Tips For Being Creative
July 18, 2005
(I'm little hesitant to post this because the guy I'm linking is an artist living and working in New York and his language is sometimes vulgar and crude. I've decided to link his post anyway since the ideas he presents are so good. If you decided to read the article be warned and have as much sense as an old cow, eat the hay and leave the sticks.)
Hugh, at Gaping Void, an artist, who works in advertising, has posted a list of 30, very interesting tips, on how to be more creative. He has several versions, a short one, a long one, a book form in PDF you can download. I'm linking to the long one because the explanations were quite good, here's a sample to whet your appetite:
"1. Ignore everybody.
The more original your idea is, the less good advice other people will be able to give you. When I first started with the cartoon-on-back-of-bizcard format, people thought I was nuts. Why wasn't I trying to do something more easy for markets to digest i.e. cutey-pie greeting cards or whatever?
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. And trusting your feelings is not as easy as the optimists say it is. There's a reason why feelings scare us.And asking close friends never works quite as well as you hope, either. It's not that they deliberately want to be unhelpful. It's just they don't know your world one millionth as well as you know your world, no matter how hard they try, no matter how hard you try to explain …
3. Put the hours in.
Doing anything worthwhile takes forever. 90% of what separates successful people and failed people is time, effort, and stamina.
I get asked a lot, "Your business card format is very simple. Aren't you worried about somebody ripping it off?"Standard Answer: Only if they can draw more of them than me, better than me.
What gives the work its edge is the simple fact that I've spent years drawing them. I've drawn thousands. Tens of thousands of man hours.
So if somebody wants to rip my idea off, go ahead. If somebody wants to overtake me in the business card doodle wars, go ahead. You've got many long years in front of you. And unlike me, you won't be doing it for the joy of it. You'll be doing it for some self-loathing, ill-informed, lame-ass mercenary reason. So the years will be even longer and far, far more painful. Lucky you.
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.
So yeah, success means you've got a long road ahead of you, regardless. How do you best manage it…
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.
I was offered a quite substantial publishing deal a year or two ago. Turned it down. The company sent me a contract. I looked it over. Hmmmm...Called the company back. Asked for some clarifications on some points in the contract. Never heard back from them. The deal died.
This was a very respected company. You may have even heard of it.
They just assumed I must be just like all the other people they represent- hungry and desperate and willing to sign anything.
They wanted to own me, regardless of how good a job they did…
Okay, now go read the rest and get inspired to do something and then do something.