Repair and refactoring processes are creative

Because Creativity is organic, creative projects often need updates, maintenance, or repair along their lifespan just as living organisms need periods of rest and repair.

Repair is often approached as an effort to "return" to a previously stable state (dusting the shelves, fixing a bug caused by a code change elsewhere, getting the car headlights to turn on again). However, a process of repair is also an opportunity to generate new patterns and Practice morphogenetic creative processes. It's an opportunity to enliven existing patterns, establish new patterns between and within existing patterns, and make the system ready for new morphogenetic growth. (Repair comes from reparer, re- 'back' + parare 'make ready').

Every act of building, design, or "new" creation happens within a larger context, and seen from that larger context it is also an act of repair. It fits into, alters, and refreshes the context it lives in.

"In this sense, the idea of repair is creative, dynamic, open."
The Timeless Way of Building chapter 24

"Every act of building is, with respect to its larger context, an act of repair."
The Timeless Way of Building chapter 24

"In this new use of the word repair, we assume that every entity is changing constantly: and that at every moment we use the defects of the present state as the starting point for the definition of the new state."
The Timeless Way of Building chapter 24

See NPR Interview with Robert Pirsig 1991