How to be Creative

An extract from a brilliant piece by Hugh McLeod. This article is funny, brilliant and insightful. It seems to be not just a revelation about creativity but a way of thinking about working and living in the real world

1. Ignore everybody.

The more original your idea is, the less good advice other people will be able to give you. You don’t know if your idea is any good the moment it’s created. Neither does anyone else. The most you can hope for is a strong gut feeling that it is.

2. The idea doesn’t have to be big. It just has to be yours.

The sovereignty you have over your work will inspire far more people than the actual content ever will.

Your idea doesn’t have to be big. It just has to be yours alone. The more the idea is yours alone, the more freedom you have to do something really amazing. The more amazing, the more people will click with your idea. The more people click with your idea, the more this little thing of yours will snowball into a big thing…

3. Put the hours in.

Doing anything worthwhile takes forever. 90% of what separates successful people and failed people is time, effort, and stamina.

If somebody in your industry is more successful than you, it’s probably because he works harder at it than you do. Sure, maybe he’s more inherently talented, more adept at networking etc, but I don’t consider that an excuse. Over time, that advantage counts for less and less. Which is why the world is full of highly talented, network-savvy, failed mediocrities.

Stamina is utterly important. And stamina is only possible if it’s managed well. People think all they need to do is endure one crazy, intense, job-free creative burst and their dreams will come true. They are wrong, they are stupidly wrong. Being good at anything is like figure skating- the definition of being good at it is being able to make it look easy. But it never is easy. Ever. That’s what the stupidly wrong people conveniently forget.

4. If your biz plan depends on you suddenly being “discovered” by some big shot, your plan will probably fail.

Nobody suddenly discovers anything. Things are made slowly and in pain.

5. You are responsible for your own experience.

Nobody can tell you if what you’re doing is good, meaningful or worthwhile. The more compelling the path, the more lonely it is.

Every creative person is looking for “The Big Idea”. You know, the one that is going to catapult them out from the murky depths of obscurity and on to the highest planes of fame. The one that’s going to get them invited to all the right parties, metaphorical or otherwise.

So naturally you ask yourself, if and when you finally come up with The Big Idea, after years of toil, struggle and doubt, how do you know whether or not it is “The One”?

Answer: You don’t.

All you get is this voice inside you that seems to say, “This is totally stupid. This is utterly moronic. This is a complete waste of time. I’m going to do it anyway.” And you go do it anyway.

6. Everyone is born creative; everyone is given a box of crayons in kindergarten.

Then when you hit puberty they take the crayons away and replace them with books on algebra etc. Being suddenly hit years later with the creative bug is just a wee voice telling you, “I want my crayons back, please.”

So you’ve got the itch to do something. Write a screenplay, start a painting, write a book, turn your recipe for fudge brownies into a proper business, whatever. You don’t know where the itch came from, it’s almost like it just arrived on your doorstep, uninvited. Until now you were quite happy holding down a real job, being a regular person…

Until now.

You don’t know if you’re any good or not, but you’d think you could be. And the idea terrifies you. The problem is, even if you are good, you know nothing about this …

Go ahead and make something. Make something really special. Make something amazing that will really blow the mind of anybody who sees it. If you try to make something just to fit your uninformed view of some hypothetical market, you will fail. If you make something special and powerful and honest and true, you will succeed.

They’re only crayons. You didn’t fear them in kindergarten, why fear them now?

7. Companies that squelch creativity can no longer compete with companies that champion creativity.

Nor can you bully a subordinate into becoming a genius.

Since the modern, scientifically-conceived corporation was invented in the early half of the Twentieth Century, creativity has been sacrificed in favor of forwarding the interests of the “Team Player”. There’s only one problem. Team Players are not very good at creating value on their own. They are not autonomous; they need a team in order to exist.

So now corporations are awash with non-autonomous thinkers.

“I don’t know. What do you think?”
“I don’t know. What do you think?”
“I don’t know. What do you think?”
“I don’t know. What do you think?”
“I don’t know. What do you think?”
“I don’t know. What do you think?”

And so on.

8. Everybody has their own private Mount Everest they were put on this earth to climb.

You may never reach the summit; for that you will be forgiven. But if you don’t make at least one serious attempt to get above the snow-line, years later you will find yourself lying on your deathbed, and all you will feel is emptiness.

This metaphorical Mount Everest doesn’t have to manifest itself as “Art”. For some people, yes, it might be a novel or a painting. But Art is just one path up the mountain, one of many. With others the path may be something more prosaic. Making a million dollars, raising a family, owning the most Burger King franchises in the Tri-State area, building some crazy over-sized model airplane, the list has no end. Whatever. Let’s talk about you now. Your mountain. Your private Mount Everest. Yes, that one. Exactly.

Let’s say you never climb it. Do you have a problem with that? Can you just say to yourself, “Never mind, I never really wanted it anyway” and take up stamp collecting instead?

Well, you could try. But I wouldn’t believe you. I think it’s not OK for you never to try to climb it. And I think you agree with me. Otherwise you wouldn’t have read this far.

9. The more talented somebody is, the less they need the props.

Abraham Lincoln wrote The Gettysberg Address on a piece of ordinary stationery that he had borrowed from the friend whose house he was staying at.

James Joyce wrote with a simple pencil and notebook. Somebody else did the typing, but only much later.

Van Gogh rarely painted with more than six colors on his palette.

There’s no correlation between creativity and equipment ownership. None. Zilch. Nada.

Actually, as the artist gets more into his thing, and as he gets more successful, his number of tools tends to go down. He knows what works for him. Expending mental energy on stuff wastes time. He’s a man on a mission. He’s got a deadline. He’s got some rich client breathing down his neck. The last thing he wants is to spend 3 weeks learning how to use a router drill if he doesn’t need to.

A fancy tool just gives the second-rater one more pillar to hide behind.

Which is why there are so many second-rate art directors with state-of-the-art Mac computers.

Which is why there are so many crappy photographers with state-of-the-art digital cameras.

Which is why there are so many unremarkable painters with expensive studios in trendy neighborhoods.

Hiding behind pillars, all of them.

Pillars do not help; they hinder. The more mighty the pillar, the more you end up relying on it psychologically, the more it gets in your way.

And this applies to business, as well.

Which is why there are so many failing businesses with fancy offices.

Which is why there’s so many failing businessmen spending a fortune on fancy suits and expensive club memberships.

Again, hiding behind pillars.

Successful people, artists and non-artists alike, are very good at spotting pillars. They’re very good at doing without them. Even more importantly, once they’ve spotted a pillar, they’re very good at quickly getting rid of it.

Good pillar management is one of the most valuable talents you can have on the planet. If you have it, I envy you. If you don’t, I pity you.

Sure, nobody’s perfect. We all have our pillars. We seem to need them. You are never going to live a pillar-free existence. Neither am I.

All we can do is keep asking the question, “Is this a pillar” about every aspect of our business, our craft, our reason for being alive etc and go from there. The more we ask, the better we get at spotting pillars, the more quickly the pillars vanish.

Ask. Keep asking. And then ask again. Stop asking and you’re dead.

10. Don’t try to stand out from the crowd; avoid crowds altogether.

Your plan for getting your work out there has to be as original as the actual work, perhaps even more so. The work has to create a totally new market. There’s no point trying to do the same thing as 250,000 other young hopefuls, waiting for a miracle. All existing business models are wrong. Find a new one.

I’ve seen it so many times. Call him Ted. A young kid in the big city, just off the bus, wanting to be a famous something: artist, writer, musician, film director, whatever. He’s full of fire, full of passion, full of ideas. And you meet Ted again five or ten years later, and he’s still tending bar at the same restaurant. He’s not a kid anymore. But he’s still no closer to his dream. His voice is still as defiant as ever, certainly, but there’s an emptiness to his words that wasn’t there before.

Yeah, well, Ted probably chose a very well-trodden path. Write novel, be discovered, publish bestseller, sell movie rights, retire rich in 5 years. Or whatever.

No worries that there’s probably 3 million other novelists/actors/musicians/painters etc with the same plan. But of course, Ted’s special. Of course his fortune will defy the odds eventually. Of course. That’s what he keeps telling you, as he refills your glass.

Is your plan of a similar ilk? If it is, then I’d be concerned.

Is you plan unique? Is there nobody else doing it? Then I’d be excited. A little scared, maybe, but excited.

11. If you accept the pain, it cannot hurt you.

The pain of making the necessary sacrifices always hurts more than you think it’s going to. I know. It sucks. That being said, doing something seriously creative is one of the most amazing experiences one can have, in this or any other lifetime. If you can pull it off, it’s worth it. Even if you don’t end up pulling it off, you’ll learn many incredible, magical, valuable things. It’s NOT doing it when you know you full well you HAD the opportunity- that hurts FAR more than any failure.

Frankly, I think you’re better off doing something on the assumption that you will NOT be rewarded for it, that it will NOT receive the recognition it deserves, that it will NOT be worth the time and effort invested in it. The obvious advantage to this angle is, of course, if anything good comes of it, then it’s an added bonus.

The second, more subtle and profound advantage is: that by scuppering all hope of worldly and social betterment from the creative act, you are finally left with only one question to answer:

Do you make this damn thing exist or not?

And once you can answer that truthfully to yourself, the rest is easy.

12. Never compare your inside with somebody else’s outside.

The more you practice your craft, the less you confuse worldly rewards with spiritual rewards, and vice versa. Even if your path never makes any money or furthers your career, that’s still worth a TON.

When I was 16 or 17 in Edinburgh I vaguely knew this guy who owned a shop called “Cinders”, on St. Stephen’s Street. It specialized in restoring antique fireplaces. Cinders’ modus operandi was very simple. Buy original Georgian and Victorian chimney pieces from old, dilapidated houses for 10 cents on the dollar, give them a loving but expedient makeover in the workshop, sell them at vast profit to yuppies.

Back then I was insatiably curious about how people made a living (I still am). So one-day, while sitting on his stoop I chatted with the fireplace guy about it.

He told me about the finer points of his trade- the hunting through old houses, the craftsmanship, the customer relations, and of course the profit.

The fellow seemed quite proud of his job. From how he described it he seemed to like his trade and be making a decent living. Scotland was going through a bit of a recession at the time; unemployment was high, money was tight; I guess for an ageing hippie things could’ve been a lot worse.

Very few kids ever said, “Gosh, when I grow up I’m going to be a fireplace guy!” It’s not the most obvious trade in the world. I asked him about how he fell into it.

“I used to be an antiques dealer,” he said. “People who spend a lot of money on antiques also seem to spend a lot of money restoring their houses. So I sort of got the whiff of opportunity just by talking to people in my antiques shop. Also, there are too many antique dealers in Edinburgh crowding the market, so I was looking for an easier way to make a living.”

Like the best jobs in the world, it just kindasorta happened.

“Well, some of the fireplaces are real beauties,” I said. “It must be hard parting with them.”

“No it isn’t,” he said (and this is the part I remember most). “I mean, I like them, but because they take up so much room- they’re so big and bulky- I’m relieved to be rid of them once they’re sold. I just want them out of the shop ASAP and the cash in my pocket. Selling them is easy for me. Unlike antiques. I always loved antiques, so I was always falling in love with the inventory, I always wanted to hang on to my best stuff. I’d always subconsciously price them too high in order to keep them from leaving the shop.”

Being young and idealistic, I told him I thought that was quite sad. Why choose to sell a “mere product” (i.e. chimney pieces) when instead you could make your living selling something you really care about (i.e. antiques)? Surely the latter would be a preferable way to work?

“The first rule of business,” he said, chuckling at my naivete, “is never sell something you love. Otherwise, you may as well be selling your children.”

15 years later I’m in New York. Some friend-of-a-friend is looking at my work. He asks me if I publish. I tell him I don’t. Tell him it’s just a hobby. Tell him about my advertising job.

“Man, why the hell are you in advertising?” he says, pointing to my portfolio. “You should be doing this. Galleries and stuff.”

“Advertising’s just chimney pieces,” I say, speaking into my glass.

“What?”

“Never mind.”

13. Merit can be bought. Passion can’t.

The only people who can change the world are people who want to. And not everybody does.

Human beings have this thing I call the “Pissed Off Gene”. It’s that bit of our psyche that makes us utterly dissatisfied with our lot, no matter how kindly fortune smiles upon us. It’s there for a reason. Back in our early caveman days being pissed off made us more likely to get off our butt, get out of the cave and into the tundra hunting woolly mammoth, so we’d have something to eat for supper. It’s a survival mechanism. Damn useful then, damn useful now.

It’s this same Pissed Off Gene that makes us want to create anything in the first place- drawings, violin sonatas, meat packing companies, websites. This same gene drove us to discover how to make a fire, the wheel, the bow and arrow, indoor plumbing, the personal computer, the list is endless.

Part of understanding the creative urge is understanding that it’s primal. Wanting to change the world is not a noble calling, it’s a primal calling.

We think we’re “providing a superior integrated logistic system” or “helping America to really taste freshness”. In fact we’re just pissed off and want to get the hell out of the cave and kill the woolly mammoth.

Your business either lets you go hunt the woolly mammoth or it doesn’t. Of course, like so many white-collar jobs these days, you might very well be offered a ton of money to sit in the corner-office cave and pretend that you’re hunting. That is sad. What’s even sadder is if you agree to take the money.

14. Avoid the Water Cooler Gang.

They’re a well-meaning bunch, but they get in the way eventually. Back when I worked for a large advertising agency as a young rookie, it used to just bother me how much the “Water Cooler Gang” just kvetched all the time. The “Water Cooler Gang” was my term for what was still allowed to exist in the industry back then. Packs of second-tier creatives, many years past their sell-by date, being squeezed by the Creative Directors for every last ounce of juice they had, till it came time to firing them on the cheap. Taking too many trips to the water cooler and coming back late from lunch far too often.

15. Nobody cares. Do it for yourself.

Everybody is too busy with their own lives to give a damn about your book, painting, web innovation, new business process etc, especially if you haven’t sold it yet. And the ones that aren’t, you don’t want in your life anyway.

Making a big deal over your creative genius is the kiss of death. That’s all I have to say on the subject.

16. Don’t worry about finding inspiration. It comes eventually.

Inspiration precedes the desire to create, not the other way around.

You have to find a way of working that makes it dead easy to take full advantage of your inspired moments. They never hit at a convenient time, nor do they last long.In the meantime, you’re better off going out into the big, wide world, having some adventures and refilling your well. Trying to create when you don’t feel like it is like making conversation for the sake of making conversation. It’s not really connecting, it’s just droning on like an old, drunken barfly.

17. Write from the heart.

There is no silver bullet. There is only the love God gave you.

As a professional writer, I am interested in how conversation scales.

How communication scales, x to the power of n etc etc.

Ideally, if you’re in the communication business, you want to say the same thing, the same way to an audience of millions that you would to an audience of one. Imagine the power you’d have if you could pull it off.

But sadly, it doesn’t work that way.

You can’t love a crowd the same way you can love a person.

And a crowd can’t love you the way a single person can love you.

Intimacy doesn’t scale. Not really. Intimacy is a one-on-one phenomenon.

It’s not a big deal. Whether you are writing to an audience of one, five, a thousand, a million, ten million, there is really only one way to really connect. One way that actually works:

18. The best way to get approval is not to need it.

This is as true in business as it is in art and business.

About 15 years ago I was hanging out in the offices of Punch, the famous London humor magazine. I was just a kid at the time, for some reason the cartoon editor (who was a famous cartoonist in his own right) was tolerating having me around that day. I was asking him questions about the biz. He was answering them as best he could while he sorted through a large stack of mail.

“Take a look at this, Sunshine,” he said, handing a piece of paper over to me.

I gave it a look. Some cartoonist whose name I recognized had written him a rather sad and desperate letter, begging to be published.

“Another whiney letter from another whiney cartoonist who used to be famous 20 years ago,” he said, rolling his eyeballs. “I get at least fifty of them a week from other whiney formerly-famous cartoonists.”

He paused. Then he smiled an wicked grin.

“How not to get published,” he said. “Write me a silly letter like that one.”

19. Power is never given. Power is taken.

People who are “ready” give off a different vibe than people who aren’t. Animals can smell fear; maybe that’s it.

The minute you become ready is the the minute you stop dreaming. Suddenly it’s no longer about “becoming”. Suddenly it’s about “doing”. You don’t get the dream job because you walk into the editor’s office for the first time and go, “Hi, I would really love to be a sports writer one day, please.”

You get the job because you walk into the editor’s office and go, “Hi, I’m the best sports writer on the planet.” And somehow the editor can tell you aren’t lying, either.

You didn’t go in there, asking the editor to give you power. You went in there and politely informed the editor that you already have the power. That’s what being “ready” means. That’s what “taking power” means.

Not needing anything from another person in order to be the best in the world.

20. When your dreams become reality, they are no longer your dreams.

If you are successful, it’ll never come from the direction you predicted. Same is true if you fail.