I frequently write about how people don’t often appreciate the process of failure and revision involved with any creative endeavor. The belief that those with talent succeed whereas those without need to find another line of work can prevent people from investing the time and effort of learning, practicing and exploring so crucial to the creative process.

A month or so ago I received a magazine from the Library of Congress (LoC) which was focused on Broadway related materials in their collection.

Page 10 & 11 discussed the process Oscar Hammerstein II went through while writing the lyrics for The Sound of Music‘s “My Favorite Things.” LoC has Hammerstein’s handwritten notes on 10 sheets of legal pad showing the transition of the song, originally called Good Things, to the familiar song we know today.

As you can see in the image below, there were some fun imagery that got cut out of the song – riding down hill on my big brother’s bike; icy cold water right out of a well; wading a river and flying a kite, waking at morning and sleeping at night.

At first the song contained the line “these are a few of the things like I like,” which LoC suggests is a little clunky. Once he hit on the phrase “favorite things” he brainstormed words rhyming with -ing.

The LoC piece discusses other changes, both subtle and major, that the song underwent. It is pretty interesting to see all the choices made and discarded.

If you get to reading the LoC article and thinking about how it took him about five days to move from his first draft to a more or less completed set of lyrics, realize that in 1959 The Sound of Music was about the 47th show he had a hand in creating since 1919. Plus, he had directed or produced the revival of 2-3 of his shows in that period.

What you see here represents the investment of a lot time and the accumulation of a lot of experience.

For some reason recently I seem to be writing a lot about how money and external rewards/punishments don’t seem to motivate creative professionals.

I saw the topic come up again just last week in an opinion piece on Artnet.com (scroll down to “MIND ON MY MONEY & MONEY ON MY MIND”). Tim Schneider examines a study conducted with a small sample size that was being used to support an idea that artists are poor because their brains are hardwired to desire that state.

The article he responds to says:

Adding a twist to their findings, the researchers also discovered in a second test that artists showed a greater response in another dopamine-related part of the brain (the anterior prefrontal cortex) when they were told to reject the green squares. In other words, artists get less worked up about receiving money and more worked up when they know they can’t have it.

“Collectively, our results indicate the existence of distinct neural traits in the dopaminergic reward system of artists, who are less inclined to react to the acceptance of monetary rewards,” the researchers write.

Schneider refutes the suggestion that the study supports the idea artists’ brain chemistry creates a preference toward poverty. Not only because the sample size for the study was only two dozen people, but because he felt the poverty interpretation read too much into the results.

…Instead, the researchers simply concluded that artists “are less inclined to react to the acceptance of monetary rewards” than non-artists—meaning, in effect, that the artists in the sample prioritized cash less than normies when making certain practical decisions.

Which… duh? In fact, short of proposing that it might not be advisable on a first date to go beast mode on a full slab of ribs, I’m having a hard time imagining a less controversial statement than that one—especially to artists themselves. After all, if they didn’t find a higher value in pursuing creative goals than making money, they would just be content to sink into stable, boring jobs like the rest of us rather than braving the many risks, uncertainties, and injustices of life as an artist.

So as I have been writing throughout these posts, don’t let people convince you that you are poor because you want to be or your brain chemistry is imbalanced. Next thing you know, someone will start prescribing drugs to cure your AADS – Artist Acquisitive Deficiency Syndrome.  (I am sure someone out there can come up with a more entertaining acronym).