Creative Something

Why be creative? A free ebook from several brilliant creatives.

Why should you be creative? Why should anyone, for that matter, concern themselves with creative thinking?

In the free ebook, Why Creativity?, several of today’s brilliant creatives provide insights into these questions. World renown illustrator and writer Frank Chimero offers a brief explanation, while the remarkable author Julien Smith describes the answer vividly and in a way that is sure to motivate you to create today.

The book also offers ideas from authors Matthew E May, David Meerman Scott, and Gregg Fraley, as well as answers from creative geniuses Mike Brown and Patrick Algrim.

Of course, because the ebook is free, you have nothing to lose by downloading it today, but so many ideas to gain.

So, if you haven’t downloaded “Why Creativity?” yet, be sure to grab it here.

To make creativity sustainable, don’t wait.

Mere ideas aren’t worth anything.

When professional creatives are paid it’s because they either have worthwhile knowledge and experience that they can actively educate others about, or because they create work that sells.

In both cases, the only way to make creativity sustainable is to do something with your ideas. Creation is the key to creativity, after all. Consider this: everyone has ideas, floating around in their minds. On the other hand: not everyone knows what to do with those ideas or executes them.

If you feel like your purpose in life is to be a creative, you have to create work that other people can see, use, and feel inspired by. Without a large portfolio of work you won’t have the valuable experiences to share or anything to sell.

You won’t sell everything you create, but the experience and being able to add the work to your growing portfolio is valuable in and of itself. Create for the sake of creating, but if you want to do it for a living you’ll have to find a way to sell the work, or sell what you learned by creating it.

So get out there and create something today. It’s your only chance.

Photo by Lorraine Santana.

Creativity is a gamble. But what’s not?

“Look high, look low, and we see that gamblers actually form the majority of the world’s inhabitants.” – James Runciman.

One way to get better at gambling is to start with low bets, experiment with different games, and practice repeatedly.

You and I are gambling every day, which is why it’s important to have some idea of how to get better at it.

Whenever we start a project or pursue an idea, we’re risking our time, energy, and potentially money, on something that we can’t see the outcome of. It’s a gamble to try something new, to be creative. Only fools believing they can accurately predict the outcome of any endeavor, which makes the gamble that much more worthwhile.

Sometimes you win big, you get lucky. Other times you simply lose and have to get over the loss of your time or money or emotional bet.

If you want to get better at being creative, you need to get used to gambling more with your ideas. Take risks and try something new. Bluff, if you have to, but be content with the possibility of losing. Because you will lose, more often than you’ll win.

Fortunately, ideas and energy automatically replenish themselves over time – unlike money – so you’re not really gambling anything that would make it impossible to gamble again in the future.

So, take a gamble on being wrong. If you lose, you don’t lose much, but the potential to win big is always there. It’s worth the risk to try something new.

Photo by Conor Ogle.

What to do after you start.

Getting started is easy if you are motivated enough.

You take the first few steps, you put the pencil to the paper and move it around a bit, or you open the text editor on your computer and make the clackity noise, or whatever else it takes to simply do something.

But what then?

If you’re like everyone else then you start to encounter strange feelings, of fear and doubt and uncertainty. It’s in this place, just after you start something, that creativity really shines.

You’ll begin to question yourself and your abilities. You’ll find yourself asking “Is this the right way?” repeatedly. Undoubtedly, shortly after you start something, you will feel discouraged. At least, if you’re really doing something worthwhile, you’ll have these feelings. That’s where you find the value of your own abilities, of course.

Like walking around a strange city without a map, the only way to know what’s out there is to explore.

Without exploration we – all of us – wouldn’t be where we are today. So embrace the fear and uncertainty and doubt you feel after starting something, it’s a sign you’re on the right track.

Photo by Grand Canyon NPS.

How to maintain a creative, healthy perspective.

“What we see depends mainly on what we look for.” – John Lubbock

Often creative ideas stem from seeing something that you couldn’t see before.

The missing piece you were overlooking, or the element you hadn’t considered adding, or the solution you didn’t know existed until it hit you randomly. Regularly, new experiences can fuel these types of creative insights.

At the heart of it, a change of perspective is what invokes new ideas.

Think about this for a minute. Your perspective is unique because it’s only yours. Nobody has seen the things you’ve seen, from the exact place you’ve seen them, while thinking the things you’ve been thinking. Nobody. That’s your perspective. But the solutions to your problems, new ideas for your projects, and creative insights all regularly lie outside of your perspective (if they didn’t, you wouldn’t be stuck searching for ideas). Outside of what you’ve already seen.

So what do you do?

Like your body, you need to maintain a healthy perspective on the world around you. You need to exercise it, feed it, make time to simply listen to it. How do you do those things?

Regularly questioning your beliefs, asking yourself “Why do I believe this particular thing to be true? What if it wasn’t?” Asking others for their opinions, and really listening to what they have to say, helps too. Look for reasons why your perspective on something might be restricted somehow, and seek out ways to expand what you believe/see/think/feel.

Most importantly: try new things, often.

Like trying to watch a movie from the direct side of the screen, you don’t know what you’re missing until you actively change where you’re sitting.

Photo by Helga Birna Jonasdottir.