I slept through all Economics discussions in high school. In the second of my three attempts at a bachelor’s degree, I took a Statistics 101 class. I dropped it after a week— I had thought we’d be talking about Tony Gwynn hitting a lifetime .338 batting average. And I know you’ll be shocked to discover I have opened up whole Bank of America branches with my overdraft charges.
Today, however, I’m going to tell you everything I’ve learned about economics and the creative life. But first, let me tell you about my current writing project…
The working title is Get Hal Brinkley. It’s a female-driven, hard-boiled crime novel about a trust fund baby socialite (think c. 2003 Paris Hilton) who’s partying days are behind her and now she’s willfully broke in Los Angeles. When she agrees to help her current boyfriend rob a movie producer, things quickly go wrong and her life unravels. You can read the first chapter here: Current Project - Get Hal Brinkley
I’ll tell you how I came up with this idea. I love Elmore Leonard. I decided four years ago to read everything he’d written. I started with the westerns, and I’ve made my way into his mid-1970s stuff, where he starts introducing some fantastic, well-rounded female characters.
I got the notion to write a female-driven crime novel, but I’d never written anything with a woman as the main character. I remember being inspired by Orange is the New Black, so I went back and watched the first season again and took notes.
Then one day, while surfing the web, I started down a Lindsay Lohan rabbit hole. Completely enthralled with the wreckage of her life (my words, not hers), I began to picture her as a great archetype for a lead character. What would she be doing now? What if she was laying low, and just drinking around the Sunset Strip? What kind of trouble could I get her into?
That got me thinking of old films noir, and so I stumbled across the greatest thing: Noir Alley on TCM. Every Sunday morning, this program features a different film about the seedier side of life. LOVE THIS!! I’ve added it to my Favorite Fixations page. Highly recommend it.
I’d seen The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity, and Out of the Past, but what about Split Second? What’s The Breaking Point? Who’s the Stranger on the Third Floor? I got my hands on all of these. They all helped inform the gritty Los Angeles setting I wanted for my book.
Watching them, however, I realized I’d never read any of the the hard-boiled grandmasters. I read James M. Cain’s Double Indemnity. Incredible. Took up Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon and all of Raymond Chandler. Man, oh, man. What else was out there? I went downtown and asked the knowledgable folks in the Last Bookstore about the genre. They turned me onto The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps. I read it cover to cover. Wow!
By this point, I’d been so steeped in noir land for all these months, that I finally broke down, bought and played a video game I’d been pining for most of the decade: L.A. Noire. It’s a 1940’s cop-themed open world video game.
It was so awesome! It reminded me a lot of Dragnet, which I’d seen but not much. In a happy coincidence, I found that Audible had the ENTIRE Dragnet radio episode catalog. Cost? ONE CREDIT!
I listened to each episode, and jotted down plot points that…
Wait. I was supposed to give my economics lesson.
Okay, here it is. Today we’re going to talk about producing vs. consuming.
Best way to explain it is this— what started out as inspiration for the book turned into… what? Well, let’s look at all the verbs I used:
- Read Elmore Leonard
- Watched Orange is the New Black
- Surfed the web.
- Watched old films
- Read pulp novels
- Played L.A. Noire
- Listened to Dragnet
Read. Watched. Surfed. Watched. Read. Played. Listened. All that took nearly a year, and I surprised myself in wondering how I’d managed to write not one single word. How?
Because those verbs are 100% consumption, and 0% production. I feel hung over just thinking about them.
Now if you don’t have that creative germ inside of you, this may be all be a foreign concept. I often dream of you folks and the lives you live.
You’re the Road Less Traveled Group A: you people out there who have your kids, work 9-to-5 at jobs that are meaningless to you, but it doesn’t matter. You make money, pay your bills on time, but then have your weekends and your three weeks in the summer. You buy your jet skis and cruise around the lake without a care. (I don’t know why you imaginary people in my head always have jet skis. You just do.) Do you all rest your heads on your pillows, not having cared one iota about creativity or artistic flair throughout the whole day? Sounds strange. But also kind of amazing and serene.
By the way, when I say “creativity”, I’m not just referring to my community of actors/writers/directors/painters. I’m also talking about people who:
- obsess about interior design
- plant vegetable gardens for incredible farm-to-table meals
- build gobs of vision boards on Pinterest
- improve systems and productivity at work
- think up amazing adventures for trips with their kids
- start new businesses
- dream of building a better jet ski. (I know. Enough with the jet skis, already.)
For all of us who have that artistic DNA, when we consume too much, it’s like eating too many potato chips. It feels the same as real food when we’re doing it (for example, all my consuming activity in the name of book research), but in the end it’s just empty calories.
Producing, on the other hand, feeds our spirit and keeps the energy flowing. You know that sensation— you jump into your creativity and it’s like a Las Vegas casino clock— time doesn’t exist. Blink your eyes, hours fly.
So how come we don’t stay in that place? Produce 24/7? Ah, yes. Meet Road Less Traveled Group B. These guys:
- wake up
- maybe eat
- produce creativity
- go to the bathroom
- produce more creativity
- eat again
- produce even more creativity
- go to bed, putting creative ideas in their dream journal for the day’s work tomorrow.
I wish. Look, does either Road Less Traveled Group A or Group B really exist? Maybe. But, who cares?
Because it’s got to be a balance for me. I often consume. OFTEN. I mean, you’re reading a blog that has a Favorite Fixations page, for f**k’s sake. I have to be in acceptance of that side of me. When I don’t let it out to play, it rebels. Hard.
I also have to love and accept that part of me that gets the malaria sweats when I shut down the creativity for too many hours, days, weeks, or months.
That’s my Statistics 101. Finding my proper, balanced ratio of production vs. consumption.
What is your proper, balanced ratio? No idea. We all have to figure that out for ourselves.
We also have to figure out what is considered producing and what’s consuming. It’s different for all of us. I once shared this produce vs. consume idea with a writer friend, and she told me reading was absolutely production. It excited and inspired her. I don’t doubt it. It’s all what’s meaningful to you.
Here’s the question I ask myself. When I’m done with the activity in question, do I feel stimulated? Or drained?
Let me give you a partial list of my own activities. Note that some of the things I list on the producing side have absolutely nothing to do with career aspirations or growing my life in any material way. I just know that when I engage in them, I’m energized. And when I engage in the consume list too much, I’m drained.
For your perusal:
PRODUCING (afterwards = stimulated, energized)
- Writing
- Meditation
- Watching Movies in the Theater (vs. TV)
- Playing Guitar
- Hanging Out with Friends
- Going to Recovery Meetings
- Being of Service to Others
- Travel
- Dining Out
- Going to Live Music
CONSUMING (afterwards = drained, beat up)
- Binge-Watching TV
- Escape-Reading Too Much
- Playing Video Games
- Organizing My Music by Genre, Year, and Mood (🤦🏻♂️ for HOURS)
- Installing and Updating Software. Then, Reading the Manual
- Spending Time with Toxic Acquaintances
- Listening to Podcasts That Feel Like Homework
- Social Media Comparing and Despairing
- Purchasing Things on Amazon
Lay it on us— what are your best productive acts? What are your grungiest, most low-down consumptions?
May we all wake up tomorrow and have a balanced, fulfilled, stimulating day. If we fail, just remember we can take our jet skis onto the lake this weekend.