Create, Revise, Repeat

Is simply doing more important than always doing well?

In a recent Fast Company article, Rebecca Greenfield explores the work of filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki, who takes an interesting spin on creativity and regret.  In his biography, the animator described a particular quirk of his creativity.

Making films is all about–as soon as you’re finished–continually regretting what you’ve done. When we look at films we’ve made, all we can see are the flaws; we can’t even watch them in a normal way. I never feel like watching my own films again. So unless I start working on a new one, I’ll never be free from the curse of the last one. I’m serious. Unless I start working on the next film, the last one will be a drag on me for another two or three years.

In a sense, the same could be said of the collegiate experience.  Read the passage again, but replace film with paper, report, or any-other-college-assignment.  Stressful, exhausting, exciting–the cram-write-repeat cycle makes a fitting parallel to Miyazaki’s creative process.  Perpetually writing, we become semi-creative on a moment’s notice–for a grade–promptly followed by another assignment.

Miyazaki’s lesson is best learned quickly–that success is not necessarily born from obsessive revision, but from an incessant will to continue, to adjust, to make better with the next.