This article was taken from the April 2015 issue of WIRED magazine. Be the first to read WIRED's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
People often emphasise the need for creatives to get discovered and show their work as quickly and early as possible. And now there are more ways than ever to have your work discovered via Instagram, YouTube and countless other platforms, this makes sense on a practical level. But every now and then, this advice can backfire.
Many artists instinctively know that prematurely revealing their work can be dangerous. Duran Duran keyboardist Nick Rhodes lamented that a band's ability to grow and develop in front of an audience, as they did in the 80s, is gone. Also, without an immediate hit single or album, a band isn't likely to have the same support as they could expect in the past. In a recent interview with New York magazine, Chris Rock lamented that smartphones and other devices in comedy clubs have made it nearly impossible for a well-known comedian to practise new material. The rehearsal space is too public too early.
Albert Einstein considered the difficulty of maintaining what he called his "worldly cloister". The phrase hints at the paradox of the process of invention -- releasing something new to the world requires a temporary removal from it. Showing your work too early may help you find an audience, but being too conscious of your audience can unhinge you from yourself. It is an antiquated idea, but also a timeless one.
Any art form that relies on an audience also requires the discernment to know when a work is ready to be brought to light. Creativity has a growth pattern to it; as in life, it starts with an embryonic stage.
There is something at stake when we don't honour this sense of knowing about the creative process. I learned this the hard way when I was working on The Rise, my most recent book. Early on in the writing process, I revealed a chapter -- about the then-little-known Travis Kalanick, CEO and cofounder of Uber -- to my editor. He was speaking at a FailCon, a Silicon Valley conference where wildly successful tech entrepreneurs speak largely about their failures to help others learn from them. My agonising over the edits caused me to eliminate the bulk of the writing on him. He is still in the book, but in a reduced form.
Thankfully I learned a thing or two as I wrote. For research, I read every interview I could find, from the 60s to the present, from The Paris Review. I then charted the recurring themes from these interviews. The subjects' necessity for a private domain ranked high.
Private domains are not only about physical space; they are also about a space within us where we can shield ourselves from our inner critics. Private domains permit the bravery required for decision-making. It's about time that we honour the stage at which these private domains are as important as networking and putting your work out there. Doing so is a key factor in understanding a timeless feature of the creative process. It will remain, I believe, no matter how our technology shifts.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
