Tag Archives: Creativity

student blogs

Creative soft core inspo (#2)

Not gonna lie, the first quote that came to my mind is not necessarily the most encouraging or inspiring, but I remember the first time I read it, I felt so seen.

“Writing is 99% procrastination” ― Phoebe Waller-Bridge

Damn girl, same. Here I am, writing this at 1 am after like 3 naps. But, despite relating so much to it, I feel like it doesn’t show my full view of writing, why I write, or what makes me feel; so, I looked for another:

“One of the greatest rewards of making art is our ability to share it. Even if there is no audience to receive it, we build the muscle of making something and putting it out into the world.” ― Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being

YES, RICK, YES! But allow me to give some context.

I do not believe we are meant to create to share it. I think we are meant to create to get something out of our system, because if it’s not outside our mind and body, it rots inside. It makes us sick. So we struggle to get a piece out. We write, and delete, and re-write, and delete everything, and start from scratch, and delete it again, and so on and so forth until we can’t stand the piece anymore.

At that moment, a decision has to be made: do I keep the piece I hate (this is just the feeling I often have after finishing my pieces, but the feeling changes person to person, and piece to piece) and deal with its existence on my own, or do I share it and make it someone else’s problem as well? At least like that, I wouldn’t have to hate it alone. I’m sure most, if not everyone, has shared a cursed Instagram reel or meme because “if I saw this, you have to too.” I do it with my cousins all the time. And though on the surface level it seems vindictive and hateful, it’s an act that looks for relatedness. To find something that connects us further, even if it is by traumabonding over cursed memes.

I think that’s why we feel the need to share what we create. To connect with others, and with ourselves too. Countless times I thanked others for sharing their words, figuratively speaking beacuse I don’t know these people. I would listen to lyrics and think, how do they know? How could someone that I have never met and know nothing about, know so much about how I feel from hundreds of thousands of miles away? Now that I’m older, I understand that we are not singularities, and I have to thank my mom for not allowing me to get tattoos at 12 years old. If she did, I would have a “music saved my life lml” tattoo across the chest. Thanks mom.

But Rick says that we share it even if there’s no audience — even if there’s no one on the other side to relate to you or your piece. Yeah, we do. And we do it for the same reason that we share an opinion when nobody asked us for one: we need to get it out of our chest.

Though an opinion can be blurted out in the span of a second without any previous thought, and a creative piece requires much attention to detail and consideration, both desire to exist in the world with the same strength. We set them free in the world to free ourselves from their weight, and instead share it with the universe’s energy, or someone.

Letting go is not easy, and at times it’s even painful, but the more we go through it, the less it hurts. Which, for some reason, makes me think of the American Sycamore we saw today. Shedding its bark because it’s too restricting. By letting go of it, the tree exposes itself, vulnerable to the world, so at the same time it can expand and cleanse itself from pests.

Nature is so creative, omg.

student blogs

Beware of dog (blog #8)

This was a really interesting video to watch, and it brings ease to see and listen to experts from different fields (including the CS professor) agree that we can use to our advantage, but we must beware of AI.

To answer some of the questions posed in the workshop, I think I do a better job than AI at creating outlines and overall structures of pieces. Because I am able to develop ideas on my own, I trust myself more than AI to figure out the organization of the piece, which sometimes is key to the personal purpose of a key. We do this without even realizing it, so explaining it to AI so the machine can give us that meaningful structure and organization feels like an extra, unnecessary step.

I’ve been open about my use of AI to look for synonyms, specific words (by providing the machine with explanations), and to translate words or phrases from different languages into the correct cultural translation and not the literal translation a digital translator would give me. I believe this usage, or tasks that I assign the machine, pose minimal to no risk. Besides profiling me into the cultural boxes based on my translation cues and the carbon footprint, I think these tasks do not have negative consequences.

As for redefining “writing,” I don’t think I know what the actual definition is, but, for me, writing is the craft that involves transcribing ideas and transforming them, from just thoughts into intelligible words tailored to a specific audience. Because it requires so much intention and personal touch, AI cannot even try to replicate its efficacy. In reality, AI only imitates formats, not human thoughts.

I think AI has the potential to enhance AND hinder my creativity. Just a few weeks ago, I put the idea of a short story I had into AI for it to tell me what it thinks and how to develop it. I didn’t necessarily like the advice it provided, so I steered away from the tips. However, it was shocking for me when I workshopped the piece, and the feedback I received was the same as what AI told me. I haven’t touched the story anymore, but now I feel like I can’t even attempt to brainstorm with AI, or I will fall into the box of what it tells me to do rather than what I want to do. In a similar way, in a job that required me to use AI for writing, I always felt stuck and on a block. My writing always looked to imitate what AI had to say, and it made me have a whole existential crisis over the fact that, if AI is supposed to learn from US, why do we try to learn from IT?