The greatest opening line ever written is found on page 1 of William Gibson's Neuromancer.
"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel."
I've read novels that I've enjoyed more, but no opening line has stuck with me as much as that one. In a single line, Gibson conjures a melancholy, lonely feeling, familiar yet hinting at something strange. I'll never forget it.
The rest of Neuromancer is equally impressive as a creative work. Published in 1984, the novel put the entire cyberpunk genre on the map and popularized the term "cyberspace".
The Matrix, Ghost in the Shell, Cyberpunk 2077, Deus Ex and countless other movies, games, books, and fashion trends trace their roots to this book.
There is a ton of raw talent that shows in Gibson's writing - but beyond that, there's a practice that enabled him to come up with the imaginative world in the book. And that practice is the same one that will help you and me when we're feeling uninspired and creatively drained.
It’s a simple habit, but it may be the single most important differentiator between those who create memorable, innovative work, and those who don’t.
Gibson described it as building a "personal micro-culture", but I like to use just one word: exploration.
Today, we'll discuss three ways you can make exploration a more consistent habit in your life.
The first is to broaden the scope of what you intake - the books you read, the movies you watch, the people you talk to - all of it. Like Jobs said, creativity is just combining things - and when you're learning from a wide variety of sources, you get this rich trove of pieces to combine.
Consider the term "cyberspace", which was essentially coined in Neuromancer. Technically, Gibson coined it in a short story from a couple years earlier, but what fascinates me is that Gibson had no access to the internet before publishing this book. In fact, he wrote it on a typewriter because he didn't have a computer.
Moreover, in the early 80's, the "internet" was in an embryonic stage - just a loose collection of mostly academic and military computers in networks like ARPANET. The first web browser wouldn't come around until 1990.
Gibson's vision of "cyberspace" as a near-ubiquitous daily destination for billions of people was an invention of pure fiction, and it was cobbled together from many sources. His main inspiration stemmed from seeing people play video games in arcades - in particular, the way they'd be transfixed on the screens, almost in a trance.
This image was poured into a mental mixture with others, including a flyer advertising an Apple II computer.
<aside> 🧐 In case you're interested, this script is part of the following video:
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This is why you don't feel inspired.