Editing while you're writing is like strangling the baby in the crib.
Interpretation
Editing during the writing process can stifle creativity and hinder the flow of ideas.
Quincy Jones uses a stark metaphor to convey that constantly editing or judging one's writing while in the creative process can be detrimental. It suggests that allowing ideas to flow freely without immediate criticism is essential for the birth of genuine creativity, similar to nurturing a baby rather than stifling it before it has a chance to grow.
In practice
During a writing workshop, a facilitator might say this quote to encourage participants to prioritize free expression over perfection.
Just blow in it and sound bad for about a year and then make it sound a little bit better, and you get a little band together, and then you get a few jobs. You take four guys that sound half bad, but if they're 25 percent each, they can give 100 percent, you know?
Music in movies is all about dissonance and consonance, tension and release.
When you produce an album, you're dealing with it theatrically. It has to have a structure, and the inner response to that is that the ear loves it.
You can study orchestration, you can study harmony and theory and everything else, but melodies come straight from God.
I got a scholarship to Seattle University and I was writing arrangements for singers and everybody. But the music course was too dry and I really wanted to get away from home.
I tell my kids and I tell proteges, always have humility when you create and grace when you succeed, because it's not about you. You are a terminal for a higher power. As soon as you accept that, you can do it forever.
There is no doubt that creativity is the most important human resource of all. Without creativity, there would be no progress, and we would be forever repeating the same patterns.
Failure is built into creativity... the creative act involves this element of 'newness' and 'experimentalism,' then one must expect and accept the possibility of failure.
Reading, conversation, environment, culture, heroes, mentors, nature β all are lottery tickets for creativity. Scratch away at them and youβll find out how big a prize youβve won.
But neither money nor machines can create. They shuttle tokens of energy, but they do not transform. A civilization based on them puts people out of touch with their creative powers.
If you know what you're looking for, that's all you'll get - what's previously known. But when you're open to what's possible, you get something new - that's creativity.
You can't write a script in your mind and then force yourself to follow it. You have to let yourself be.
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