Wednesday, April 2, 2014

I recently read a book by psychologist Rollo May called "The Courage to Create". While I didn't have much feelings of love towards the book (there were just too many off topic conversations to keep up with), there was one idea of his that I found interesting. May mentioned the concept that destruction and creation go hand in hand. As he put it, by creating something new, we are destroying the previous creation. Whether that creation is a new building, or a fundamental idea, it doesn't make a difference. The point is that what existed previously is essentially useless. Whenever I read about this idea of destruction/creation I realized that it made complete and total sense. However, the first real life example of this I could think of was of course Galileo and his suggested idea that the planets orbited around the Sun, not Earth. My question though is, Does this apply to writing? By creating new stories and essays, are we destroying all the hard work of previous authors?
 

4 comments:

  1. I don't think that, as authors, we are destroying the work done by the previous authors. I think that we're telling a similar story, or approaching a similar theme that they wrote about, but our culture and perceptions show the differences between our worldviews.

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  2. I'm a slash and burn kind of guy. I destroy around 90% of my own creations because they don't live up to my standards.

    I will argue with the previous comment. I write good work for the sake of writing good work. It is generally not my attempt to "destroy" other author's work. If, in writing good work, I destroy or tear up somebody else's work, I don't really care. I'm sure it's going to happen to my own stories and poems one day and all that will do is give me a drive to move forward.

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  3. Possibly in a way. I think novels and other media channels have developed so much in recent history that some of the outdated concepts just aren't satisfying enough to revisit. Not to say that we don't have our classics, but certain subjects of controversy that spurred the uniqueness of a novel may not be relevant after the subject has become indoctrinated by society. The novel loses some of that spark after so many other works have created something where it found its roots.

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  4. What an interesting question. I have often wondered how much of what is written today is so closely similar to so many other things of the past. It's like we live in a world of Plagiarism. I really don't think anything is being destroyed. Just revamped under a newer, fresher look.

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