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nobody cares. do it for yourself.

More thoughts on “How To Be Creative”:

22. Nobody cares. Do it for yourself.

Everybody is too busy with their own lives to give a damn about your book, painting, screenplay 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 schtick is the kiss of death. That’s all I have to say on the subject.

selling out is harder than it looks

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More thoughts on “How To Be Creative”:

21. Selling out is harder than it looks.

Diluting your product to make it more “commercial” will just make people like it less.

Many years ago, barely out of college, I started schlepping around the ad agencies, looking for my first job.
One fine day a Creative Director kindly agreed for me to come show him my portfolio. Hooray!
So I came to his office and showed him my work. My work was bloody awful. All of it.
Imagine the worst, cheesiest “I used to wash with Sudso but now I wash with Lemon-Fresh Rinso Extreme” vapid housewife crap. Only far worse than that.
The CD was a nice guy. You could tell he didn’t think much of my work, though he was far too polite to blurt it out. Finally he quietly confessed that it wasn’t doing much for him.
“Well, the target market are middle class houswives,” I rambled. “They’re quite conservative, so I thought I’d better tone it down…”
“You can tone it down once you’ve gotten the job and once the client comes after your ass with a red hot poker and tells you to tone it down,” he laughed. “Till then, show me the toned-up version.”
This story doesn’t just happen in advertising. It happens everywhere.

the hughtrain has been rewritten

(Read the whole thing here)
The (Updated) Hughtrain Manifesto: “The market for something to believe in is infinite.”

This cartoon directly above explains exactly why I said, “Forget the fancy buzzwords. The future of business is spiritual…”
This goes with what I said previously:“It’s this utter belief in humanity and human potential that excites us. We humans want to believe in our own species. And we want people, companies and products in our lives that make it easier to do so. That is human nature.“

Think less about what your product does, and think more about human potential. What statement about humanity does your product make?

The bigger the statement, the bigger the idea, the bigger your brand will become.
I know, I know, spirituality and marketing don’t mix, right?
You sure about that?

(Read the whole thing here)
I decided that “Smarter Conversations” wasn’t cutting it, somehow. Any fool can be smarter.
But to borrow from Paul’s Letter to The Corinthians, without Love, you have nothing.
When somebody like me or Evelyn Rodriguez or John Strande talks about entering “The Creative Age”, we’re not saying the world will one day be run by graphic designers. We’re talking about “purpose and belief” i.e. human, spiritual values driving the brand to ever increasing degrees, rather than just what it does or how much it costs.
That means brands, businesses and people will have to become more spiritually sophisticated. And that means marketing folk will have to start behaving less like priests, more like monks.

over the weekend

change is not death

August 28, 2004

how to be creative (long version)

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As requested, I went ahead and put the entire “How To Be Creative” thread, originally 21 pages long, onto a single page.
It’s a long read by blogging standards. You can find it here.
Hope it’s OK.
The original shorter version is here.
Meanwhile, Clark kindly translated the 20 main tenets into Chinese. Heh. Thanks, Clark!
1. 走自己的路
2. 想法虽不起眼，但它却能改变全世界
3. 投入时间
4. 千里马常有，而伯乐不常有
5. 你的经历由你自己负责
6. 创造性是人的本性
7. 保持日常工作
8. 唯有有创意的公司才能生存
9. 每个人都有自己的生存目标
10. 成大事者不拘小节
11. 与众不同
12. 期望越大，失望越大
13. 不要互相攀比
14. 书山有路勤为径
15. 区分你喜欢做的事和你不喜欢做的事
16. 世易时移
17. 黄金有价，激情无价
18. 远离失败的人
19. 要有自己的个性和风格，哪怕是缺点
20. 形式并不重要，重要的是内容

diagramatical

August 27, 2004

the creative age

A blogger I’m enjoying a lot these days is Evelyn Rodriguez.
She’s in sync with a lot of my current thinking, namely, that we’re entering into what is known as “The Creative Age”. Good-bye white collar, hello black collar.
What are the implications of living in The Creative Age? This is my take on it:
As I get older, what becomes more interesting to me is not what my clients make, but why they make it. There are lots of possible reasons: To make money. To make a dent in the universe. To enhance their attractiveness to women. To allow themselves to become the person they were born to be. To sell more junk than the guy down the street. To serve God & Man. To get revenge on their father. To have the biggest boat in the yacht club. The list is endless.
Experience has taught me– the more interesting the brand, the more higher up the spiritual food chain the people behind it are.
Which leads me to conclude: Branding is a spiritual exercise.
All you marketing and brand mavens out there: Forget the fancy buzzwords. The future of business is spiritual. “Creative” is just a subset.
UPDATE: Evelyn mentions this post here. Thanks, Ev!

thoughts on “smarter conversations”

How to have smarter conversations.
Somewhere along the the line I decided that embracing “Smarter Conversations” was preferable to prematurely consigning my career to the dustbin of history. I just wrote down some random thoughts:
1. Understand why what you’re offering to do for other people is interesting, important, meaningful etc then start telling people about it.
Think about this one. Hard. If you don’t know, then how will other people know? Exactly. They won’t.
2. Live like you know the difference between remarkable and unremarkable, like it matters to you.
The more “remarkable” matters to you, the more likely that it will appear in the product you’re selling. The more likely other people will notice it.
3. Seek out the exceptional minds.
This is my basic mantra. It’s a good one to have. Not everybody gets it. Their loss.
4. Start a blog.
Blogs are funny things. Say something smart, people pay attention. Say something dumb, you’re ignored. We big media folk just can’t seem to get our heads around that concept, for some reason. Regular blogging can help train you to better discern between smart and dumb. Makes it easier to extend this to the rest of one’s business.
5. Ruthlessly avoid working for companies that “don’t get it”.
Yeah, you may have to turn down a few gigs, and that can really hurt when the rent is due. Still, anything that’s easy to get isn’t worth having.
6. Ruthlessly avoid working for companies that think they know better than you.
Luckily, if you get the whole “smarter conversations” thing, their “Yes, Buts” will just seem rather empty. Making them easier to “toss out like old furniture”.
7. Be nice.
Smarter conversations are fuelled by goodwill. Lose it and die.
8. Be honest.
Again, smarter conversations are fuelled by goodwill etc.
9. Karma is key.
But you already know that. Or you’re stupid. No middle ground on this one, sorry.
10. Listen.
Tongues are dumber than brains, brains are dumber than ears etc.

huge cluetrain hole

Found a huge INTELLECTUAL HOLE in The Cluetrain Manifesto:

4. Whether delivering information, opinions, perspectives, dissenting arguments or humorous asides, the human voice is typically open, natural, uncontrived.

Wow. That’s the most UTTERLY WRONG thing I’ve ever read in my life.
They obviously don’t go to the right parties.

August 26, 2004

new sales policy

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I do not sell the originals individually. I only part with them en masse as part of a much larger commission.
Commissions start at $50,000 USD.
Fifty thousand U.S. dollars. Rock on.
Feel free to contact me for more info: hugh at gapingvoid etc.
Thank you.

August 25, 2004

seek out the exceptional minds

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More thoughts on “How To Be A Copywriter”:

4. Seek out the exceptional minds, avoid everyone else.

Life is short. You don’t want to end up in The Watercooler Gang.

OK, I

August 24, 2004

new york bartender allegory

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A strange thing happens to New York bartenders when they hit the age of thirty: They suddenly realize they’re never going to be famous.
Right up to the point where they were 29 years, 364 days, 23 hours, 59 minutes and 59 seconds old they are all absolutely, positively certain that their screenplay will be sold, their face will be discovered by a big stage producer, their paintings will be hanging at The MoMA, their photographs will be gracing the pages of Vogue etc. etc.
Then Boom! Within nanoseconds of the clock chiming Midnight on the morning of the Big Three-Oh, the dream is suddenly over. Crash. Burn. Dead. No more magic famemachine to lift their souls out of the lowly depths of bohemian hand-to-mouth living and into the higher realms of A-List parties and Central Park South apartments.
Of course, the first thing they do is panic. Holy Shit! I’m old! Despair! Despair! Utter Despair!
Then once the initial rush of fear and dread starts to wane, they decide it’s finally time to grow up and do something serious. Goodbye, Dream. Hello, Sensible Adulthood. Time to stop working for The Man. Time to strike out on their own. Time to be a grownup.
They look around for ideas to start their own business. But like everybody else alive, their search is limited by what they know. Besides their art thing (auditions, gallery schmoozing etc), they’ve only really been in one business since dropping out of college a decade previously– pouring drinks.
Bartending is the only job they know. The drinks trade is all they know.
So late one night, Bartender One (who just turned thirty) is having an after-hours beer with a friend, Bartender Two (who also just turned thirty). They�re both in mourning for their recently-lost youth. They are commiserating, trying to keep it in perspective, trying to focus on the positive. But now they�re also talking intently, talking passionately, thinking seriously, they�re figuring it all out, they’ve got to come up with an idea. They need a business idea. They need a plan. Suddenly…
Bartender One: I know! Let’s open our own bar!
Bartender Two: Yeah! Cool! Let’s open our own bar!
So they whoop and holler and dance around and hug each other, glowing radiantly in the sheer excitement of their new business plan.
Good thing nobody else in New York has thought of it yet.

long day

August 23, 2004

idea amplifier

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More thoughts on “The Hughtrain Manifesto”:

A company’s primary role is to function as an “idea amplifier”. Making and doing are mere subsets.

Most things companies make are actually pretty dull. Most things people buy are fairly mundane.
A computer is just a plastic and metal box you use to send e-mail, write papers and whatnot.
A pair of running shoes is just some cloth and rubber that allows you to go jogging.
Coffee is just flavored hot water with some caffeine in it.
Yet Apple, Nike and Starbucks excite people. Why?
Sure, they were better than their competitors, they redefined their markets. But there are a lot of markets out there; lots of them are being redefined all the time. So what’s the big deal about these three brands?
It’s not the companies’ products that are so great, it’s not what the products actually do that is so great, it’s their belief in human potential that is so great.
Their belief in the spiritual heights a person is able to reach within a single lifetime, that is the idea we buy into. That is what’s compelling, not the actual benefit, not the actual molecules.
All three companies in some way want to change the world. And all three companies believe they can. But more importantly, all three companies believe that their customers can change the world as well.
They believe people can do something meaningful with their lives. Ergo they want to provide their customers with stuff that help them to do exactly that.
It’s this utter belief in humanity and human potential that excites us. We humans want to believe in our own species. And we want people, companies and products in our lives that make it easier to do so. That is human nature.
So maybe think less about what your product does, and think more about human potential. What statement about humanity does your product actually make?
The bigger the statement, the bigger the idea, the bigger your brand will become.

August 22, 2004

ignore everybody

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[BIG NEWS: My new book, “Ignore Everybody“was launched June 11th, 2009. You can find out more details here, and you can order the book here:

Amazon.

Barnes & Noble.

Borders.

800-CEO-READ. (great for bulk buys)

IndieBound. [to find an independent store]

IGNORE EVERYBODY

So you want to be more creative, in art, in business, whatever. Here are some tips that have worked for me over the years.]

1. Ignore everybody.

2. The idea doesn’t have to be big. It just has to be yours.
3. Put the hours in.
4. If your biz plan depends on you suddenly being “discovered” by some big shot, your plan will probably fail.
5. You are responsible for your own experience.
6. Everyone is born creative; everyone is given a box of crayons in kindergarten.
7. Keep your day job.
8. Companies that squelch creativity can no longer compete with companies that champion creativity.
9. Everybody has their own private Mount Everest they were put on this earth to climb.
10. The more talented somebody is, the less they need the props.
11. Don’t try to stand out from the crowd; avoid crowds altogether.
12. If you accept the pain, it cannot hurt you.
13. Never compare your inside with somebody else’s outside.
14. Dying young is overrated.
15. The most important thing a creative person can learn professionally is where to draw the red line that separates what you are willing to do, and what you are not.
16. The world is changing.
17. Merit can be bought. Passion can’t.
18. Avoid the Watercooler Gang.
19. Sing in your own voice.
20. The choice of media is irrelevant.
21. Selling out is harder than it looks.
22. Nobody cares. Do it for yourself.
23. Worrying about “Commercial vs. Artistic” is a complete waste of time.
24. Don�t worry about finding inspiration. It comes eventually.

25. You have to find your own schtick.

26. Write from the heart.
27. The best way to get approval is not to need it.
28. Power is never given. Power is taken.
29. Whatever choice you make, The Devil gets his due eventually.
30. The hardest part of being creative is getting used to it.
31. Remain frugal.
32. Allow your work to age with you.
33. Being Poor Sucks.
34. Beware of turning hobbies into jobs.
35. Savor obscurity while it lasts.
36. Start blogging.
37. Meaning Scales, People Don’t.
37. When your dreams become reality, they are no longer your dreams.

MORE:

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.
Plus a big idea will change you. Your friends may love you, but they don’t want you to change. If you change, then their dynamic with you also changes. They like things the way they are, that’s how they love you– the way you are, not the way you may become.
Ergo, they have no incentive to see you change. And they will be resistant to anything that catalyzes it. That’s human nature. And you would do the same, if the shoe was on the other foot.
With business colleagues it’s even worse. They’re used to dealing with you in a certain way. They’re used to having a certain level of control over the relationship. And they want whatever makes them more prosperous. Sure, they might prefer it if you prosper as well, but that’s not their top priority.
If your idea is so good that it changes your dynamic enough to where you need them less, or God forbid, THE MARKET needs them less, then they’re going to resist your idea every chance they can.
Again, that’s human nature.
GOOD IDEAS ALTER THE POWER BALANCE IN RELATIONSHIPS, THAT IS WHY GOOD IDEAS ARE ALWAYS INITIALLY RESISTED.
Good ideas come with a heavy burden. Which is why so few people have them. So few people can handle it.

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.

We all spend a lot of time being impressed by folk we’ve never met. Somebody featured in the media who’s got a big company, a big product, a big movie, a big bestseller. Whatever.
And we spend even more time trying unsuccessfully to keep up with them. Trying to start up our own companies, our own products, our own film projects, books and whatnot.
I’m as guilty as anyone. I tried lots of different things over the years, trying desperately to pry my career out of the jaws of mediocrity. Some to do with business, some to do with art etc.
One evening, after one false start too many, I just gave up. Sitting at a bar, feeling a bit burned out by work and life in general, I just started drawing on the back of business cards for no reason. I didn’t really need a reason. I just did it because it was there, because it amused me in a kind of random, arbitrary way.
Of course it was stupid. Of course it was uncommercial. Of course it wasn’t going to go anywhere. Of course it was a complete and utter waste of time. But in retrospect, it was this built-in futility that gave it its edge. Because it was the exact opposite of all the “Big Plans” my peers and I were used to making. It was so liberating not to have to be thinking about all that, for a change.
It was so liberating to be doing something that didn’t have to impress anybody, for a change.
It was so liberating to be doing something that didn’t have to have some sort of commercial angle, for a change.
It was so liberating to have something that belonged just to me and no one else, for a change.
It was so liberating to feel complete sovereignty, for a change. To feel complete freedom, for a change.
And of course, it was then, and only then, that the outside world started paying attention.
The sovereignty you have over your work will inspire far more people than the actual content ever will. How your own sovereignty inspires other people to find their own sovereignty, their own sense of freedom and possibility, will give the work far more power than the work’s objective merits 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.
That’s what doodling on business cards taught me.

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?
Well, as I’ve written elsewhere, don’t quit your day job. I didn’t. I work every day at the office, same as any other regular schmoe. I have a long commute on the train, ergo that’s when I do most of my drawing. When I was younger I drew mostly while sitting at a bar, but that got old.
The point is; an hour or two on the train is very managable for me. The fact I have a job means I don’t feel pressured to do something market-friendly. Instead, I get to do whatever the hell I want. I get to do it for my own satisfaction. And I think that makes the work more powerful in the long run. It also makes it easier to carry on with it in a calm fashion, day-in-day out, and not go crazy in insane creative bursts brought on by money worries.
The day job, which I really like, gives me something productive and interesting to do among fellow adults. It gets me out of the house in the day time. If I were a professional cartoonist I’d just be chained to a drawing table at home all day, scribbling out a living in silence, interrupted only by freqent trips to the coffee shop. No, thank you.
Simply put, my method allows me to pace myself over the long haul, which is important.
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 coveniently forget.
If I was just starting out writing, say, a novel or a screenplay, or maybe starting up a new software company, I wouldn’t try to quit my job in order to make this big, dramatic heroic-quest thing about it.
I would do something far simpler: I would find that extra hour or two in the day that belongs to nobody else but me, and I would make it productive. Put the hours in, do it for long enough and magical, life-transforming things happen eventually. Sure, that means less time watching TV, internet surfing, going out or whatever.
But who cares?

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.
That’s the thing about some big publishers. They want 110% from you, but they don’t offer to do likewise in return. To them, the artist is just one more noodle in a big bowl of pasta.
Their business model is to basically throw the pasta against the wall, and see which one sticks. The ones that fall to the floor are just forgotten.
Publishers are just middlemen. That’s all. If artists could remember that more often, they’d save themselves a lot of aggrevation.
Anyway, yeah, I can see gapingvoid being a ‘product’ one day. Books, T-shirts and whatnot. I think it could make a lot of money, if handled correctly. But I’m not afraid to walk away if I think the person offering it is full of hot air. I’ve already got my groove etc. Not to mention another career that’s doing quite well, thank you.
I think “gapingvoid as product line” idea is pretty inevitable, down the road. Watch this space.

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 incandescent ludicity.
The one that’s all love-at-first-sight with the Zeitgeist.
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.
There’s no glorious swelling of existential triumph.
That’s not what happens.
All you get is this rather kvetchy 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.
Second-rate ideas like glorious swellings far more. Keeps them alive longer.

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�d like 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 kind of business. You don’t know any publishers or agents or all these fancy-shmancy kind of folk. You have a friend who’s got a cousin in California who’s into this kind of stuff, but you haven’t talked to your friend for over two years…
Besides, if you write a book, what if you can’t find a publisher? If you write a screenplay, what if you can’t find a producer? And what if the producer turns out to be a crook? You’ve always worked hard your whole life, you’ll be damned if you’ll put all that effort into something if there ain’t no pot of gold at the end of this dumb-ass rainbow…
Heh. That’s not your wee voice asking for the crayons back. That’s your outer voice, your adult voice, your boring & tedious voice trying to find a way to get the wee crayon voice to shut the hell up.
Your wee voice doesn’t want you to sell something. Your wee voice wants you to make something. There’s a big difference. Your wee voice doesn’t give a damn about publishers or Hollywood producers.
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.
The wee voice didn’t show up because it decided you need more money or you need to hang out with movie stars. Your wee voice came back because your soul somehow depends on it. There’s something you haven’t said, something you haven’t done, some light that needs to be switched on, and it needs to be taken care of. Now.
So you have to listen to the wee voice or it will die… taking a big chunk of you along with it.
They’re only crayons. You didn’t fear them in kindergarten, why fear them now?

7. Keep your day job.

I�m not just saying that for the usual reason i.e. because I think your idea will fail. I�m saying it because to suddenly quit one�s job in a big ol’ creative drama-queen moment is always, always, always in direct conflict with what I call “The Sex & Cash Theory”.

THE SEX & CASH THEORY: “The creative person basically has two kinds of jobs: One is the sexy, creative kind. Second is the kind that pays the bills. Sometimes the task in hand covers both bases, but not often. This tense duality will always play center stage. It will never be transcended.”
A good example is Phil, a NY photographer friend of mine. He does really wild stuff for the indie magazines– it pays nothing, but it allows him to build his portfolio. Then he’ll go off and shoot some catalogues for a while. Nothing too exciting, but it pays the bills.
Another example is somebody like Martin Amis. He writes “serious” novels, but he has to supplement his income by writing the occasional newspaper article for the London papers (novel royalties are bloody pathetic– even bestsellers like Amis aren’t immune).
Or actors. One year Travolta will be in an ultra-hip flick like Pulp Fiction (“Sex”), the next he’ll be in some dumb spy thriller (“Cash”).
Or painters. You spend one month painting blue pictures because that’s the color the celebrity collectors are buying this season (“Cash”), you spend the next month painting red pictures because secretly you despise the color blue and love the color red (“Sex”).
Or geeks. You spend you weekdays writing code for a faceless corporation (“Cash”), then you spend your evening and weekends writing anarchic, weird computer games to amuse your techie friends with (“Sex”).
It’s balancing the need to make a good living while still maintaining one’s creative sovereignty. My M.O. is gapingvoid (“Sex”), coupled with my day job (“Cash”).
I’m thinking about the young writer who has to wait tables to pay the bills, in spite of her writing appearing in all the cool and hip magazines.… who dreams of one day of not having her life divided so harshly.
Well, over time the ‘harshly’ bit might go away, but not the ‘divided’.
“This tense duality will always play center stage. It will never be transcended.”
As soon as you accept this, I mean really accept this, for some reason your career starts moving ahead faster. I don’t know why this happens. It’s the people who refuse to cleave their lives this way– who just want to start Day One by quitting their current crappy day job and moving straight on over to best-selling author… Well, they never make it.
Anyway, it’s called “The Sex & Cash Theory”. Keep it under your pillow.

8. 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”.
Fair enough. There was more money in doing it that way; that’s why they did it.
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.
Creating an economically viable entity where lack of original thought is handsomely rewarded creates a rich, fertile environment for parasites to breed. And that’s exactly what’s been happening. So now we have millions upon millions of human tapeworms thriving in the Western World, making love to their Powerpoint presentations, feasting on the creativity of others.
What happens to an ecology, when the parasite level reaches critical mass?
The ecology dies.
If you’re creative, if you can think independantly, if you can articulate passion, if you can override the fear of being wrong, then your company needs you now more than it ever did. And now your company can no longer afford to pretend that isn’t the case.
So dust off your horn and start tooting it. Exactly.
However if you’re not paricularly creative, then you’re in real trouble. And there’s no buzzword or “new paradigm” that can help you. They may not have mentioned this in business school, but… people like watching dinosaurs die.

9. 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 oversized 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 witb 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.
So it looks like you’re going to have to climb the frickin’ mountain. Deal with it.
My advice? You don’t need my advice. You really don’t. The biggest piece of advice I could give anyone would be this:

“Admit that your own private Mount Everest exists. That is half the battle.”

And you’ve already done that. You really have. Otherwise, again, you wouldn’t have read this far.
Rock on.

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

Meeting a person who wrote a masterpiece on the back of a deli menu would not surprise me. Meeting a person who wrote a masterpiece with a silver Cartier fountain pen on an antique writing table in an airy SoHo loft would SERIOUSLY surprise me.

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 Gough rarely painted with more than six colors on his palette.
I draw on the back of wee biz cards. Whatever.
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 Macinotsh computers.
Which is why there are so many hack writers with state-of-the-art laptops.
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 yacht 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.

11. 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.
When I started the business card cartoons I was lucky; at the time I had a pretty well-paid corporate job in New York that I liked. The idea of quitting it in order to join the ranks of Bohemia didn’t even occur to me. What, leave Manhattan for Brooklyn? Ha. Not bloody likely. I was just doing it to amuse myself in the evenings, to give me something to do at the bar while I waited for my date to show up or whatever.
There was no commerical incentive or larger agenda governing my actions. If I wanted to draw on the back of a business card instead of a “proper” medium, I could. If I wanted to use a four letter word, I could. If I wanted to ditch the standard figurative format and draw psychotic abstractions instead, I could. There was no flashy media or publishing executive to keep happy. And even better, there was no artist-lifestyle archetype to conform to.
It gave me a lot of freedom. That freedom paid off in spades later.
Question how much freedom your path affords you. Be utterly ruthless about it.
It’s your freedom that will get you to where you want to go. Blind faith in an over-subscribed, vainglorious myth will only hinder you.
Is you plan unique? Is there nobody else doing it? Then I’d be excited. A little scared, maybe, but excited.

12. 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.

[To read the remainder of IGNORE EVERYBODY– 40 chapters in all– please go buy the book, Thanks!

happy coincidence

write like you mean the words

More thoughts on “How To Be A Copywriter”:

5. Write like you mean the words.

“Being creative” is not the hardest thing in the profession. That’s easy. Being able to write about the client’s product with conviction, with passion, with genuine humanity is far harder. Most copywriters can’t do it. If you can do it, there’s always going to be a market for it. Be excited.

Most copywriters “can’t do it” for one of three reasons:
1. They’re hacks. Hacks cannot write. Not really write. They can futz around, make it look fancy and professional, but they cannot inject it with any resonant human spirit, for they lost all that themselves years ago.
2. Their clients are idiots and won’t let them write properly. Any time they try to write like a human being (as opposed to a whipping-boy-for-cash) their client kills what they do and sends him back to his cube for a re-write.
3. Fear. Also commonly known as “practicality”. It’s a competitive world out there, so to minimize risk and avoid conflict with their paymasters, they pre-emptively rid their work of any human quality, and replace it with dry, blethering, meaningless corporate-speak instead. If you do this often enough it starts to feel normal.
I’m kind of hardcore about this. I think if you’re writing meaningless drivel, it’s your fault. You chose to work for this guy, you took his money, you cashed the check. It’s not his problem, it’s your problem. All writers are responsible for their own experience. “The client won’t let me” doesn’t cut it.
The thing to do is only work with people whose vision and character excites you. The only way to do that is to have vision and character yourself.

August 21, 2004

i own the world

bootstraps

how to be a copywriter

14 Comments

So you want a writing job in the advertising business. Here are my two cents:
1. Be good.
If you’re good you can get any job you want, at any agency you want. If you’re not, then you can’t and you won’t. It’s a ruthlessly meritocratic business.
2. Getting good is mostly practice.
I wrote 12 ads yesterday. All good ones. Took me a couple of hours. I’m not some creative genius, I’ve just been doing it a while.
3. Work on the ideas, not the polishing.
Most books look the same (a “book” is your portfolio of work samples you send around the agencies when you’re hustling for a job). Yawn. Snore. More yawns and snores. Highly professional, highly polished, and full of second-rate ideas. You don’t notice how ineffective a marketing tool they are till there’s a recession on and you REALLY NEED to find a job.
4. Seek out the exceptional minds, avoid everyone else.
Life is short. You don’t want to end up in The Watercooler Gang.
5. Write like you mean the words.
“Being creative” is not the hardest thing in the profession. That’s easy. Being able to write about the client’s product with conviction, with passion, with genuine humanity is far harder. Most copywriters can’t do it. If you can do it, there’s always going to be a market for it. Be excited.
(read more here…)
6. Make the client think differently about his product.
This is the gold dust of the profession. This is what the client will really value over the long-haul. Hard as hell to do. It took me almost 10 years in the business before I made my first real intellectual breakthrough with Gerber Baby Foods. Now it’s pretty much all I do. Everything else is secondary.
7. Awards are overrated.
They’re fine for allowing a young rookie to get his or her name known in the business, but award juries are mostly biased, political, paranoid, incestuous, smug, nasty entities, a refuge for self-satisfied, backwards-looking mediocrity. Any business plan that includes their approval in the equation is highly flawed.
8. TV is still where the money is.
If you work in the mainstream of the business, your career will be rewarded in direct proportion to the number of TV spots you sell. Yes, there are exceptions, but they’re rare. This sad little factoid has pretty much sealed the death warrant on the standard agency business plan, but hey, it’s not my problem.
9. The business is in meltdown.
Everybody knows the “Job For Life” is dead, cold and buried. However, professionally you’re still expected to behave like that isn’t the case. There’s a disconnect. It won’t last forever. Smart clients know that agency business models generally suck and what’s on offer is expensive for what you get. We live in interesting times.
10. Everything you read about the advertising business is wrong (including this).
How do I know? Because there’s a new game in town. A new creature has come down the pike which will change the business forever. I don’t speak about it here, I save it for my clients. Rock on.
(For further thoughts about the advertising business check out “The Hughtrain Manifesto”. Thanks.)

August 20, 2004

the choice of media is irrelevant

More thoughts on “How To Be Creative”:

20. The choice of media is irrelevant.

Every media’s greatest strength is also its greatest weakness. Every form of media is a set of fundematal compromises, one is not “higher” than the other. A painting doesn’t do much, it just sits there on a wall. That’s the best and worst thing thing about it. Film combines sound, movent, photography, music, acting. That’s the best and worst thing thing about it. Prose just uses words arranged in linear form to get its point across. That’s the best and worst thing thing about it etc.

Back in college I was an English Major. I had no aspirations for teaching, writing or academe, it was just a subject I could get consistently high grades in. Plus I liked to read books and write papers, so it worked well enough for me.
Most of my friends were Liberal Arts Majors, but there the similarity ended. We never really went to class together. I dunno, we’d meet up in the evenings and weekends, but I never really socialized with people in my classes that much.
So it was always surprising to me to meet the Art Majors: fine arts, film, drama, architecture etc. They seemed to live in each other’s pockets. They all seemed to work, eat and sleep together. Lots of bonding going on. Lots of collaboration. Lots of incestuousness. Lots of speeches about the sanctity of their craft.
Well, a cartoon only needs one person to make it. Same with a piece of writing. No Big Group Hug required. So all this sex-fuelled socialism was rather alien to me, even if parts of it seemed very appealing.
During my second year at college I started getting my cartoons published, and not just the school paper. Suddenly I found meeting girls easy. I was very happy about that, I can assure you, but life carried on pretty much the same.
I suppose my friends thought the cartooning gigs were neat or whatever, but it wasn’t really anything that affected our friendship. It was just something I did on the side, the way other people restored old cars or or kept a darkroom for their camera.
My M.O. was and still is to just have a normal life, be a regular schmoe, with a terrific hobby on the side. It’s not exactly rocket science.
This attitude seemed kinda alien to the Art Majors I met. Their chosen art form seemed more like a religion to them. It was serious. It was important. It was a big part of their identity, and it almost seemed to them that humanity’s very existence totally depended on them being able to pursue their dream as a handsomely rewarded profession etc.
Don’t get me wrong, I knew some Art Majors who were absolutely brilliant. One or two of them are famous now. And I can see if you’ve got a special talent, how the need to seriously pursue it becomes important.
But looking back, I also see a lot of screwy kids who married themselves to their medium of choice for the wrong reasons. Not because they had anything particularly unique of visionary to say, but because it was cool. Because it was sexy. Because it was hip. Because it gave them something to talk about at parties. Because it was easier than thinking about getting a real job after graduation.
I’m in two minds about this. One part of me thinks it’s good for kids to mess around with insanely high ambitions, and maybe one or two of them will make it, maybe one or two will survive the cull. That’s what’s being young is all about, and I think it’s wonderful.
The other side of me wants to tell these kids to beware of choosing difficult art forms for the wrong reasons. You can wing it while you’re young, but it’s not till your youth is over that The Devil starts seeking out his due. And that’s never pretty. I’ve seen it happen more than once to some very dear, sweet people, and it’s really heartbreaking to watch.

blogging about blogging

Every now and then the urge to write something about blogging hits me.
It’s the future, it’s the revolution, it’s the citizen’s media, it’s The Cluetrain, it’s The Hughtrain, it’s The Cat’s Pyjamas etc.
Usually by the third sentence I am so utterly bored of thinking about the subject matter, I quit and get back to work.

August 19, 2004

brooklyn

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cool hunted to extinction

12 Comments

“Nike. Cool hunted to extinction.”
I just wrote that phrase. No idea what it means.
Actually, that’s not entirely true, but… Eh. I’m still chewing on it etc. Anybody who does know what it means feel free to leave a comment.
These days Apple is the ultimate cool hunter’s wet dream. Remember when Nike had the same cachet? What the hell happened?
The trouble is, every other cool hunter and his mother is watching the Apple brand with the eyes of a hawk.
Steve Jobs can’t even go to the bathroom without every member of every “cute-sounding-supposedly-cutting-edge division of large, dinosaur agency” peeking over the stalls.

August 18, 2004

sing in your own voice

More thoughts on “How To Be Creative”:

19. Sing in your own voice.

Piccasso was a terrible colorist. Turner couldn’t paint human beings worth a damn. Saul Steinberg’s formal drafting skills were appalling. TS Eliot had a full-time day job. Henry Miller was a wildly uneven writer. Bob Dylan can’t sing or play guitar.

But that didn’t stop them, right?
So I guess the next question is, “Why not?”
I have no idea. Why should it?

a reader writes…

21 Comments

A regular reader just sent me the following e-mail:

i started to leave this as a comment but then decided to do by email instead. there’s a shift in tone in your list (not a shift for those who’ve been reading gapingvoid for a while like me, but a shift for the newbies) that a few people are picking up on, and i wonder if it threatens to unravel the ‘how to be creative’ list. from ‘everyone was born with crayons’ and ‘getting more out of the job you already have’ to ‘lose the losers and get out and hunt wooly mammoth’. what made the former so popular among the blogosphere is undermined by the latter, i think. we can’t all hunt wooly mammoth. someone’s gotta do some gathering. and gathering is not incompatible with being creative. just my two cents.

Well, fair enough. Though I do think being creative isn’t just about opening up your metaphorical box of crayons… there’s some external components to consider, not just freebasing the inner recesses of one’s psyche. Thoughts?

August 17, 2004

avoid the watercooler gang

15 Comments

More thoughts on “How To Be Creative”:

18. Avoid the Watercooler Gang.
They

August 16, 2004

noah’s flood

business is change

August 15, 2004

merit can be bought. passion can’t.

12 Comments

More thoughts on “How To Be Creative”:

17. 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 wooly 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.

venn diagram 6

commodity

8 Comments

I drew this one on the train to work the other day. “Commodification” is a subject that interests me. Why it happens, how it happens etc.
I do know it’s happening to a LOT of people’s careers, far too quickly for their liking. And a lot of people don’t know what the hell to do about it. They just assumed that once they got to a certain rung in the ladder they’d be able to coast for the rest of their lives. Apparently not.

the world is changing

16 Comments

More thoughts on “How To Be Creative”:

16. The world is changing.

Some people are hip to it, others are not. If you want to be able to afford groceries in 5 years, I’d recommend listening closely to the former and avoiding the latter. Just my two cents.

Your job is probably worth 50% what it was in real terms 10 years ago. And who knows? It may very well not exist in 5 – 10 years.
We all saw the traditional biz model in my industry, advertising, start going down the tubes 10 years or so ago. Our first reaction was “work harder”.
It didn’t work. People got shafted in their thousands. It’s a cold world out there.
We thought being talented would save our asses. We thought working late and weekends would save our asses. Nope.
We thought the internet and all that Next Big Thing, new media and new technology stuff would save our asses. We thought it would fill in the holes in our ever more intellectually bankrupt solutions we were offering our clients. Nope.
Whatever. Regardless of how the world changes, regardless of what new technologies, business models and social architectures are coming down the pike, the one thing “The New Realities” cannot take away from you is trust.
The people you trust and vice versa, this is what will feed you and pay for your kids’ college. Nothing else.
This is true if you’re an artist, writer, doctor, techie, lawyer, banker, or bartender.
i.e. Stop worrying about technology. Start worrying about people who trust you.
In order to navigate The New Realities you have to be creative– not just within your particular profession, but in EVERYTHING. Your way of looking at the world will need to become ever more fertile and original. And this isn’t just true for artists, writers, techies, Creative Directors and CEOs; this is true for EVERYBODY. Janitors, receptionists and bus drivers, too. The game has just been ratcheted up a notch.
The old ways are dead. And you need people around you who concur.
That means hanging out more with the creative people, the freaks, the real visionaries, than you’re already doing. Thinking more about what their needs are, and responding accordingly. It doesn’t matter what industry we’re talking about– architecture, advertising, petrochemicals– they’re around, they’re easy enough to find if you make the effort, if you’ve got something worthwhile to offer in return. Avoid the dullards; avoid the folk who play it safe. They can’t help you any more. Their stability model no longer offers that much stability. They are extinct, they are extinction.

hot pimp action

blocards sidebar image big.jpg
(HOT PIMP ACTION: Regular readers of gapingvoid are asked to help support the site by buying the occasional box of blogcards. Thanks)
Here I go, pimping blogcards again. I have no shame. I just got myself a new box of 500 (this design).
Blogcards totally rock. Those who disagree are idiots.
And in other news…
I’m still working on “How To Be Creative”, still having fun with it. The trick is keeping it interesting and useful without, as a reader kindly pointed out, turning it into a 12-Step touchy-feely monstrosity. You know, like those lilac-colored books with Prozac-friendly titles and pictures of rainbows on the cover that you see in the bookstores.
Don’t worry. I’ve got a plan. Heh.
Work has been really busy. My company just won a big new client last week, thanks partly to the work I’ve been doing (read “The Hughtrain Manifesto” to get an idea). It was a good team effort.
Between work, drawing cartoons, my 90 minute commute each way and writing “How To Be Creative” I’ve not had much time for reading other people’s blogs. Ergo I don’t have a lot of new links to show you guys. Ouch. Blogs are meant to be a two-way thing. Blogs are about “The Conversation”. So I feel like I’ve been negligent.
Still, as I often tell people, instead spending all your free time trawling for interesting links, it’s really far easier to just find somebody who’s much better at it than you, and refer your readers to him/her. Somebody like Jeff Jarvis or Jason Kottke.
I’m reading a lot of venture capitalist blogs these days. I have no need for venture money myself, but I generally find their world view very interesting– very different to the ones I normally come across in the advertising and marketing world. They’re in the business of guessing “what comes next”, and making money from it. Not an easy game to play. You have to be very, very smart and have a diamond-hard sense of intellectual honesty to do it. So it’s all very stimulating stuff. Brad Feld and Tim Oren are both great ones. I’m also a big fan of Fred Wilson– he can take the big ideas and make them sound really simple and down-to-earth. His ability to demystify VC and make it all sound pretty common-sense stuff is phenominal.
The one I’ve been clicking with a lot recently is Jerry Colonna. He was a VC, he isn’t any more, but he’s a terrific writer. He’s got this wonderful ability to be totally lucid, totally informed and totally heartfelt at the same time. He knows a lot, he thinks a lot, he feels a lot. It’s a terrific combo.
And hardly a day goes by without me checking up on Loic Lemeur and Joi Ito, two VCs/entrepreneurs who are heavily involved with blogging and blogging software. If you want to know where that world is going, you cannot, repeat cannot afford not to listen to what they’re saying.

August 14, 2004

where to draw the red line

More thoughts on “How To Be Creative”:

15. The most important thing a creative person can learn professionally is where to draw the red line that separates what you are willing to do, and what you are not.

Art suffers the moment other people start paying for it. The more you need the money, the more people will tell you what to do. The less control you will have. The more bullshit you will have to swallow. The less joy it will bring. Know this and plan accordingly.

Recently I heard Chris Ware, currently one of the top 2 or 3 most critically acclaimed cartoonists on the planet, describe his profession as

dying young is overrated

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More thoughts on “How To Be Creative”:

14. Dying young is overrated.

I’ve seen so many young people take the “Gotta do the drugs & booze thing to make me a better artist” route over the years. A choice that wasn’t smart, original, effective, healthy, or ended happily.

It’s a familiar story: a kid reads about Charlie Parker or Jimi Hendrix or Charles Bukowski and somehow decides that their tragic example somehow gives him permission and/or absolution to spend the next decade or two drowning in his own metaphorical vomit.
Of course, the older you get, the more casualties of this foolishness you meet. The more time has had to ravage their lives. The more pathetic they seem. And the less remarkable work they seem to have to show for it, for all their “amazing experiences” and “special insights”.
The smarter and more talented the artist is, the less likely he will choose this route. Sure, he might screw around a wee bit while he’s young and stupid, but he will move on quicker than most.
But the kid thinks it’s all about talent; he thinks it’s all about ‘potential’. He underestimates how much time, discipline and stamina also play their part. Sure, there are exceptions. But that is why we like their stories when we’re young. Because they are exceptional stories. And every kid with a guitar or a pen or a paintbrush or an idea for a new business wants to be exceptional. Every kid underestimates his competition, and overestimates his chances. Every kid is a sucker for the idea that there’s a way to make it without having to do the actual hard work.
So the bars of West Hollywood and New York are awash with people throwing their lives away in the desperate hope of finding a shortcut, any shortcut. And a lot of them aren’t even young anymore; their B-plans having been washed away by Vodka & Tonics years ago.
Meanwhile their competition is at home, working their asses off.

August 12, 2004

justify events

napping

(Another early one. Pencil on business card. Laminated. New York, 1998)

reverse-engineered

August 11, 2004

the chimneypiece

12 Comments

More thoughts on “How To Be Creative”:

13. 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 chimneypieces 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. chimneypieces) when instead you could make your living selling something you really care about (i.e. anitques)? Surely the latter would be a preferable way to work?
“The first rule of business,” he said, chuckling at my na

August 10, 2004

girltalk

(Cartoon dedicated to Laren)

August 9, 2004

if you accept the pain, it cannot hurt you

More thoughts on “How To Be Creative”:

12. 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.

August 7, 2004

the idea doesn’t have to be big. it just has to change the world.

More thoughts on “How To Be Creative”:

2. The idea doesn’t have to be big. It just has to change the world.

The two are not the same thing.

We all spend a lot of time being impressed by folk we’ve never met. Somebody featured in the media who’s got a big company, a big product, a big movie, a big bestseller. Whatever.
And we spend even more time trying unsuccessfully to keep up with them. Trying to start up our own companies, our own products, our own film projects, books and whatnot.
I’m as guilty as anyone. I tried lots of different things over the years, trying desperately to pry my career out of the jaws of mediocrity. Some to do with business, some to do with art etc.
One evening, after one false start too many, I just gave up. Sitting at a bar, feeling a bit burned out by work and life in general, I just started drawing on the back of business cards for no reason. I didn’t really need a reason. I just did it because it was there, because it amused me in a kind of random, arbitrary way.
Of course it was stupid. Of course it was uncommercial. Of course it wasn’t going to go anywhere. Of course it was a complete and utter waste of time. But in retrospect, it was this built-in futility that gave it its edge. Because it was the exact opposite of all the “Big Plans” my peers and I were used to making. It was so liberating not to have to be thinking about all that, for a change.
It was so liberating to be doing something that didn’t have to impress anybody, for a change.
It was so liberating to have something that belonged just to me and no one else, for a change.
It was so liberating to feel complete sovereignty, for a change. To feel complete freedom, for a change.
And of course, it was then, and only then, that the outside world started paying attention.
The sovereignty you have over your work will inspire far more people than the actual content ever will. How your own sovereignty inspires other people to find their own sovereignty, their own sense of freedom and possibility, will change the world far more than the the work’s objective merits 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 it will change the world.
That’s what doodling on business cards taught me.

August 5, 2004

you are responsible for your own experience