Octavia E. Butler was a science fiction writer. She was born in 1947 in Pasadena, California, and raised by her mother and grandmother. Butler was one of the only two prominent Black science fiction writers when she sold her first novel. In her essay “Positive Obsession,” which appears in her book Bloodchild and Other Stories, she writes, “so, then, I write science fiction and fantasy for a living. As far as I know I'm still the only Black woman who does this.” That essay was published in 1989, and although there are more now, Butler is still the most known Black female science fiction writer today.
Butler’s creativity is special because of the many aims and obstacles it has and overcomes. As a teenager, Butler was told by her aunt, "Honey . . . Negroes can’t be writers." Despite this, Butler remained determined to make a career of writing. She developed what she called a “positive obsession”. She wrote constantly, and it became an escape for her. She was bullied at school for being awkward and very tall. She had science fiction and fantasy ideas from a young age.
Butler advanced to higher education and kept writing. She wrote, “at college (in California at that time, junior college was almost free), I took classes taught by an elderly woman who wrote children's stories. She was polite about the science fiction and fantasy that I kept handing in, but she finally asked in exasperation, ‘Can’t you write anything normal?’” What Butler wrote was weird and new. After going to college, Butler did a lot of factory work and manual labor. She worked as a dishwasher, a potato chip inspector, a telemarketer, etc.. Throughout that time, though, she woke up very early to write before work. Two or three o’clock in the morning. Her persistence was an enormous part of her success. Her determined personality, her strong will, enabled her to create in a precarious environment. She believed persistence is the most important trait a writer can possess. Her essay "Furor Scribendi" is a manual for writing. In it, she says, "forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you’re inspired or not." This approach shows her practical personality. Although she was very imaginative, Butler was never flighty. She learned to rely on what she could control, rather than waiting for ideas to come.
Butler’s chosen genre remained a challenge. “I was writing science fiction and fantasy, for God's sake,” Butler wrote. “At that time nearly all professional science-fiction writers were white men. As much as I loved science fiction and fantasy, what was I doing? Well, whatever it was, I couldn't stop. Positive obsession is about not being able to stop just because you're afraid and full of doubts. Positive obsession is dangerous. It's about not being able to stop at all.”
That idea of not being able to stop creating makes me think of motivation. Butler’s motivation was intrinsic. She had a drive that kept her writing. I know this because she wasn’t obtaining rewards during most of this process. Instead, she fatigued herself by limiting her sleep in order to write and work. However, there is some extrinsic motivation involved in her process. She wanted to sell a story. That’s what she had always wanted to do. It was a goal she made for herself. The selling of a story would obviously bring money, but it wasn’t about the actual cash, it was about the validation that the sale would bring. Butler’s extrinsic motivations were success and good judgement from others.
I think Butler is a Big-C Creative. Her work is unlike any author’s before her. Other people had obviously written science fiction, but not with the complex social mirror-structures of hers. Many of her stories are innovative pieces of literature that deal with minority experiences in other worlds and universes. Her fiction explores totally new ways of thinking, of being. Extra-terrestrials, fabricated diseases, new languages without words, time travel, and vampires all inhabit her work, but the themes of her texts are imperative in our contemporary lives on earth.
Despite being a pretty big fan of science fiction, I am sad to say I have never actually read anything by Octavia E. Butler! That will certainly change after reading this post though. Regardless, she sounds like a pretty amazing writer and woman.
ReplyDeleteWhat really struck me was her emphasis on habit and actively developing the hard skills needed in tandem with creativity. As she said, “habit will sustain you whether you’re inspired or not.” Although this is true about many aspects of life, it is particularly interesting when looking at it in the sense of creativity. It is as if, by recognizing the dangers of depending too much on merely being inspired, Butler gains a greater agency and control over her creative process. This definitely shows her determined and practical personality, but I think it also is what makes her process so unique. She doesn’t allow insight to completely govern the creation of her product.
This actually reminds me of the reading we had where Amabile was analyzing John Irving’s process. According to him and the way he created, one needed to possess the “passionate craft of creativity.” Raw talent, a clever imagination, and a creative personality—although Butler certainly has some degree of all three of these—are not enough to be successfully creative. Hard work and love of craft—seen with Butler’s opinion on habit as well as her intrinsic motivation—are also extremely important. Irving and Butler both seem to place an important emphasis on the knowledge and intellectual skill aspects of the Investment Theory of creativity.
Thanks for talking about Octavia E. Butler! Her novels are now on my list!