Rebellion

About 5 years ago I ran into a concept called “The Four Tendencies” by writer Gretchen Rubin. The idea was that each person can generally fall into a category of how we respond to external and internal directives. Her observations were that some people, for example, were really good at following directions when somebody else gave it to them, but really bad at it if they gave it to themselves. If you can figure out which of those tendencies you were, you could try to hack your own personality into being more productive, or happier, or well balanced or whatever.

I should note that this is not based in any sort of real psychological research. She's not a doctor or a therapist or anything like that.

Anyway, when I took the tendency test and read the articles associated with it, I came up as “The Rebel.” The idea of the rebel is that they have difficulty listening to the commands of anything outside themselves, and anything inside themselves. Basically, the moment somebody tells me something to do, I don't want to do it. At least, not in the exact way that I was told how to do it. According to Rubin, there's an independent streak in the rebel, so even if they're completely willing to do the task they are given, either by others or by themselves, there's always going to be a tendency to do one part of it just slightly different, or slightly their own way.

I was very fascinated by this angle for a while, but then I saw a real psychiatrist and started thinking about other things.

Still, I wonder if there's something to it. I've been trying to get back to writing my Persona 4/ 5 fanfiction story, and I just couldn't. I was in a part in the overall arc that I didn't really have a strong idea for when I first came up with the thing. It's a big gap in the story, and this happens sometimes to me while I'm writing novels too. When that happens, I just have to buckle down and outline a bunch of stuff until I figure out how to glue the previous sections in the next section that I already know how to do.

So I spent about an hour and a half one morning going through all the lead up, figuring out where I wanted to go next, and then outlining it. That was exactly what I needed to get back on track, and I've been regularly posting on that story again.

And then this morning, I wrote a portion of the story that was not something I outlined, or something that I had planned for. I was struck with the idea at a whim, and just started typing it out.

I'm happy with what I wrote, and I totally posted it, but I still found myself going “Why am I like this?” Why did I spend all that time carefully outlining every single step, only to throw it completely off by the third time I sat down to write?

Now, as I'm walking the dog, I started thinking about that Four Tendancy thing again, and wonder if there is a part of me that has to rebel against what I'm told, even if I'm the one that told myself. It's an extremely annoying habit , and one of the reasons, most outlining systems don't work for me. The minute I've decided how a story supposed to go, I feel compelled to not do it in that way. Sometimes that's a good thing, resulting in a really interesting, creative twists from what I was going to do. Or sometimes it just results in me not doing anything on that project at all.

There's always been a piece of me that loves the improvisational. I mean I was a jazz major after all, and the podcast is basically a large exercise and improvisation. I used to be a 100% "pantser” as a writer, but then I got frustrated with how long it took me to get anything done. I've tried to become more and more outline base, more on schedule, on track, productive.

But maybe I'm just delaying the inevitable. If I'm just going to buck every outline I make, is there a point in doing it? I don't know.

The Creative Pep Talk podcast the other day was talking about Taika Watiti’s tendency to write something, then leave it behind for a few years, then go back and tackle it again. I used to write like that. My rule was right, a novel, write another one, then go back and edit the first one. Heck, Heart and Soul Fist was the result of me going back and finding a story I had written 7 years prior.

So is that the true methodology of who I am as a creative person? Output output output whatever comes to mind, toss it in the metaphorical drawer, and then bring it back to life later?

Is it better to embrace your natural tendency, or train and mold yourself into something different?