BLT – How do you stimulate and channel your creativity?

DEFINITION: “Creativity – the use of imagination or original ideas to create something.”
Oxford English Dictionary

I’ve been ‘creatively’ putting off writing up this last BLT session for a fortnight now, so it’s time to put some of the suggestions made at this meeting into practise

Here are 6 Creative Tips:

1. Just start… somewhere!

“Write drunk, edit sober”
– Ernest Hemmingway

I’ve always loved this quote – in fact, it’s usually my first port of call when asked to describe copywriting (not the drunk part though!) in that you just need to start writing something, and can then perfect it at a later stage: “You can’t edit a blank page.”

2. You don’t have to start from scratch

“If I have seen further it is by standing on ye sholders of Giants.”
– Issac Newton

Being creative doesn’t necessarily mean starting with a blank piece of paper – you can adapt and make something your own. After all, if it was good enough for Issac Newton…

A BLT member had this story about a feature writer who had ‘invented’ a system to help him become creative – he called it a ‘Swipefile’.

This was a file where he would store his ‘swiped’ ideas. Whenever he came across a good piece of writing, or headline, or image, he would rip it out (or copy it) and file it away with a post-it note on which he jotted a few bullet points and categorised it. Then, when he was called upon to write something in the future, he could quickly check through his Swipefile to stimulate his creative thinking.

3. Sell me this pen!

In the closing scene of Wolf of Wall Street, the lead character (Jordan Belfort) is speaking at a conference, demonstrating sales techniques. In order to show them how sales works, Belfort pulls a pen from his pocket and starts going round the audience, one by one, commanding them to “Sell me this pen”. As each one takes the pen from Belfort, they start to fumble through an attempted sales pitch:

Audience member#1: “It’s a… an amazing pen… f-for professionals—”
Audience member#2: “It’s a nice pen. You can use the pen to write down thoughts from your life…so you can remember—”
Audience member#3: “Well…this pen works..and I personally love—”
Wolf of Wall Street

Lesson: You sell the pen by NOT selling the pen.

Remember: emotions rather than facts that sell a story – it is all about the ‘Why’ rather than the ‘What’ when capturing somebody’s attention. This is exactly the issue which I commonly come across when writing copy for websites, particularly for engineers it seems, who are adamant that all the facts need to be listed at the outset

So, when being creative, don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story – always start with the ‘Why’.

4. Be creative within your confines

One BLT member is an IFA and hence highly regulated in terms of what he is able to write on his website.

However, he has applied his creativity to finding clients, focusing upon a specific niche and tailoring the financial information accordingly to this niche; e.g. targeted seminars, financial bulletins…etc.

5. Think around rather than through a problem

Edward De Bono is the celebrated pioneer of lateral thinking and his Thinking Systems have helped to redefine how we approach long-standing problems in new creative ways.

Example: a local authority in New Zealand wanted to free up parking spaces but the cost of monitoring parking was expensive.
Solution: allow free parking to anyone who kept their headlights on whilst parked.

6. Be creative… wherever it suits

This dovetails nicely with the first point in this blog about dealing the ‘Blank Page’ phenomenon – if you take it on, head to head, you are likely to lose!

So, sidestep the blank page by doing something rather than sitting at your desk.

CONCLUSION

How you stimulate and channel your creativity depends upon WHAT you do; are you in a creative industry (artist, designer..etc) and need to stand out from the competition, or are you in a process-driven industry (banker, lawyer) and hence to find a memorable niche?

However, at the end of the day, being creative comes down to WHY. It’s about the story you are looking to tell, so it’s fine to stimulate this by either taking inspiration from others (“standing on the shoulders of giants”) or to looking for inspiration within yourself (Solvitas perambulam)…the most important thing is to take that first step and TO DO SOMETHING! [note: rather like the fact it’s taken me over 2 weeks to write and post this blog!]

February 14, 2019/0 Comments/by Matt Wright