What forms the foundation of effort in a creative endeavor?

If I make a creative art, is there an obvious vertical hierarchy of capital goods that went into producing the final product? When a physical structure is erected or a technological marvel crafted, there is an obvious assembly of materials, research and engineering needed to turn imagination into realization. However, it seems as though the foundation of creativity is internalized within the mind, and is more of a horizontal rather than vertical process.

Take a half written novel, for instance. It is quite easy at this stage to call the writing a loss and to retard further progress. While some writers may create or collect an exuberant amount of notes or research to aid them in writing, all of these materials may become irrelevant due to a change in direction. Some authors are more organic in nature and write extemporaneously, while others are more contemplative and produce their work from a carefully crafted outline.

Perhaps art–and therefore writing–is more like continuous prototyping. Hours are spent researching background and crafting genealogical hierarchies–work which may be discarded at a moments notice. What matters is not what or how it is done, but that something is ultimately created. The foundation of the creative endeavor then becomes the endless lists of “might-have-beens”, and the final product is the resulting “because-it-is”.

Such is the bane of the writer. We more often than not produce what never needed producing. We shine tentative lights in the vacant spaces between genres and we do so without knowing what we will find. Content with the knowledge that the light of the world may never grace the presence of our deepest thoughts entrusted to the paper in our hands, we do so nevertheless.

I often think that I would write a thousand words over and over cast in infinite phrases if I knew they would help me create a single impregnable thought. And then I realize the indelible spirits of artists are forged in the fires of repetition, and that the only blacksmith to be found is my pen.

Forward progress requires me to keep thinking, to keep learning and to keep trying, and so I will.