Great Advice on How to Be Creative
Found this great list of advice from the Gaping Void Site. You can see 31 points of advice, some of the best quotes include:
- Ignore Everybody: GOOD IDEAS ALTER THE POWER BALANCE IN RELATIONSHIPS, THAT IS WHY GOOD IDEAS ARE ALWAYS INITIALLY RESISTED.
- 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.
- Keep Your Day Job: 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."
- Avoid the Watercooler Gang: In retrospect it was Ted’s example that taught me a very poignant lesson- back then I was still too young and naive to have learned it by that point- that your office could be awash with Clio’s and One Show awards, yet your career could still be down the sink-hole.
- The best way to get approval is not to need it: This is equally true in art and business. And love. And sex. And just about everything else worth having.
- Power is Never Given, Power is Taken: You don’t get the dream job because you walk into the editor’s office for the first time and go, "Hi, I would really love to be a sports writer one day, please."You get the job because you walk into the editor’s office and go, "Hi, I’m the best frickin’ sports writer on the planet." And somehow the editor can tell you aren’t lying, either.
The other way is to join us at T4td Corp.
You could start with our post titled: Help yourself on Feb 6th.
http://t4td.blogspot.com/2007/02/help-yourself.html
Thank you.
T4td Corp.
We’re behind you.
Hmmm – very interesting – I thought this was some sort of auto-responder or something at first. In response to your post, I think that there is excellence in every genre, including self-help. I used to loathe them too since I truly don’t believe that there is one stock answer to all problems like some of the bad ones claim. But, it is not worth writing off the whole genre. Most of the very smart people I know have gotten something out of one book in the self-help section in their lives, whether it be for relationships, career or life goals. It is just another way to deal with the complex world that we are in today – what is wrong with that?