Just out of curiosity

I get it when fiction-writer Dean Wesley Smith says that we have a 'creative voice' and a 'critical voice'. Smith always writes with his creative voice, never with the critical one, not even when rewriting the text, simply because he never rewrites. He says the best work is done with the creative voice (and actually, it is the way to enjoy the process the most). It is easy to distinguish between the two voices: the critical voice is always finding problems, and difficulties, it is negative, complaining, judging; the creative voice says 'let's play!' . I think this is the best description I have ever encountered about creative voice: 'let's play!'. No judgment, no evaluation, no worries about reaching the objective. That is why the creative voice is so important: because it does not create barriers, it allows anything to happen ; it does not stop action by analysing it, evaluating it, judging its value, measuring its importance.  The creative voic

Following the previous post , there are even more analogies between writers and researchers in mathematics. Typically writers are categorized into two types: the discoverers (they write without a plot in mind) or the plotters (the ones that organize all the scenes, the points of view, and the structure). Discoverers do not know what is going to happen next, plotters know everything. Typically writers are in between these two extremes. I think researchers are more the 'discovery' type. We have some kind of end goal that can be more or less vague, and some initial path to get there, but that is where our understanding of the plot ends. When walking the initial path new things are learned, new questions are asked, new curiosity is spiked and new motivation is born. So we keep changing paths, goals, and the story. As a consequence, we create a lot of work that will go to the bin: piles of written papers that will not appear in the end product, but that was necessary to reach the de

Tomorrow, back to work. It has been the first long holiday (2 weeks) in a long time. Among other things, I read the book "Someday is today" by the novelist and storyteller Matthew Dicks. I found it great. It is especially useful for creative people that do not manage to find the time (and strategy) to get things going. Dicks is a brave and generous guy: he goes out there and exposes his journey and vulnerabilities. I found him a true source of inspiration. Reading "Someday is today" and "Storyworthy" (another book of his) , I found quite a few analogies between being a researcher (in mathematics) and being an artist: Despair (of not knowing if you will make it or if you will be good enough): Apparently, both Matthew Dicks and Stephen King (and others) had a moment of despair where they thought that they would never become novelists; nobody was going to buy their books. The same tends to happen in maths: PhD students (and post-docs) tend to go through a