craft into something worth sharing. There are untold masses of extremely talented people that the world will never hear from because they cannot develop the other facets of this process.
Personally, my Realist and Critic are ready, willing and able to execute, which is a by-product of the highly technical, project based work I do. It’s my Dreamer that has been gone for quite some time. Possibly crushed by the monotony of corporate life or on an extended sabbatical trying to refocus. Until the moment its return, I will continue to focus on developing the facets of my creative process, churning out words even if they aren’t colored by the Muse’s touch. This way when the epiphany does strike, my writing muscles will already be stretched, limber and itching to hit the ground running.
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Hear, hear. Don’t I know it. Remind me to tell you about the new project my Dreamer role has come up with. While brilliant, (as most of my zany ideas are, natch) I’m missing the Realist to make it happen. Well, that and a few more hours to the day. Not to mention other projects that have fallen by the wayside. Alas, the eternal struggle of a creative mind…
Thanks for a thoughtful response to my article Gabriel. At Lateral Action we think it’s high time the ‘starving artist’ stereotype was retired!