On Monday I wrote about how Curio, my little animated co-host, somehow made me excited about creating videos again.
At first I thought it was because she was new.
New project. New character. New way of making videos.
Of course that feels exciting.
But the more I thought about it, the less I believed that was the whole reason.
I have started new projects before. Quite a few of them, actually.
Some have given me energy. Some have mostly given me more folders.
There is a difference.
What feels different with Curio is that she changed the way I create.
Before, most of my videos started with me asking myself some version of the same questions.
What do I want to say?
How should I explain it?
What should happen next?
Very reasonable questions.
Also very efficient.
Maybe a little too efficient.
Curio introduced a different kind of question.
What would she ask?
That sounds like a small change, but it really isn’t.
I know it is still me deciding what Curio will ask. She is not sitting somewhere independently coming up with questions for me. But even knowing that, something changes when I put the question into someone else’s point of view.
Suddenly I am not only thinking about what I want to say. I am wondering what she might notice or question, or what she might think is a little strange.
Sometimes she interrupts.
Sometimes she reacts.
Sometimes I imagine her sitting there looking at me as if I have just said something completely ridiculous.
Which, to be fair, probably happens more often than I would like to admit.
That small shift in perspective seems to create a little distance from my own first thought. I am still writing both sides of the conversation, but I am no longer only asking, “What do I want to say next?”
And somewhere in that process, the video stops feeling like something I am assembling and starts feeling more like something I am discovering.
I think that is the part that brought back some of the excitement.
When the Process Gets Too Familiar
There is something strange that can happen when you have been creating for a long time.
You get better at it.
That sounds entirely positive.
You learn your tools. You develop workflows. You know how long things take and where your files belong. After a while, you can sit down to make something without first having to figure out how every part of the process works.
Eventually you become efficient.
And efficiency is useful.
I would not like to return to the days when I had no idea what I was doing every single time I opened an editing program.
But familiarity can also quietly remove some of the surprise.
You know the route by then. Most of the turns are familiar, and you usually have a pretty good idea where you are going to end up.
Sometimes creativity starts behaving a little too well.
I don’t think that means the work becomes bad.
It may actually become better in many ways. More polished. More consistent. Easier to finish.
But that does not necessarily mean it feels more alive.
That is the part I have been thinking about.
Maybe Inspiration Needs Friction
Curio makes things slightly more complicated.
I have to think about another voice and another point of view. Sometimes I also have to leave room for a question I would probably not have asked if I were simply talking to the camera.
That is less efficient.
And perhaps that is exactly why it works.
We talk a lot about removing friction from creative work.
Make the workflow smoother. Create templates. Automate the boring parts. Use tools that make everything faster.
I do all of that too.
But maybe not all friction is something we should remove.
Sometimes the little interruption is what makes me stop and look at the idea again.
Curio does that for me right now.
Not because she is secretly an independent little creature hiding inside my computer. I am the one creating her questions and reactions.
But when I ask myself what Curio would say, I have to move outside the straight line of my own first thought.
And occasionally I surprise myself.
That matters.
Creativity as a Conversation
I have used different voices in my work for years.
Sometimes those voices have been writing personas. Sometimes characters. Sometimes I simply try to look at an idea from somewhere that is not my usual point of view.
I have always been fascinated by what happens when you stop asking, “What would I write?” and instead ask, “What would this voice notice?”
Curio is doing something similar, except now it is happening visually and in conversation.
I say something. She asks something back.
Even though I am technically creating both sides, I don’t experience it as simply writing a script for two characters.
It feels closer to creating a space where the idea can bounce around a little.
Maybe that is why conversation can be such a useful way to think.
It rarely moves in a perfectly straight line.
Someone asks something you had not considered. You explain yourself and realize halfway through that your original thought was not quite as clear as you believed.
The thought changes because you had to respond to something outside its first version.
Curio gives me a tiny version of that.
With orange glasses.
Play Is Not the Opposite of Serious Work
I also think I had forgotten something about play.
Not completely.
I still make odd things. I still follow ideas simply because they make me curious. I am not exactly known for choosing one sensible project and staying there forever.
But there is a difference between being creative and playing.
Creative work can still become very goal-oriented.
Finish the post. Film the video. Edit it. Upload it.
Then there is always something else waiting.
There is satisfaction in that. I like finishing things.
But play asks something else.
What happens if I try this?
Not because it is the sensible next step.
Just because I want to see what happens.
Curio brought more of that back into the process.
Sometimes it is as simple as wondering whether she should sit on the couch or stare at the laptop. Sometimes I change one of her questions and the whole scene feels different.
They are tiny decisions, but they make me curious about what comes next.
And once I am curious, I want to keep making it.
Maybe We Don’t Need More Ideas
This is probably the part I am still figuring out.
When creative energy drops, the obvious response is often to look for a new idea.
A new topic. A new project. Maybe some new tool that will supposedly fix everything.
Sometimes that works.
But maybe the missing piece is not always the idea itself.
Maybe sometimes we need to change the conditions around it.
For me, apparently, that meant inventing Curio and letting her ask questions.
For someone else it might be changing the format, adding a strange limitation, or trying to make something in a way that feels slightly unfamiliar again.
Enough unfamiliarity that you have to pay attention.
I am not sure this is a grand theory of creativity.
It may simply be that I made a tiny animated girl with orange glasses and accidentally reminded myself how much I like playing with ideas.
But right now, I think there is something in that.
Maybe inspiration is not always something we have to go looking for.
Sometimes we just need to make the process unfamiliar enough that we become curious about it again.
