Creative Something

Read this and get closer to creative success.

Earlier over the weekend I was reading some fantastic writing from Merlin Mann when I stumbled across an article of his titled “The problem with ‘feeling creative’” and immediately I fell in love with what I discovered.

You saw my article some weeks ago about how difficult creating can be, right? It’s not just that creating is hard, it’s that creativity is work in itself.

To quote Merlin’s aforementioned article: “Creative work only seems like a magic trick to people who don’t understand that it’s ultimately still work.”

The creative genius wasn’t born with some remarkable, innate ability to see the world differently, he or she was simply primed for creative thinking all his or her life. The same can go for you as well: if you practice being creative enough, and if you do the hard work to question the world around you and if you make efforts to shake things up once in a while, you’ll be a creative pro.

There’s no real trick, and any amount of advice or wisdom you seek out won’t help you be more creative if you’re not willing to put in the work and exercise your creative muscles.

Get out there and do something creative today, even if it’s something really damn small and only takes you five minutes. Then do something similar tomorrow, and the next day. Work at being more creative and – surprise – you will be.

The perks of venturing into an unknown art.

A painter can learn a lot about shapes by exploring the art of sculpture.

The painter who learns to sculpt can play with shapes and textures in the 3D world without having to start a new canvas to see how changes affect those shapes. The different creative medium allows the painter to see their art from a new perspective, using new techniques and abilities he or she may have not fully explored before.

Similarly, a writer can discover insights from cinematography, an entrepreneur can learn much from farming, and a digital designer can explore new ideas by mastering traditional art.

Becoming well‒known for one type of creation is good, especially when you really excel at that one form. But if you only stick to one method of creating and don’t explore the countless other ways to create that are out there, you’ll be missing an opportunity to really explore and grow as a creative individual.

We can’t know what is possible if we only stick to what we know. Author and probability expert Nassim Nicholas Taleb reminds us of the value we can see as creatives by exploring in his book The Black Swan. Taleb suggestions: “The payoff of a human venture is, in general, inversely proportional to what it is expected to be.”

Today, what can you do to create something using a different method than you’re used to? What types of tools and techniques can you use to spur on your creativity right now?

Photo by Zach Dischner.

To find creative bliss, just focus.

When you grab a camera and take a picture that is out of focus, the result isn’t very pleasing.

A photo that is out of focus requires a lot of unnecessary work on part of the viewer in order to see exactly what the picture is of. Your creative life is a lot like that photograph: if there’s nothing clearly in focus, you’re creating unnecessary work that could have been prevented.

You have to learn what to focus on if you want to succeed as a creative and be happy.

Successul people aren’t always necessarily more intelligent or creative than anyone else, they just know how to focus their efforts. Author Seth Godin recently blogged about this topic, he writes: “…those that manage to capture the imagination…and grow are doing it by perfecting the things that matter and ignoring the rest.”

But how do you know what matters right now – what you should be focusing on – and what doesn’t?

As a creative, you likely have a lot of areas to focus on right now. There’s work to be done, there’s responsibilities and bills to see to, there’s friends and family and possibly an entire other category of work that you enjoy. So which area do you focus most of your efforts on? There’s no easy answer, but one way to tell what you should be focusing on is to evaluate how happy and challenging the work is.

Exciting work that makes you feel happy and accomplished, work that is somewhat challenging and that makes you feel as though you’re learning and growing, may be the right work to focus on. Ultimately you’ll have to explore different areas of focus, but with any sort of focus you’re working on the photo that is your creative life, and that’s better than an out of focus picture.

Keep going with a solid focus when you find it, rather than taking the side road to somewhere else. Doing so will help you create a clear picture and enable you to be more successful.

So go now, find something worth focusing on, and give it all you’ve got.

Photo by Magdalena.

Share where you discover creative inspiration.

I’ve written before about how inspiration is all around us, but I wanted to try something different with your help.

When asked the question: where do you find creative inspiration, what first comes to mind? Now take that idea and find a way to present it, in a photo, a drawing or painting, in a poem, in a short story, or any other way you like to present your ideas.

Got it? Now email your answer to information AT creativesomething.net. I’m going to gather and collect responses from Creative Something readers like you and put them into an inspiration gallery here on the site!

Your inspiration could be featured in the new gallery, so be sure to send your name and blog or website URL to be given proper credit.

I’ll accept entries into the inspiration gallery until Friday, May 18th.

Illustration by John Borowicz.

Be uncertain of your ideas, but not your purpose.

“Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.” – Voltaire

Feeling certain can be a large burden for creative endeavors.

The inventor who goes out in search of what he is confident to be an ideal, perfect machine, is doomed for failure. By being married to his vision of what his invention should be, he doesn’t see the better solution just around the edges.

We can see this problem almost every day. We all settle into ideas because we’re so sure they’ll work, and when they don’t work we keep pushing on them, spending countless hours to try and fit our square peg of an idea into the round hole of a goal.

Instead, our creative process should be the opposite. We shouldn’t be married to ideas, we should instead be married to goals, visions, and purposes.

If your purpose is to create artwork that inspires, creating art using only crayons may not be the best way to go about it. If your vision is to be the best improv actor this side of the globe, you can’t be married to the idea that opening your own theater is the way to get there. This is important because wasting your time on an idea that isn’t working is just that: a waste of time. Pursuing ideas that aren’t right means you’re wasting time that you could otherwise be devoting to the right efforts.

Being married to an idea is an efficient way to waste energy and resources.

It’s natural to pursue certainty, but it’s unnatural to align that certainty to mere ideas. Instead, be open to the fact that your ideas may not be the best, that there may be a better solution waiting for you to discover it. Instead of defining yourself by your ideas, define yourself by your goals and vision.

Creative insights often hide here, just outside where we’re so certain they are.

Illustration copyright Jean Giraud via But does it float.