Whisper of the Heart is all about a protagonist chasing her dream of being a writer, with her love interest becoming a violinist. Hacks is all about a protagonist early into her writing career, who gets cancelled for a distasteful joke. Girls5eva is a comedy show about a retired band going viral and getting a second chance at stardom.

Each of these films or TV shows have varying degrees of genre—drama, comedy, etc.—and they all explore what it means to be creative. For example (spoiler alert!), fictional comedian Deborah Vance in Hacks is a millionaire many times over, who doesn’t see the value in breaking out of her very well-rehearsed comedy routine—until one of her business partners draws her multi-year residency to a close. With this new obstacle emerging, she decides to put together a completely new show to create more momentum for herself and find more business partners to work with.

In the process of doing this, she remembers how alive she feels when developing and practicing a new routine, and explores a new cultural context that was completely different from the one she spent most of her career in. While the world has largely caricatured her and disregarded her story, so she chose to do the same thing to herself, she realizes things have changed—and that the world could be ready for the truth. She realizes that she’s the one that has to change; the lessons she’d learned are no longer useful.

That’s very rich meta-creativity; it comments on creative risk, wrestling with personal demons, and taking a leap of faith to make a connection.

While I wrote a book on creativity, I see Creative Doing fitting much more in spirit with each of the aforementioned than I see it fitting in with meta-creators who discuss how to succeed or make money on the internet. 

Creativity is so much more than a mere instrument for making money. It’s time we treated it like that too.