I came across this quote from famed sci-fi writer Ray Bradbury on a post on the TwistedSifter site that featured quotes on creativity. This struck close to the bone for me as I have proudly not thought for years now. I have long maintained that thinking usually inhibits my work, making it less fluid and rhythmic.
It’s a hard thing to get across because just in the process of doing anything there is a certain amount of thought required, with preliminary ideas and decisions to be made. I think that the lack of thought I am talking about, as I also believe Bradbury refers, is once the process of creating begins. At that point you have to try to free yourself of the conscious and let intuition and reaction take over, those qualities that operate on an instantaneous emotional level.
I can tell instantly when I have let my conscious push its way into my work and have over-thought the whole thing. There’s a clunkiness and dullness in every aspect of it. No flow. No rhythm. No brightness or lightness. Emotionally vacant and awkward. Bradbury’s choice in using the term self-conscious is perfect because I have often been self-conscious in my life and that same uncomfortable awkwardness that comes in those instances translates well to what I see in this over-thought work.
So what’s the answer? How do you let go of thought, to be less self-conscious?
I think Bradbury hits the nail on the head– you must simply do things. This means trusting your subconscious to find a way through, to give the controls over to instinct.
And how do you do that? I can’t speak for others but for myself it’s a matter of staying in my routine. Painting every day even when it feels like a struggle. Loading a brush with paint and making a mark even when I have no idea at hand. Just doing things and not waiting for inspiration.
You don’t wait for inspiration– you create it.
So, stop thinking right now and just start doing things.
Redtree Times 
I agree. I might have said, “Don’t analyze,” but it gets to the same truth. It’s the self-consciousness that leads away from true creativity, I think.
It might be a strange example, but the place where I experience the dynamic regularly is in reading certain blogs. I’ll be reading along, responding this way and that. Perhaps I remember something in my own life. Perhaps a line provokes an association with another writer or artist. Whatever. Then, at the very end of the post, the author does it to me again, ending with questions like, “What do you do? What do you think about X? Is there ever a time in your life when you did Y?”
At that point, the spell is broken, and I close the page. My initial responses to the piece have been rejected in favor of a request that I “think about” the piece. The great irony is that “experts” all over the blogging world suggest asking such questions in order to engage the reader and stimulate discussion. In fact, they box in the reader and send what discussion there is down a predetermined path.
OK. I’ll get off the soap box now. But it seems so clear to me that we can block our own creativity with the same kind of questioning, the same sort of self-defeating limits. Bradbury’s dead on, as far as I’m concerned.
I understand what you’re saying about your response to those blogs that ask you to step back and consider instead of simply allowing you to free-associate internally with what they’re saying. I often will be reminded of something quite different than their subject and that is enough for me.
On Wed, Apr 30, 2014 at 8:01 AM, Redtree Times wrote:
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This really resonates for me. As soon as I a certain outcome or effect, it no longer works. I have to wander and explore. I can rarely even talk about what I create and I certainly can’t explain it. It comes from a non-verbal part of my brain.
What bogs me down is “details” — I try to just let it flow, but then I reread and think, and then start tweaking and nit picking and fiddling . . .