“Creativity is exactly like washing a pig. It’s messy. It has no rules. No clear beginning, middle, or end. It’s kind of a pain in the ass, and when you’re done you’re not sure if the pig is really clean or even why you were washing a pig in the first place.” Luke Sullivan
You don’t have to be as steeped in the business of practicing creativity as Luke Sullivan, a 30-year copywriting veteran and best-selling author on the subject, to appreciate his observation.
Because whether your business card contains a creative title or not, every human being has at least a little bit of creative muscle. We use it when we look for a new way to solve a problem. We all know that depending on how difficult the challenge is and how long we’re willing to devote to it, creative solutions are out there. It could be an idea for a new song, a piece of art, a solution to a business challenge, or even just something to get for that difficult-to-buy-for someone’s birthday.
The trick is finding a creative answer.
In How to Fly a Horse: The Secret History of Creation, Invention and Discovery, Kevin Ashton notes a letter by Mozart published in Germany’s General Music Journal in 1815, describing his creative process. The great composer’s letter concludes, “When I proceed to write down my ideas, the committing to paper is done quickly enough, for everything is, as I’ve said before, already finished; and it rarely differs on paper from what it was in my imagination.” Apparently, his greatest symphonies, concertos and operas arrived his mind complete. He had only to write them down.
The trouble is Mozart never wrote any of that. The letter’s a forgery. Mozart’s real notes, to friends and family, describe a very different process. He sketched out initial thoughts, revised and often got stuck. As exceptionally talented as he was, he created awkwardly, through trial and error, progressing iteratively.
Anyone who’s paid to be creative knows, regular creative demands are like running a marathon. In the Himalayas. Your veins need to be filled with a strange admixture of fear and confidence. Fear of failure keeps you driven, at least enough to keep trying to make something original. Original work must be, by definition, totally unproven. Sometimes it feels about as safe as Oppenheimer risking a runaway reaction that could set the atmosphere ablaze – to test a new bomb. At the same time, you need to have enough confidence to take risks as you seek something new. On top of that, you need the staying power to continually resist the status quo and keep exploring. As a final added pressure, in any creative business venture there are sums of money on the line. You envy Columbus. He must have known that sailing off the edge of the world would at least save him from the worse fate of standing before King Ferdinand’s accountant and explaining how he cost the boss 3 fully rigged-out ships.
If you make creativity your business the work can be lonely and often agonizing. You can suffer an almost unbearable pressure, not just from what seems like a hopeless task set against an impossible deadline. An even greater enemy looms: yourself. The blank page mocks you mercilessly. You grow dispirited. That terrible fear creeps in. You double down and try to think harder. Whatever substance obstructs bowels feels like it’s made its way into your cranium. The dendrites in your neo-cortex actually begin to hurt. Then, eventually, an embryonic little idea emerges. These first one or two of these are awful, malformed, embarrassing. You wonder if passing kidney stones would be less painful.
So, why do we do it?
Because creating something from nothing is an utter joy. At some point, often in a flash, an interesting idea forms before us. And we have an answer.
That’s how creativity works. It’s kind of inexplicable. No one can really explain it. And yet everyone’s felt that giddy thrill of landing on a creative way of moving forward. Yes, those of us working in creative fields often have to strain the muscle more often than others. And how lucky are we?
We get to wake up every day with a blank slate. We have an opportunity to bring something new into the world. The pressure’s there in the background, of course. We have to work to tame our internal leather-bound, crop-wielding dominatrix. But relentlessly curious, we’re inspired by our environment. We observe it, finding ways to see things anew. We fiddle, worry, explore, sweat, play, discover. As solutions elude us, we can get frustrated. But overall, it’s a joyous experience. There’s a kind of high about solving problems creatively. And on top of that delight, we get paid for it.
Because clients value that ability to stumble on a solution. And they value those who can stumble on a good solution with some degree of regularity.
No one can be sure a new solution will work. Part of the process is trying it, stress testing it, observing the results. If it fails, we try again. That’s one of the great beauties of creativity. It’s an unlimited resource. As long as we’re willing to keep trying, solutions will keep arriving. It’s part of what makes creative pursuits so much fun. They keep our minds active. Each solution prompts another and another.
We’re always observing, looking for a better solution.
Every creative idea we dream up for our clients benefits from being exposed to other voices and improved by many hands. We need our team mates to help bring the idea to life, to execute it, to refine it, to manage it through the process, to help us present it in its best light. We need them to help us manage client feedback and assist us through subsequent steps. Through that process, we all contribute to the creative product. The result is that now we all own the idea.
If we’re lucky, the squirming, writhing, once-muddy little pig we’ve scrubbed clean together moves people and makes the world a better place.