
The importance of being prolific - zmitri
http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/ct-ae-0624-prolific-artists-20120622,0,1889158,full.column
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paisible
A few months ago, I started a projet with a few friends, whereby we commit to
each writing and recording one original song per week, then meet on thursday
to listen to everyone's creations and critique. As far as I am concerned, this
experience persuaded me that taking more time does certainly not equate
producing higher quality material ; up until now, I had taken months and
sometimes years (!!) to finish and sometimes never end up recording songs,
always unhappy with the final result, and with no deadline, unable to simply
let go of my ego and release. The goal with la Chanson Du Jeudi
(www.lachansondujeudi.com) was to adopt a more "Bob Dylan" approach, ie : do
one-take recordings if that's all we had time for (none of us are professional
musicians in any capacity), and respect the act of creation above that of
perfecting. In most cases, we'd end up writing, composing and recording the
night before or day of, which led us to go down creative paths that would
otherwise maybe have been discarded. Interestingly, I was talking with a
friend last night who is applying pretty the same concept to picture-taking :
a group of friends decide on a topic, and submit pictures every week to a
Flickr channel and vote on them. Much like the need to produce songs on a
regular basis forced me to start recording any little idea that came to me to
be sure I had something to close the week, she now consciously takes her
camera everywhere she goes for this project's purpose.

~~~
rhizome
Music composition is definitely subject to creeping featuritis. Uwe Schmidt
(Atom Heart) combats this by having an idea for a track/song and executing it,
never going back, and never spending tons of time wibbling with details. If
you know what you want to make, it's really more a matter of implementation.
If you don't, well, then you start down the path of Axl Rose and every other
band that takes 8 years to make an album.

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stephth
I enjoyed this article, and this is a topic that I'd love to read more about,
read other perspectives - if you have any suggestions.

But I don't think there's one process that's better that the other -
outputting new works frequently vs working many years on the same work - and
this article felt quite biased against the latter. It never mentions how a
work can remarkably stand out in beautiful ways when the author takes the time
to let his work grow and evolve during development, even if that means giving
into to obsession to details. Think of Kubrick's 2001 or The Shining, Valve's
Portal 2. To turn like they did, these works could not have been rushed out.
Or think about how the quality of Stephen King's Dark Tower arguably declined
once the author decided to accelerate the writing of the last volumes (V, VI
and VII) (on the side of that argument, Stephen King has recently stated in
interviews that he's thinking about rewriting major parts of those last
volumes, like removing himself as a character).

There are obviously many examples of amazing works that were created in a rush
of luck and intuition, and of incredibly long processes that turned into
failures. But some of the best works in history took years, and grew older
alongside their artists before being released. In the end it's about the
artist finding the right process for his work and career, whether or not that
meets this article's definition of "prolific". Even if the audience has to
wait a decade for a work, if the process was the right for that work, it will
still be the most beneficial call for the audience.

~~~
jseliger
One other questions is how the artist fits into (or doesn't) the dominant
artistic paradigms of his or her time. For example, in his book _Old Masters
and Young Geniuses_ (see [http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2012/05/29/thinking-
about-the-...](http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2012/05/29/thinking-about-the-
process-of-being-an-artist-and-a-writer-lessons-from-david-galensons-old-
masters-and-young-geniuses/) for much more), Galenson describes how young
conceptual innovators often do their best work early and have only one or two
important works that create a radically new paradigm for their art.

Other artists learn through making many works, being prolific, and gradually
accumulating knowledge that ultimately leads them to produce great works—and
often do so later in their careers.

These two ideas obviously aren't binaries, but they provide useful ways to
think about art and being an artist.

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mjn
I think particular cultural contexts and audiences might have more to do with
it than any inherent benefit to one or the other approach. What kind of
production do we value? What kinds of "intermediate" production are there,
where you sort of try out draft ideas? Etc.

I'm thinking of how things have changed over the past 100 years in science,
for example, where it's become _much_ more common to be prolific. One reason,
imo, is that in the past you were judged (by a smaller group of peers) more by
the quality of each publication: it reflected really badly if you wasted
everyone's time by publishing something mediocre. Better to put in a little
more effort and write fewer, better journal articles. Now, the incentives are
different, and it's better to shotgun out the articles, because you're
typically judged by your _best_ articles, or even by some measure of
throughput like total citation count or h-index, not by your average or worst
article.

~~~
gwern
One of the things I keep meaning to read more about is Simonton's equal-odds
rule of science: apparently his statistical analyses of scientific output show
that scientists do not differ in 'quality' of output but instead quantity of
output - the more they do and publish, the more likely they are to hit a home-
run.

(This sort of huge randomness seems possible to me - I think every author or
creator has the feeling, at some point, that 'X is not my best or most
interesting work, why does everyone like it so much?' Certainly in reading
author interviews I've noted that they seem routinely surprised that one
particular novel or series took off and made them famous, rather than
another.)

~~~
rchi
I really enjoyed Simonton's work but was quite surprised by the equal-odds
rule you mentioned. It doesn't seem to apply to scientists at the highest
level e.g. Einstein.

~~~
gwern
I'm not sure about that. To some degree, you expect that Einstein's fame means
that he would get an 'unfair' amount of credit for even his dull papers either
because people give them too much credit ("it's _Einstein_ , after all!") or
because they get more attention than your ordinary paper which has no fans
reading everything that author produces.

But I think Einstein published quite a lot, actually, which would satisfy the
equal-odds rule: I recall reading someone mentioning that only one paper of
Einstein underwent peer review out of ~100 published, and now that I look,
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientific_publications...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientific_publications_by_Albert_Einstein)
is a very long page.

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wslh
Well... speaking about Soderbergh: Solaris was an insult against Tarkovskiy's
Solaryis (and Lem?). Sex, Lies, and Videotape was very good and I remember my
parents good comments about that movie. In my opinion Kafka (1991) was an
excellent movie (9 in my ranking). Erin Brockovich? mmmmmm.... 5. So, in my
opinion Soderbergh is prolific but abandoned his art. I would prefer a
Soderbergh oscillating between very good and very bad movies but not decaying.
I think Woody Allen is a better example.

The topic is very interesting but I believe it is more related to
personalities. Some people are more compatible to a prolific personality and
some not. Others never release, and only in this case is where the sin
appears.

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ChuckMcM
There is an interesting engineering twist on this, releasing early and often.
That speaks to being prolific and, in theory, allows people to take greater
risks because they know the next chance to ship is near anyway. It collides
painfully with the marketing concept of having people pay for each version or
upgrade since it could leave a non-functional version out there where the
'fix' is to buy an upgrade. Splitting it, where bug fix (no new features)
versions are prolific but feature versions are not worked well for NetApp when
I was there. It kept things reasonably stable, but it did lead to having
multiple repos in flight.

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mattdeboard
This is interesting. Also I don't think "prolific" captures sufficiently what
the article is about. It's not just prolific-ness. It's being prodigious
relative to volume AND quality of work (prolific implies simply volume).
Soderbergh might be considered to be prodigious quanti- and qualitatively with
regard to the article. Franzen, simply quantitatively.

Conversely I wish I could be prodigious quantitatively. I have a bunch of
projects that are basically total crap, just exercises in learning stuff. I'd
trade them all for one really awesome, world-changing project. I kind of suck
at ideas though.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
I think it's like writing comedy - you write for things that make you laugh,
and hope others have the same sense of humour.

Mostly that means your projects will appealmto people with the same tastes as
you.

Produce more, just means you get more practise.

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ISeemToBeAVerb
This really is an interesting and faceted topic. There are certainly valid
arguments to be made both ways, but from a personal perspective, I've grown to
appreciate the idea of setting aggressive deadlines on creative work.

By nature, I've always been a perfectionist and tinkerer, and while there are
benefits to that mentality, there are also severe drawbacks. The inability to
start or finish projects being at the top of that list. I've found that
setting (and sticking to) aggressive deadlines provides me with a focus and
directive that I simply can't get from working any other way.

There is a liberating feeling in the idea of not coveting any single project
or piece of work. This sounds counter-intuitive, but when you see each piece
of work as a result of whatever constraints you're working within, rather than
a cherished opus that will define your life for years to come, it releases a
lot of pressure and allows you to focus. I think it's safe to say that a lot
of artists wouldn't be where they are were it not for their willingness to
experiment often and fail often.

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josscrowcroft
I'm sure it's riveting stuff, but sadly I stop reading anything in which 6 of
the opening 8 paragraphs are just really long rhetorical questions.

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chiaro
An interesting point was made comparing the proliferation of the Beatles vs
contemporary musicians, and suggesting that this is why (more artists
producing less) past the 90's we've become increasingly culturally ambiguous.

Of course, there's also the view that we're still too close to the 00's to
properly realize what identified it.

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wellpast
Soderbergh's recent films have been utter phone-ins.

