Value Over Velocity
Creativity through the lens of value, not volume
During a discussion about reading and writing, my nephew asked me if we are born with creativity or is it something that can be taught?
I’ve learned through the years what a contentious topic this can be. It seems the two camps in this debate do not play well together. In early 2024, I argued that your creative wiring may differ from mine—and that’s okay.
But there’s another element of this question that too often gets left out of the mix. And that’s the (equally combustible) subject of quality. While creativity can be found in almost every field, for the sake of this piece let’s confine it to writing.
The cult of more, faster
Around 2014, a movement known as “rapid release” gathered momentum in the publishing world. The idea was for independent authors and publishers to crank out as much content as possible—in this case, books—and release them at a dizzying pace.
Some writers were gleefully publishing a book a week, and this was before AI swept the world. In one podcast interview, I listened to a writer who proudly claimed she’d written more than sixty novels in one year.
Sixty.
So a fair question might be: Is this woman more creative than the average writer?
Well, I suppose we don’t really know. And to be fair, I’ve never read a single sentence that she’s published. She certainly is prolific. But is that the same thing as being wildly creative?
A better definition of creativity
Educator and author Sir Ken Robinson became globally famous after one of his TED talks became an early example of viral content. He spoke about creativity in schools—or rather, how schools were crushing creativity out of students. It’s easily my favorite TED talk ever, and I’m pretty sure I’ve watched it a dozen times. Worldwide, it’s been viewed over 100 million times.
I know pop stars can get a billion views of one song, but we’re talking about 100 million views of a 19-minute lecture on educational systems. It helps that the man was not only brilliant, but hilarious.
In his talk and in one of his books, Robinson offers his own definition of creativity. I share it with you now because it drives home the element of creativity I referenced in the third paragraph. Robinson put it like this:
Creativity is the process of having original ideas that have value.
Naturally, we each can have different concepts of value. Individual taste plays a part, I’m sure. But I struggle to believe that writing a complete novel in five or six days, and doing that sixty times in a single year, is putting much of an emphasis on quality or value. It’s putting the emphasis on quantity alone. “Rapid release” was nothing more than a blatant tactic to game the system, and fortunately it’s no longer touted like it was a few years ago.
Original ideas that have value. Your first question may be: Value to whom?
I think that’s fair. Value, in fact, is where this whole conversation tilts. And the only way I can answer is with my own value test:
Is the work something in which I invested both time and sincere effort?
Have I produced something that’s original?
Does my writing evoke feeling in a reader, and is it more than just a passel of words vomited out to fill a page?
Is it truly something you’re proud of? Or did you just fulfill a mindless daily quota of words?
The quiet button
Look, I’ve had shitty writing days. I’ve poured hours into chapters that ended up deleted. I’m certainly not proud of every sentence I’ve produced. Some of my earliest published work would read quite differently if I wrote it today. In those respects, I’m just like you, I’m sure.
But we have a quality control button in our brains. Of this, I’m convinced. We don’t aim for perfection, but we should aim for value.
Our words and our work should bring value to the reader, small or large.
Creativity isn’t simply output. It’s care. It’s intention. And it’s choosing value over velocity.
Dom Testa writes fiction and nonfiction, and believes creativity works best on a slow simmer, not a rapid boil.
Find most of his work at DomTestaBooks.com.