Paul Tevis (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} ptevis) wrote,@ 2008-05-14 15:14:00 |
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rabbits and thieves
Scott Burkun is one of my new favorite writers; his Making Things Happen is a tremendously good book on the practicalities of management. I haven't read his most recent book, The Myths of Innovation, but I do follow his weblog, where he often posts about creativity and invention. Today's post had this gem which resonated strongly with me (emphasis mine):
Scott Burkun is one of my new favorite writers; his Making Things Happen is a tremendously good book on the practicalities of management. I haven't read his most recent book, The Myths of Innovation, but I do follow his weblog, where he often posts about creativity and invention. Today's post had this gem which resonated strongly with me (emphasis mine):
If you talk to most writers or artists they’ll tell you about specific influences for specific pieces. Picasso said “bad artists borrow, great artists steal”. We’re pretty sure Shakespeare based Hamlet, and many of his plays, on stories and plays he’d heard before. Reading Joseph Campell or Karen Armstrong on mythology reveals the incestuous nature of stories: they breed like rabbits and steal like thieves, and to claim any creative work as Sui genesis (means, roughly, something uncategorizable) usually means there’s a kind of ignorance at work about that particular kind of art, or a lack of imagination about what a category is.Yeah. Anyone who has gamed with me can tell you that's pretty much how I roll.
