Creativity: The Awkward Years

This is an oldie but a goodie — Ira Glass on working through the sucky early years of any creative endeavor when your taste level surpasses your skill level and you're working like mad on a bunch of stuff that you know kind of sucks.

When I first stumbled on this video during my first semester in grad school, it made me so relieved not to be alone. My grad school mantra said essentially the same thing —  When you're green, you grow. (The tatted-up hairstylist I stole the line from always added: When you're ripe, you rot.)  But I needed to hear it from someone who'd made it to the other side.

A friend reminded me of this video today, and I had to share it. (Thanks, Tyler!) It's good to re-watch on the tough days.



My favorite part transcribed in case you can't play it where you are:

And all of us who do creative work like, you know, we get into it and we get into it because we have good taste… So you've got really good taste and you get into this thing that I don't even know how to describe but it's like there's a gap. That for the first couple years that you're making stuff, what you're making isn't so good, okay? It's not that great. It's really not that great. It's trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it's not quite that good. 

But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, your taste is still killer and your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you're making is kind of a disappointment to you, you know what I mean? Like you can tell that it's still sort of crappy. A lot of people never get past that phase and a lot of people at that point quit.

And the thing I would just like say to you with all my heart is that most everybody I know who does interesting creative work, they went through a phase of years where they had really good taste and they could tell what they were making wasn't as good as they wanted it to be. They knew it fell short, you know, and some of us can admit that to ourselves, and some of us are a little less able to admit that to ourselves.

But we knew that it didn't have the special thing that we wanted it to have and the thing what to do is... Everybody goes through that. And for you to go through it, if you're going through it right now, if you're just getting out of that phase or if you're just starting off and you're entering into that phase, you've got to know it's totally normal and the most important possible thing you can do is do a lot of work.

Do a huge volume of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week or every month you know you're going to finish one story. You know what I mean? Whatever it's going to be. You create the deadline. It's best if you have somebody who's waiting for work from you, somebody who's expecting work from you, even if it's not somebody who pays you but that you're in a situation where you have to try not to work. Because it's only be actually going through a volume of work that you are actually going to catch up and close that gap. And the work you're making will be as good as your ambitions.

Wrong turn down The Artist’s Way

A few weeks ago, some article mentioned Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way and piqued my curiosity. It’s a classic with 200+ gushing reviews on Amazon. And, really, what creative person doesn’t want to “unblock.” Granted, I wasn’t feeling particularly blocked when I picked it up at the library, but there’s always room to be more creative, right?

For those of you not familiar with this book, it’s a “comprehensive twelve-week program to recover your creativity from a variety of blocks.” The main tools are morning pages (writing three stream-of-consciousness pages about whatever every morning) and artist's dates (taking weekly alone-time to get inspired). As general concepts, both have been recommended to me by professors and other creative folks.

Sounds perfectly helpful, right?

Well, I found myself in a creative slump as soon as I started reading it. Maybe it was getting up half an hour early to write gibberish about how irritated I was getting up early. Maybe it was all the exercises in which I searched my childhood for the moment some villain told me I wasn’t good enough and destroyed my creative mojo. Maybe it was reading her florid prose or all the talk about how it’s God’s plan for you to be creative. Maybe it was the vaguely condescending attitude about careers (like journalism and advertising) that she considers “shadow careers” (i.e. practical substitutions for real art).

Whatever it was, it was not good. But I didn’t want to let it go. After all, so many people say this book changed their lives. Maybe I was just going through the purging phase. (Anyone who’s tried Retin-A knows your face gets worse before it gets better.) So, I trudged on another week, writing in my notebook and reading my affirmations each morning.

But it didn’t get better. I felt run down and idealess. And there was creative work to be done and no time to let this slump work itself out. So, I finally listened to my gut and took Ms. Cameron back to the library.

It took another week or two to shake off the residue, but I’m finally energized and back in the game. Ad icon Rich Silverstein’s talk yesterday helped tremendously.

The moral of this story: You can’t turn all your energy inward and expect it to reflect back at you.

Advice from Rich Silverstein of Goodby, Silverstein & Partners

Rich Silverstein — I took a camera pic today but it was fuzzy.

Wow, guys. I’d been planning to jump back into the blogging thing next week. But, when I heard that Rich Silverstein of Goodby, Silverstein & Partners was going to speak on campus, I knew I had to post.

His talk totally invigorated me — just what I needed mid-semester. Goodby, Silverstein & Partners does amazing work, and we even got to see a few yet-to-be-aired commercials. (Let’s just say there’s some awesome stuff in the pipeline.)

He was speaking to the Technology Marketing and Advertising class (which the professor graciously allowed other students to crash), but the conversation wasn’t super tech heavy. Rich said a few times that he didn’t think about technology except as a tool to further storytelling.

Connecting people and telling stories are the two things that tie together all the careers I’ve wanted or had (acting, journalism, advertising), so it was really cool to hear him mention those ideas over and over. Other frequently repeated themes included honesty and simplicity.

“Find a way to make something brutally simple that’s brilliant,” he said.

The quotes

He was highly quotable, and I’m sure you’d rather read his words than mine, so here are a few snippets:

• “Do not talk down to consumers… Everyone is smarter than you think they are.”
•  “No one’s going to give you a free ticket in advertising. You’ve just got to work your brains out.” 
• “Sometimes a cool product is killed by advertising. You have to be honest and truthful.”
• “Put a dog in your commercial, put a baby in your commercial, and you win.” ;) 
• “It’s not easy to sell any of this to clients.”
• “Passion is very important… You’re lucky — you’ll be in an industry that has a lot of energy.”
• “Everything is a mistake waiting to happen. Nothing is perfect. You just have to go with it.”
• “Middle management destroys creativity.”

More advice

For creative directors and other managers: 
“Be fair, honest and direct… A good creative director is the boy who sees that the emperor is naked."

For creative job applicants:

• “If you’re not a student of pop culture, you shouldn’t be in advertising.”
• Your book is what matters, and it should show thinking plus craft.
• He and Jeff Goodby look for books with one great thing that makes them jealous.
• You have to have a point of view.
• And for copywriters “Writing is a lost art… Try to string some words together.”
• When asked about it, he cautioned against filling your book with gorilla work: “Clients love it and never buy it.”

And, finally, the work

Got Milk? — Aaron Burr
(He rightfully called the milk mustaches campaign a bastardization of this idea.)



NBA Finals — There Can Only Be One



Comcast High Speed Data with Powerboost — Rabbit


Doritos Hotel 626



Sprint Now Network


Dickies
Can't embed the video, but you can check out these ads at: http://874.dickies.com

Creative cross-pollination, or what I’ve learned about writing from unlikely sources

Grace Coddington

In The September Issue (which I highly recommend to any creative person, even if you aren’t into fashion), Vogue Creative Director Grace Coddington looks out the window of her taxi in Paris rather than hunching over a smart phone, as so many business travelers do.

She makes a point to do this everywhere because early in her career a mentor advised her to always look up and around for inspiration because you never knew when it would strike.

I agree wholeheartedly (even though I struggle to keep my iPhone tucked away). Not only does inspiration come from unlikely places, so do lessons about writing and creativity.

For example...

Cooking (or, hell, good eating)

Sweet is made interesting by adding spice, sour, or salt. Think Mexican hot chocolate or a salted caramel or Key Lime pie or, my recent favorite, the Mango Habanero Margarita at Takoba in Austin.

Photography

A photojournalist I worked with told me that the biggest difference between professional photographers and regular folks was that the professionals “take a hell of lot more pictures.”

Now, I don’t entirely believe that, but his point resonated with me. Want to get better at your craft? Do it more. Want to make sure you get the perfect shot? Take more shots. Want to make sure you get the perfect headline? Write more headlines.

Hair cuts

It’s much easier to trim than add more.

Fashion

Simple can be elegant, but there’s a fine line between that and boring. There is an equally fine line between elaborate and overwrought. In all cases, execution matters.

User Interface Design

It takes a lot more work on the back end to make things simple of the front end.

What have you learned about writing from unlikely sources?

Visual ads for word geeks

Like every writer I know, I heart Scrabble. And, I generally love ads for Scrabble as there have been quite of few great ones in recent years. These from Ogilvy in Mumbai made me grin this morning. 

The tag is: The Surprising Power of Words

Advertising Agency: Ogilvy & Mather, Mumbai, India
National Creative Directors: Abhijit Avasthi, Rajiv Rao
Executive Creative Director: Sumanto Chattopadhyay
Creative Directors: Sukesh Kumar Nayak, Heeral Desai Akhaury
Copywriters: Sukesh Kumar Nayak, Ragini Singh
Art Directors: Heeral Desai Akhaury, Pushkar Shintre

Check out everything from Scrabble at Adsoftheworld.com.

Go now: "Chris Jordan: Running the Numbers" at AMOA

If you’re in Austin—and especially if you’re an art director, graphic designer, or anyone else who has to organize info in a visually interesting way—get to the Austin Museum of Art to check out “Chris Jordan: Running the Numbers.” Now. (Well, at least before August 15.) It’s well worth the $5.

Chris Jordan turns stats into art. Most of us have trouble grasping the giant numbers we read in the news — that 1.14 million brown paper supermarket bags are used in the United States every hour, for example — but Chris Jordan lets you see just how many bags that is.

(Chris Jordan — Paper Bags, 2006 — Click to Enlarge)

An online picture doesn’t do it justice, but his website gallery has a pretty awesome zoom feature. Definitely check out Barbie Dolls.

If you aren’t in Austin, the exhibit (or another similar one) will be touring:

• College of Charleston, SC (Sept. 1 - Dec. 15, 2010)
• Simon Fraser University Gallery, Burnaby, BC, Canada (Nov. 6 - Dec.17, 2010)
• University of Colorado Museum of Natural History, Boulder, CO (Jan. 10 - April 30, 2011)
• Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, University of Oregon, Eugene (Jan. 15 - April 10, 2011)
• Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, University of Oregon, Eugene (Jan. 15 - April 10, 2011)
• Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, NV (April 23 - Aug. 6, 2011)
• International Museum of Art and Science, McAllen, TX (Sept. 1, 2011 - Jan. 1, 2012)
• Sordoni Art Gallery, Wilkes University, Wilkes-Barre, PA (Aug. 29 - Dec. 11, 2011)
• Carleton College Art Gallery, Northfield, MN, (Jan. 6 - March 9, 2012)
• University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH, (Jan. 27 - April 6, 2012)
• Science Museum of Virginia, Richmond, VA, (May 12 - Oct. 14, 2012)