Creative Failure

The chapter focuses on the concept of creativity and how the vast majority of creative material is never made and is perhaps never intended to be made. Most creative endeavours never result in a product that will be ‘published’, ‘released’ because they are by amateurs. Even when we look at professionals, we have to assume that most of the projects they embark upon will not result in anything; they will probably be scrapped even before another person looks at them. Even when we look at the work professionals submit to agents, we have to assume that most of that work will not come to anything. So the idea of the ‘unmade’ covers the vast majority of human creative activity. The chapter considers these theoretical implications for the study of the unmade.