Wishful Thinking -inspiring creative professionals

The creative process can look a bit odd from the outside. Sometimes it looks as though we're doing nothing at all - strolling in the park, lazing on the beach, staring into space while the rest of the office is busy being busy - yet this can be the most productive time we spend all week, when ideas are bubbling away under the surface, waiting to burst into consciousness. Creativity theorists refer to this as incubation, as if the artist or thinker were some kind of chicken waiting patiently for the eggs of inspiration to hatch.

Yet at other times our apparent inactivity conceals an even more profound inactivity. We look as though we're doing nothing, because we really are doing nothing. We're wasting our time. We have better things to do. Procrastination has reared its ugly head.

So how can we tell the difference between the two? How do we know whether we're doing just the right thing for our creative process, allowing brilliant ideas and inspiration to incubate quietly - or whether we really ought to be rolling up our sleeves and producing a little more perspiration?

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is a psychologist who has devoted his career to researching happiness and fulfilment.  His research has shown that although people enjoy indulging in pleasure, such as eating and drinking, sex and shopping, this eventually wears off, leaving us feeling unsatisfied.  True happiness comes from learning and developing our skills to overcome meaningful challenges.  When we are fully absorbed in doing this, we experience what Csikszentmihalyi calls ‘flow’:

When I first saw the film Amadeus as an impressionable teenager, I had a lot of sympathy for Salieri. Not for what he did to Mozart of course, but for the frustration and disappointment that drove him to it. Listening to his account of his early life and motivations, they sounded perfectly noble:

While my father prayed earnestly to God to protect commerce, I would offer up secretly the proudest prayer a boy could think of. Lord, make me a great composer! Let me celebrate your glory through music - and be celebrated myself! Make me famous through the world, dear God! Make me immortal! After I die let people speak my name forever with love for what I wrote! In return I will give you my chastity, my industry, my deepest humility, every hour of my life, amen!

After this pious prelude it was hard not to share Salieri’s astonishment and disgust at the childish, lecherous, drunken Mozart, and to question God’s purpose in bestowing the gift of divine music on a “giggling, dirty-minded creature”:

But why?  Why would God choose an obscene child to be His instrument? It was not to be believed!

It just didn’t seem fair.

Yet every time I’ve watched the film since, my sympathy for Salieri has waned a little more. And not just because I’ve seen the ending, or the Director’s Cut which makes his crimes against Mozart and his family more explicit. The seeds of Salieri’s downfall - and the justice of it - are plainly there to see in that speech about his ambition:

While my father prayed earnestly to God to protect commerce, I would offer up secretly the proudest prayer a boy could think of. Lord, make me a great composer! Let me celebrate your glory through music - and be celebrated myself! Make me famous through the world, dear God! Make me immortal! After I die let people speak my name forever with love for what I wrote! In return I will give you my chastity, my industry, my deepest humility, every hour of my life, amen!

10 Tips for Overcoming Writer's Block

Here are some tips for dealing with writer's block, based on my own writing experience and the most common patterns I encounter with coaching clients.

Although this post concentrates on writers, many of the tips can be applied to other kinds of creative block.

Let me know if you find them useful!

1. Make a deal with your Inner Critic
All writers have an ‘Inner Critic’ or editor at the back of the mind. We need one, to maintain quality control. The purpose of your Inner Critic is to make you a better writer - but sometimes s/he gets a bit carried away, and starts pulling your draft to pieces before you’ve even got it down. So every time you try to write, you end up listening to a nagging inner voice telling you everything that’s wrong with your work and why you’ll never cut it as a writer.

If this starts happening, imagine sitting down with your inner critic over coffee, and make the following deal:

Giving feedback on creative work is a tricky challenge, for two main reasons:

1. Artists and creatives identify very closely with their work
   When a creative worker puts a piece of work in front of you, it is as though they were putting a piece of themselves there to be judged - because of this, it is almost inevitable that they take criticism personally.
2. The value of creative work is largely subjective
   We all know this from arguments with friends about music and films - one person’s masterpiece is utter rubbish to someone else. Shakespeare, Welles and Picasso are only ‘great’ because there is a current consensus of opinion that makes them so, and fashions can change. So it’s very difficult to make a final judgement with absolute certainty, no matter how strongly you feel about it.

But feedback is vital to producing outstanding work. Without some sense of how one’s work appears to others, it’s very hard to decide how to develop it. For Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, feedback is an essential ingredient in the experience of creative flow - when we sense that we are creating something valuable, it increases our pleasure and absorption in the work.

So feedback is essential, but how should we approach it? Specifically:

1. How can we give genuinely constructive feedback on a piece of creative work, even if we aren’t experts in the medium?
2. When we’re on the receiving end, how can we make the most of the feedback we receive from others - or at least develop a thicker skin?

My last post looked at How Not to Give Feedback on Creative Work, with an example of breathtaking clumsiness from the Emperor in Amadeus. To recap, this is how the Emperor made a pig’s ear of critiquing Mozart’s opera Il Seraglio:

1. He offered a second-hand opinion
2. He pretended to be an expert when he wasn’t
3. He failed to provide any meaningful criteria for judgment
4. He was tactless
5. He was patronising

Let’s see what we can learn by reversing the Emperor’s mistakes.

1. Give your own opinion

The only person on this planet who sees things your way is you. Even if you are a novice surrounded by experts, there is still the possibility that you will have spotted something ‘obvious’ that no-one else has noticed. Don’t try to second-guess others’ opinions or be something you’re not.

If you’re not sure how your view will be received you could start with “This may sound silly but…” - it’s amazing how many times I’ve said that and found people nodding and agreeing.

2. Make your own role clear

If you are an expert in the medium, you are in a position to give a different kind of feedback than if you are not. Not necessarily better, just different. You will only irritate a professional if you try to intrude on their territory. But even if you are ‘only’ the manager, you are perfectly entitled to give feedback based on your knowledge of the client, the audience, the market and so on - as long as you make it clear in what capacity you are speaking.

I mentioned in my previous post that I know very little about graphic design, but am happy to give a ‘layman’s view’ of how a piece of design strikes me. If I’m asked to give my opinion on a poem however, it’s a completely different matter. This is a task I approach with relish and a completely different perspective - one of the reasons I enjoy writing poetry reviews. But this doesn’t guarantee that in any given situation my views on poetry will be more helpful than my views on design.

Read the rest of this post.

There’s an art to listening to criticism or praise of your work without getting carried away by elation or despair - and let’s face it, without stomping off in a huff. Having looked at How not to give feedback on creative work, 5 tips for giving feedback on creative work and what Seamus Heaney taught me about giving feedback, it’s time to look at what it’s like to be on the receiving end of all this constructive criticism.

This has been a hot topic for me this year, as I’ve been attending Mimi Khalvati’s advanced poetry workshop at the Poetry School. Feedback is my main motivation for doing the class - not only is Mimi one of the most sensitive and helpful readers of a poem I’ve ever come across, but the class is full of talented and experienced poets, who always offer insightful critiques of the poems on offer. And the thing is, it’s usually much easier to appreciate this while we’re discussing other people’s poems. As long as we’re looking at someone else’s words, it’s easy to see the aptness of the comments and the usefulness of the suggestions.

But when it’s my poem on the table, it’s a different matter.

Now, I’ve worked with hundreds of artists and creatives on how to deal with feedback and respond to it constructively. I know I shouldn’t take it too personally and remember that the comments are about the work, not about me. Obviously.

But that doesn’t stop my heart being in my mouth when I stop reading and wait for the first response.

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Heatherwick’s Rolling Bridge (Not the glass bridge) (GNU licence)

The programme was The Ingenious Thomas Heatherwick, about the English designer and sculptor. The title sounds like a Roald Dahl novel, and the contents were just as fantastic. ‘Ingenious’ is a very apt word to describe Heatherwick’s work - suggestive of something at once mechanical and artistic, with the words ‘genius’ and ‘engineering’ struggling to get out. One of his inventions - ‘Heatherwick’s Rolling Bridge’ sounds as though it should be on display next to ‘Hargreaves’ Spinning Jenny’ in some Museum of Industrial Marvels. Even Heatherwick’s name sounds like a compound of ‘Heathcliff’ and ‘Pickwick’ - another whiff of the nineteenth century, age of invention and endeavour.

Time Management for Creative People

This is a guest series on Time Management for Creative People for the excellent blog Business of Design Online. As well as running the series on BoDo I'm featuring and discussing it on Wishful Thinking - and the whole thing will be available to download as a free e-book at the end of this month (November 2007).

The series combines principles of creativity with principles of time management, in a way that is (hopefully) flexible enough for individuals to apply it to their own creative talents and habits.

At the start of his book Art Worlds, Howard S Becker quotes the following passage from Victorian novelist Anthony Trollope:

"It was my practice to be at my table every morning at 5.30a.m.; and it was also my practice to allow myself no mercy. An old groom, whose business it was to call me, and to whom I paid £5 a year extra for the duty, allowed himself no mercy. During all those years at Waltham Cross he was never once late with the coffee which it was his duty to bring me.  I do not know that I ought not to feel that I owe more to him than to any one else for the success I have had. By beginning at that hour I could complete my literary work before I dressed for breakfast."

Becker points out that the old groom played a vital role in the creative process that produced all those classic novels, even though he is far from the conventional image of a 'creative person'.  Trollope fits the Romantic image better: the solitary writer toiling away at his desk by candlelight. Yet without the old groom he would probably have overslept occasionally.  That might not have seemed important at the time, but if we totted up the figures over a lifetime (something it would be fairly easy to do, given his famous habit of writing 1,000 words per hour) a lie-in once a fortnight could have cost Trollope several novels.

The myth of the Romantic artist still lives on in some companies, where creativity is the exclusive preserve of the 'creatives', who are separated from the 'suits' and carefully insulated from contact with the client.

I once ran a business training with a team of on-the-road sales people. They were great - bright, enthusiastic, professional and likeable. We had a lot of fun and got a lot of work done. Almost inevitably, one of their requests was for help in ‘dealing with difficult people’. This one crops up in just about every training I run, it’s up there with ‘How do I find more time?’ and ‘How do I deliver negative feedback?’.

When I asked them what they meant, they described ‘the people at head office’, who sounded like they were on a mission to obstruct the sales team at every step - ‘bureaucratic’, ‘nit-picky’, and ‘difficult’ were some of the nicer words used. So we spent some time looking at ways to influence these people and minimise the interference.

From the feedback I got in the post-seminar coaching sessions, the new options were helpful and they were able to spend less time arguing with administrators and more time improving their sales targets.

A few months later I was working with another group at the same place. They were great too. Not such high energy as the sales team, but genuinely good company and just as professional. Inevitably, they wanted ideas for ‘dealing with difficult people’. So I asked for details and they told me about a bunch of fly-by-night salespeople who didn’t understand the importance of ‘doing things properly’ and had to be reminded of basic administrative procedures. Apparently things had improved a bit recently, but there was a lot of history to be forgotten. And guess who they were talking about?

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The Thinkubator and Other Creative Environments

Gerald Haman, President of Chicago innovation specialists SolutionPeople, has sent me an interesting article about his ‘Thinkubator’ - a ‘Creative Meeting Space’ where corporations can send their teams to turbo-charge their creative batteries. Part of a feature on the theme Innovate or Die Trying by US magazine Training, the article says that “the facility includes giant chair sculptures, disco lighting, a sound system, a professional karaoke system and a rooftop sun deck with panoramic skyline views of the city.”

The ‘Thinkubator’ (Photo courtesy of SolutionPeople)

Haman is quoted saying “Many people focus innovation and creativity training on what happens inside of people’s minds … I’ve found that it’s also important to pay attention to what goes on outside of people’s heads, thereby looking at the physical environment.” The idea is to tap people’s creative potential by taking teams out of their usual working environment and giving them the opportunity to devote time to “blue sky thinking”. As well as providing stimulating and unusual surroundings, SolutionPeople facilitate intensive creativity exercises and games. Haman comments, “We’ve found that the people who are willing to sing karaoke … are the ones who are willing to take risks and generate more ideas.”

I’m intrigued by the Thinkubator - how could I not be curious about a place fitted out with “comfortable and thought-provoking furniture”? I also find it very easy to relate to the idea of a ‘creative break’ in inspiring surroundings as a catalyst for creativity. Earlier this year, on holiday in Japan, wandering around the beautiful temples and shrines of the ancient cities of Kyoto and Nara, I found myself waking up in the morning and writing drafts of several poems almost without effort; something about the change of scene from London had shifted my imagination into a different gear. And after a few nights out in Tokyo I can testify to the power of karaoke to bring out a different side of your personality!

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Interviews

Mick Rigby, Managing Director, Monkey Communications

Ruth Kenley-Letts, Film Producer

Chris Arnold, Executive Creative Director, BLAC

Russell Davies, Advertising Planning Maestro

Chris Hirst, Managing Director, Grey London

David Roberts, Senior Project Manager, Creative Launchpad

Neil Youngson, Technical Director, Cabinet UK Ltd.

Greg Orme, Chief Executive, Centre for Creative Business

Chris Grant, Consultant, 14A Conversations

Antonio Gould, Consultant, and Sara Harris, Screen Media Lab

Richard Scott, Director Surface Architects

Ben Demiri, Brand Manager, SIX Showroom

Sian Prime, NESTA Creative Pioneer Programme

Jill Fear, CPD Manager, the Institute for Practitioners in Advertising

Terry Childs, Creative Director, Silver Chair

Matt Taylor, Director, Fat Beehive

Mark Earls, Advertising Contrarian

David Amor, Creative Director, Relentless Software

Creative Synaesthesia - If You See What I'm Saying

I discovered this video of the Reactable, a new music-making interface, via City of Sound and Peter Marsh.

Why do I find this so fascinating? I think it’s the way it opens up new creative possiblities via artificial synaesthesia.

According to the scientists, ‘true’ synaesthesia is a neurological condition in which one sense is involuntarily translated into another - e.g. colours are experienced as sounds or vice versa. It is popularly associated with psychedelic drugs, but can also result from a stroke, blindness or deafness. I encountered synaesthesia in my work as a hypnotherapist, as it’s a fairly common occurrence in trance subjects.

Synaesthesia and Creativity

Less extreme versions of synaesthesia, sometimes called ‘pseudo-synaesthesia’, are reported by many people as part of their normal thinking processes. This kind of everyday synaesthesia seems to be particularly common among artists and other creative types. Like a lot of poets, I experience a kind of grapheme-colour synaesthesia, whereby words (and numbers) are associated with particular colours. Louis MacNeice describes the phenomenon in his poem ‘When we were children’:

When we were children words were coloured
(Harlot and murder were dark purple)
And language was a prism, the light
A coloured inlay on the grass,

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