How To Be Creative

Neil Pavitt has spent most of his career a writer in advertising, working at Saatchi & Saatchi and other top London ad agencies. As well as having won many prestigious awards in the industry, he has had a short film nominated for the BAFTA New Writers award and spent a stint as a stand-up comedian. He now runs Lightbulb and works as a creative consultant running talks and workshops to help people become more creative. To find out more, visit www.thelightbulbidea.com.

Directory is proud to be able to bring our readers the first two chapters of Neil's book. When we asked him why he had written it, he told us: A survey by IBM of 1,500 CEO's around the world, put 'creativity' as the most important quality needed for leadership over the next five years.But what is creativity? I wanted to demystify the creative process, showing readers that it is a process not a gift. It's not a standard "how to'

book.There are no creativity exercises and it's written as a story about two brothers, one of whom is left- brained, the other one of whom is right-brained. Yes, it's a metaphor. It is also short, easy to understand and, I hope, entertaining; while at the same time being insightful about what it means to be creative. It won't make anyone creative overnight, but it will help people understand what it takes to be creative and then the rest is up to them.

Introduction

Someone recently said to me, "I wish I was creative, but I haven't got a creative bone in my body". It's hard to believe that some people still think 'being creative' is a gift only bestowed on the lucky few. So I decided to write a short book that anyone could pick up and, by the end of it, know where to find their creative bones. Now, when it comes to finding your creative bones, you'd think that the people most likely to know where to find them would be the inventors, the artists and the deep thinkers among us. That's probably why the most common question at talks by 'creative people' is, "Where do you get your ideas from?" Unfortunately, their most common answer is, "I don't know". This isn't because they want to keep the secret to themselves; they genuinely don't know.

The reason for this is that the most important part of the creative process happens in our unconscious. This is what makes creativity so magical and frustrating in equal measures. You can't guarantee that you'll come up with a great idea; all you can do is create the conditions for creativity to happen. It's like planting a seed in your garden. You just plant it in good soil and make sure it gets plenty of water and sun. There's no point standing over it shouting "GROW, GROW!"But before you start thinking that you have no control over whether you'll be creative or not, don't worry: help is at hand.

There is a process to creativity. All the great creative people throughout history have used this process. That's not to say that many of them would necessarily be aware they were following a process. You wouldn't have found Newton under an apple tree saying, "Not now, can't you see I'm in the middle of Stage Three?"

There have already been many books written on creativity, but I found that a great deal of them are full of creativity exercises. Now while creativity exercises can be useful, I don't believe they are vital. After all, do you think the creative people you admire, whether artists, writers, scientists or business people, started their days with creativity exercises? Can you imagine Michelangelo dropping by Leonardo Da Vinci's house and asking him what he was working on, to be met with, "I was going to muse on whether there could be some form of sheet with ropes that would help people fall safely through the sky, but first I think I should paint my room blue; it's meant to aid creativity. Perhaps you can help, you're good at painting ceilings." I believe the most important thing is to truly understand how creativity works. Then instead of spending your time doing creativity exercises you can spend it thinking about some real problem to which you want to find a creative solution. If you want to write a great novel, read a great novel. Don't read a book about how to write a great novel.

I've written the book as a story, so you won't find a pre´cis at the end of each chapter; but I've summarised all five stages of the creative process at the end of the book. I wanted it to be a book you could sit down and read from cover to cover without worrying that you should be making notes. The story is about two brothers, each of whom represents a different side of the brain, and it follows their discussion about the nature of creativity. Even if you don't enjoy it, your brain will. The brain loves a good metaphor.

Chapter 1 - Why Not Me?

"Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up." Pablo Picasso

Venn had just got off the phone after a particularly long and boring call. He pushed his chair back and went next door to see what his brother, Hodge, was doing. When he opened the door, he saw Hodge, feet on the desk, looking out of the window.

"Hard at work, I see," said Venn.

"I'm thinking," replied Hodge.

"Oh, is that what you call it?"

He wrote children's books for a living and had become very successful at it. But with this success came accounts, invoices, contracts, merchandising rights and lots and lots of phone calls. And this is where Venn came in.

Venn and Hodge were twins. But, as the eldest, Venn had always been pushed to be the mature, sensible one. Hodge, on the other hand, had pretty much been allowed to do what he wanted. Seeing them together, you'd think there was ten years' difference between them, not ten minutes.

Venn had taken up a job in a large London accountancy firm, while Hodge had tried to make it as a writer. After receiving endless rejection letters for his novel, he tried his hand at writing for children and became instantly successful. Venn saw his brother's success as an opportunity to escape the corporate world, and he became Hodge's manager/agent/accountant. He loved working with his brother; he just found it annoying that the more successful his brother's books were, the more stressful his job became.

Venn stood there, looking around his brother's office. The walls were covered with pictures that Hodge had drawn and strange photos he'd ripped out of magazines. The shelves were covered with all manner of random objects he had picked up on his travels, while the floor was barely visible under piles of books and papers.

Venn's office, on the other hand, was the complete opposite. Any paperwork was put away in filing cabinets, and the only things that covered the walls were spreadsheets and a year planner. He hated the mess in Hodge's office, but he still envied his free-thinking mind.

"Why can't I be creative like you?" he said.
Hodge took his feet off the desk and turned to his brother.

"You can be creative; everyone can be creative. Come and sit down and let's talk about it."

"I've got calls to make," said Venn, with a sigh. "Forget the calls. Just come and sit down."

Venn walked over to the sofa, which was also covered with what he would term rubbish, but his brother called 'reference material'. He instinctively started
to separate the paper from the magazines and stack it in neat piles."Just chuck it all on the floor and sit down," said Hodge, eager to start their conversation.

But instead of throwing everything on the floor, Venn just started to sort it more quickly.

"Okay, okay," said Hodge with a sigh.

"If you want to be creative, your first challenge is to chuck all that stuff on the floor. Try to ignore your inner accountant and find your inner child."

"I think my inner child grew up a long time ago," said Venn. "I just think that some people are creative and some aren't, and I'm one of the latter."

"That sounds like a challenge," said Hodge, smiling. "I was a bit stuck anyway, so it'll be nice to have something else to focus on. It might be buried pretty deep, but I'm sure that I can help you to find your inner child. You were creative when you were young; you've just had it knocked out of you by spending your adult life in careers where only logical and analytical thinking are rewarded."

"What do you mean, I was creative when I was young?" interrupted Venn.

"Don't you remember you used to say some really creative things. Mum said you once saw an oily puddle with its many colours glinting in the sunlight and you said, 'Look it's a dead rainbow'. Turn that into a line 'The oily puddle glinted in the sunlight like a dead rainbow' and you've got something really poetic. There you go: inner child found. Proof that you have the ability to be creative."

"Nice try, but you're going to have to do better than that to prove I'm creative. When I said that, I wasn't trying to be creative. I said it through a lack of knowledge. I didn't realise that a rainbow wasn't a living thing. Yes, it's sweet and funny, but it's sweet and funny precisely because I wasn't trying to be clever or creative. I was just making what I believed to be a real statement using the limited information I had. Therefore, ipso facto, I wasn't being creative."

"I don't know about ipso, but with you it's definitely about the factos. It's as if you're trying to prove to me that you're not creative, and if you can, you don't have to try any more. Let me have a think of a plan of action overnight and we'll re-convene in the morning."

Chapter 2 - The Rules

"You can't use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have." Maya Angelou

The next day, when Venn arrived at the office, he was greeted by the sight of Hodge banging picture hooks into the wall above Venn's desk. As soon as Hodge saw his brother's face, he stopped hammering and started laughing.

"You're more concerned about the damage I'm doing to your wall than what I'm going to hang on these hooks, aren't you?"

Venn said nothing. His brother knew him too well.

"These are reminders of the barriers to being creative," said Hodge.

He then hung a mirror on one hook, a picture of the London Underground map on the second and a framed white sheet of paper on the third.

"Shall I explain their significance?" he asked.

"I feel like I'm back at school."

"Well, that's not a bad place to start, as that's where our natural creativity usually gets knocked out of us. Children start to lose that open-mindedness and their curious view of the world. School seems to be all about what's right or wrong and learning what other people think. Creativity is all about opening up your imagination, trying to do things differently, discovering what you think. There's no right or wrong in creativity. Just because something's always been done one way, doesn't mean that's the way it should always be done. Which leads me to the picture of the tube map.

This map was originally created in 1933 and was the brainchild of Harry Beck, an engineering draughtsman who'd actually been made temporarily redundant by London Underground. When he initially presented the idea, it was rejected for being too radical. But Beck kept pushing, and eventually London Underground printed five hundred copies to test it out. It was a huge hit with the public and they published a first edition of seven hundred thousand. It didn't follow conventional mapping rules because, as Beck said himself, 'If you're going underground, why do you need to bother about geography?' The point I'm trying to make is that it's important to be open to any possibilities. Try not to be judgemental. When you're thinking creatively, it's always important not to confuse knowledge (other people's ideas) with information (the hard facts). The only thing set in stone on a map of the London Underground is the information: the tube lines and all of the stations on them."

Hodge waited for his brother to say something in response, but Venn was just staring into space.

"Have you been listening?" he asked, looking slightly hurt.

"I was just thinking about you describing the tube map as the 'brainchild' of Harry Beck. It's interesting that it's the qualities associated with a child that are always used when talking about creativity."

"Eureka!" shouted Hodge.Venn looked surprised. "What have you thought of now?" he asked.

"Not what I've thought of," said Hodge, "what you've thought of. I've never noticed that about the word 'brainchild', but you did. You took something, a word that we take for granted and found a fresh way of looking at it. Welcome to the world of creativity."

And if you want to read on, you'll have to buy the book. It's in paperback, just £4.99, from www.amazon.co.uk