Sue Woolfe's approach to writing a novel is that she writes a whole bunch of fragments. Thousands of them. And then she looks for patterns in them. Themes. Voices. Characters. And then the fragments get assembled. Or rather something emerges. The image she used this evening was of creating a skin of narrative to hold together these myriad pieces. Sue is also into neuroscience as applied to creativity - and she talks about some of this here.
One thing Sue said tonight stuck in my mind: The creative enterprise generates a lot of anxiety. And those who succeed at it find a way of dealing with that anxiety. Now a lot of this boils down to "feeling the fear & doing it anyway". But also living with the fear while you are doing it.
It makes me think about the discussion I had with Johnnie on facilitation recently. One thing about being a facilitator is about managing anxiety - both yours & other people's. One way to manage anxiety is to have an incredibly detailed process (which you may or may not follow). I am not a big fan of those for supposedly "creative" activities - because I think creativity is messy & unpredictable - or experimental if you prefer. Another way is to say participants: "trust yourselves". The myriad pieces will come together into something.
One observation to be made is that people get anxious when they are out of the moment. When they are in the middle of "it", experiencing flow, everything's cool. The moment I start thinking "where will this end?" "what is the future?" "will the outcomes be acceptable?" - panic sets in.
So the question becomes: how do you keep people in the moment?
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5 comments:
I think the difference between anxiety and fear is worth noting - anxiety doesn't have an "object" in that it's not attached to something. Fear is. So no amount of detailed planning will be successful at making anxiety go away..on the other hand very often the one thing that everyone in the room has in common IS anxiety so acknowledging that can very often be the thing that keeps people in the moment.
I'm not sure that one can "keep" people in the moment... only they can. It's partly a social thing, if the facilitator is both engaged and in the moment (ie not in a private moment) then the people around her/him are more likely to be too (though there's no guarantee)... the converse is that anxiety is just as infectious as engagement. Of course the design of the interaction is also important. I think there's a kind of scale of effectiveness that is best when the facilitator is observant, weakens when they become watchful and is fragile when they become anxious. My sense is that engagement weakens along this scale, because the ego is becoming more dominant.
Annette - Thanks for the "fear/anxiety" distinction. I agree that acknowledging anxiety can be a critical activity before moving beyond it.
Patrick - I think that's another good point. Facilitators finds themselves as a role model for participants (whether they want to be or not)...
Excellent post Matt, and good comments. I like the anxiety/fear distinction too. I agree with Patrick, you can't keep people in the moment; it's more about being in the moment yourself and maintaining relationship with the group. I'm with Chris Corrigan in thinking of facilitation as a practice, we just keep praticing!
Matt,
where have you gone? What is InnoFuture going to do without you? please contact margaret, inspirator without fears (not many at least)
margaret.manson@innofuture.com.au
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