Creative Deception
March 22, 2014
A friend recommended Sidney Lumet’s book to me. I found in it this fascinating quote that chimes with me, and probably any writer who has completed a work. It is one more that sums up the journey, from one who’s been through it many times.
“Creative work is very hard, and some sort of self-deception is necessary simply in order to begin. To start, you have to believe that it’s going to turn out well. And so often it doesn’t. I’ve talked to novelists, conductors, painters about this. Unfailingly, they all admitted that self-deception was important to them. Perhaps a better word is ‘belief.’ But I tend to be a bit more cynical about it …
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All good work is self-revelation. When you’ve deceived yourself, you wind up feeling very foolish indeed. You dove into the pool, but there was no water there. Perfect Buster Keaton.
Another great danger in self-deception is that it easily leads to pretension [...] the feeling that we own the work, that it exists only because of us, that we are the vessel through which some divine message is being passed is lunacy.”
Entry Filed under: Observation & Musing