There is, and probably always has been, an epidemic of people thinking they aren’t and/or can’t be creative, and it sucks beyond the telling of it.
It’s not specific to advertising (the number of times my mom has said, “Gosh, I wish I were as creative as you and your brother,” like, Mom, where do you think it came from?), but in an industry that has an entire job designation of “Creative,” it’s easy to start believing creativity is the purview of one type of person. We divide ourselves into “creatives” and “not creative, but that’s okay because you’re good at other things,” or, even worse, “hey, it takes creativity to make a Gantt chart,” like, WOW.
Anybody can be creative — in the traditional way we think of being creative — and I know this because we all started out as kids, and kids are WILD. Kids create entire play-pretend worlds with fully fleshed-out characters. And they will lay those worlds on you with absolute seriousness, like whatever is going on in their head is a perfectly commonplace extension of reality such that you should be able to understand it. It’s the best.
And it’s not some kind of scale where the most wildly creative kids go on to creative careers. When I played Barbies as a kid, my Barbie didn’t have a Dream House, she had a home office, and she didn’t need a Ken because she had a career. You have never met a more pragmatic Barbie-player-with than young Caperton, and now I literally pay my bills by being creative.
So here’s my unexpectedly emotional appeal about all that.
Consuming fiction is an exercise in creativity.
Or maybe we’ll call it a gateway drug to creativity. Sure, producing fiction is obviously a more substantial application of it. But being able to insert yourself into a created world and move around in it takes a degree of open-mindedness that is inherent to creating things. Willfully suspending disbelief takes at least the tiniest grain of creativity. Thinking, I’ve never been in space before, and I don’t even believe in aliens, but yeah, let’s go for it, let’s all pretend we’re in space, and y’all, don’t look now, but you’re doing a creative.
No, it wouldn’t suit to crank through an AI-generated, formulaic murder mystery of an evening and think, “Why, I am artiste.” But if you’re on the fence, if you’re reluctant, if you have Creative Feelings but don’t see any path from wishing you were creative to actually being creative, there you go.
The idea of “stupid ideas” is a stupid idea.
Which is to say, there aren’t any inherently stupid ideas.
I think a lot of this, particularly in the ad industry, arises from the fact that we are trying to solve problems — we have goals to achieve — and not every idea is a good solution for the problem at hand. What if we did the entire ad in Italian? Well, the audience is American, and the product is toilet cleaner, so probably not, but hold onto that idea for later. Maybe literally put it in a document called “Ideas for Later,” because the solution you found just now could be a solution to a different problem later.
The reason I always start brainstorming sessions with a few minutes of the worst ideas we can possibly think of is to get everyone comfortable with having “bad ideas,” and having them in front of other people. Because even the worst ideas can have something usable in them, and going into the creative process with pragmatism in mind is a great way to limit yourself and not come up with any really good “good ideas.”
Ineffective, implausible, racist — there are plenty of reasons an idea might not be viable for the purpose at hand. But stupid? Stupid just means “hold onto that for later.”
Remember that problem-solving is creative.
Catch what I said a few paragraphs back: solution for the problem at hand.
Yeah, I know I said the whole “it takes creativity to make a Gantt chart” thing is trite and condescending, and we don’t do that stuff here, please and thanks. But it’s true that finding a solution to a problem, when all the traditional methods have failed, is an inherently creative act. There’s a whole category of ads called “visual solves,” and if you want to talk about being jealous of someone else’s creativity, sit next to me while an art director does their job. I”m consistently in awe.
If you can only see creativity as solving “problems” like “there should be an Art Thing there but isn’t,” you’re going to be blocked. But that’s upper-level stuff. Think of all the times you’ve approached a problem sideways, or come up with a solution no one else could find. You’re already there.
If you want to limber up your creative muscles a bit, give yourself some “problems” to solve. Find some writing or doodling prompts online, and then go at it. (If you demand to spend money, my belovedest art director got me Wreck This Journal, which is both artistically and emotionally satisfying.) Do your best not to limit yourself or judge yourself. Start with little things, and gain confidence to move up to bigger things. See what’s in there that you didn’t know was there.
Find your childlike ugh whatever gross forget about it
We talk about how we “forget” how to be creative after a childhood of play-pretending, but it’s worse than that: We make ourselves stop doing it. We tell ourselves creative play is a worthless, unproductive thing — “worthless” in the sense of “not having or producing value” — and something to be set aside in favor of Grown-Up, Important Things as we grow up. And then, when we find ourselves unable to problem-solve or even just find ourselves jealous of someone who hasn’t set it aside, we don’t make the connection.
I honestly hate that this is a thing I need to write about at all — that there are people who crave creativity but feel it’s beyond them. I hate that my mom has ever felt inadequately creative because my brother and I write for a living. I hate that I have this thing that makes me so happy and I can’t share because people want it but don’t think they can have it. Please, have faith in yourself that you can have it.
And for the love of all that’s holy, if you have kids, or have any kind of influence over young people, don’t do the thing with the making them stop being creative. Don’t stop them from playing and pretending because they’re Getting Too Old for That Kind of Thing. Join in on the playing. And not because childlike wonder, blah blah, uninhibited blah blah whatever — because they have a skill you need, and the best way to learn it is at their knee.
If I, as a college freshman, hadn’t discovered a field that directly connects creativity with paying the bills, I don’t know what career I’d eventually end up in, but I’m pretty confident it would be frustrating. Don’t roll the dice on being that lucky. Start ‘em young, and if you’re already not-young, start yourself at whatever age you are. However you want to use it, however far you want to go with it, use it that way and take it that far. Anyone can be creative, and I sincerely mean that. So please.
Please.
Just… Y’all, please.