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Comment by proto-n | Hacker News Reader

Based on the title alone, you might think that this is about needing silence to be creative. But as far as I understand, the (very short) post is more about the lack of feedback while creating. "While you’re reading this, creative people are working hard now across the world on the next novel, movie, or song you’ll love, and yet, you don’t know anything about it, and they don’t know if you’ll like it either."

Also, to react to the post itself, yes to some degree, but also no? Most crative processes involve multiple people going back and forth, giving feedback along the way. Editors, teammates, talking to family, brainstorming, etc. Yeah it's not the final audience, but it's similar. A mind on its own is so so much less creative then two minds interacting.

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For sure. And take board game design. If your game isn't being put in front of people in a prototype state and getting feedback (and more than just your closest friends), you're likely putting yourself at a disadvantage when you put a game out there. There are conventions and playtest groups just for getting that feedback before you commit to the full project.

It'll help you identify problem areas in the game, how engaged the players are, if they find it interesting, help you with specific design problems you're having, etc. I don't think a single board game design of mine hasn't incorporated at least something from the feedback I've gotten from others, before it was pitched to publishers/released.

The same technically applies to video games as well, but that's much riskier, as if you put it out there too much too early, there's a real risk that another developer will take your idea and beat you to market with it (unless it's a narrative or content-heavy game, like a Stardew Valley or Undertale, which my games tend not to be). I've had a few of my games get cloned and put onto other platforms before I've had a chance to, for example, and I'm just a small solo developer.

I do agree that you need periods of silence, though. Sometimes very long periods.

I can't remember which article it was, but Steve Pavlina said people often ask him, "ok I've written my book, now how do I sell it?" and he's like, "you dingus! You're supposed to get the audience first, and then create for them!"

So there's a spectrum, from creating in silence to creating in public, which is perhaps down to personal preference or temperament (introversion / extraversion?).

I've often seen people launch mailing lists and pre-orders for products, books, courses, of which they have not yet written a single line. So their early users get a discount in exchange for providing invaluable feedback during the development process.

> I've often seen people launch mailing lists and pre-orders for products, books, courses, of which they have not yet written a single line.

I can spot these people from a mile away.

What they're doing is antithetical to the sentiment expressed in this post, which is about being creative. Not doing pre-marketing for some side hustle course or e-book.

Steve himself has launched courses which are entirely improvised from day 1. He did the same thing with live seminars and that seemed to go very well for him.

I'd say that counts as a highly creative act, and is the polar opposite of working in silence.

> You're supposed to get the audience first, and then create for them

This is certainly the smart thing to do, but there’s something about “creating something for an audience” that stops my creative juices from flowing. I guess there are too many thoughts about how this will be received and what people might think, that it stops me from creating truly great work.

David Bowie on why you should never "play to the gallery":

https://youtu.be/cNbnef_eXBM

Creation should require some form of bravery, blindly plunging into the unknown. Not knowing how the creation will be received until it’s actually created.

In the past decade people have been getting burnt out on all these lean startup, kickstarting fucks that just want to test for a market or audience before building out a product. The end result is we are bombarded with vaporware products, services, books, that we have to show interest in or worse put some money down before the creator decides to actually create anything. This makes people skeptical of “new” offerings. The consumer wants a product right away, not a promise. Also, the end product becomes subject to the tyranny of whatever can be tested for with pre-marketing.

The risk needs to shift back onto the creator. I’m talking big designs upfront; products coming to market ready to consume. If it does poorly, the creator just takes the hit in the form of wasted time and money. This is how things used to be, before a generation of entrepreneurs decided they wanted to be risk averse and try out a hundred half baked ideas rather than one idea really well thought out. It seems that as the skill of getting products right on the first try began to wane, “lean” processes began to grow in popularity.

> I've often seen people launch mailing lists and pre-orders for products, books, courses, of which they have not yet written a single line. So their early users get a discount in exchange for providing invaluable feedback during the development process.

Or, more often, their users get nothing at all.

I steer clear of people doing this. It's one thing get other people's feedback on what's clearly communicated as just an idea, or a work in progress. It's another thing to claim you have a ready (or launching any minute now!) product/service, while all you really have is a webpage full of lies and a textbox for victims of your con artistry to leave their contact information, so you can "gauge interest" / "determine market size" (and possibly spam those e-mails later with something else). The latter I consider dishonest, and on the off chance someone doing this actually launches their thing, I'll already be biased against purchasing/subscribing.

The ones I've seen were completely honest about the situation. "Here's what I'm making, here's when I expect to launch, the first part will come out in a month, if you sign up now you get early access and a nice discount, and you can help me shape the final product."

> Based on the title alone, you might think that this is about needing silence to be creative

On that tangent, I believe this is very much dependent on the person in question. I personally like to do knowledge work in library silence. I even find music distracting, although instrumental music without vocals is better than open office noise. On the other extreme I've heard stories that Richard Feynman liked to do physics in strip clubs. I'm not ashamed to admit that Feynman was more creative than I'm likely to ever be, but I don't think that my relative inferiority in that regard is because I'm not working from a strip club.

> because I'm not working from a strip club.

Like you, I mostly prefer creating in quiet solitude approaching sensory deprivation. However, sometimes I find it possible to coax a creative idea or concept into conscious awareness when surrounded by a familiar roar of external stimuli but only as long as I perceive that cacophony as a fairly uniform wall of noise. Personal examples include aimlessly walking alone around a massive trade show floor with booths all blaring their visual and sonic messages. For me, such noisy environments seem especially good for more "connectionist" type inspirations.

I've heard the Feynman strip club story and others like it, and always interpreted it in a similar way. It appears that environment was both familiar and comfortable for Feynman and perhaps his ideas could emerge as signal from the wall of perceptual noise.

Sounds like product development, not creation (as in creative work).

Product development is creation, is it not? Sure, the medium is different and even the process may be different but product development is a creative endeavor.

At least for me, product development is all about the business: you need to get feedback to know you're building the right thing (otherwise you're fired). Whereas when one creates alone, it's all about the pleasure of creating for the sake of it.

There is a creative part of product development though. You need to come up with something to vet with the outside first!

Successful product development usually needs more than just the creative process, but it’s not totally absent the upfront creative side either.

Brainstorming is actually a formal process where you bounce ideas back and forth without judgment; a "yes and" state of mind, instead of checking if the ideas are viable.

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