How environment boosts creativity, or: how a drunken F. Scott was right all along
Of all the characters in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s books - as well as in his rich and colorful real life - one of our absolute favorites has to be Andrew Turnbull. Turnbull is of the real-life variety of characters, a then 11-year-old whose parents owned the estate Fitzgerald stayed in while he was writing Tender is the Night and his wife was being treated for schizophrenia. Still with us? Good. Turnbull reported that Fitzgerald worked in dark, disheveled rooms with notebooks scattered all over the place and a bottle of gin at the ready, and that he stumbled around the house looking dazed and wan in a bathrobe, and regularly took walks in his pajamas. While part of us desperately wants to read all the dirt that Andrew Turnbull can dish, the other part of us simply must point that according to research done on creativity, F. Scott was doing all the right things. Turn out the lights Or at least turn them down. Study after study has shown that darkened lighting helps your mind