Creative Steps

Would doing what Hemmingway did help you achieve more in your creative life?

One man thought so.

It turns out that author William Elliot Hazelgrove has managed to live out, to what some may be, a literary fantasy: he writes his novels in Ernst Hemmingway’s attic.

It was a serendipitous thing, born of luck, ability and perhaps an element of writer’s block. Hazelgrove was trying to find inspiration in a coffee shop having abandoned his attempts to write in his own home given the recent arrival of his new baby. It wasn’t working and he gave up, disheartened.

On the way home he passed the white Victorian house in which Hemmingway was born in 1899. He entered the house and asked the elderly lady who had turned the old house into a museum if it would be possible for him to find a place to write inside the house.

At first she was reluctant, but perhaps remembering that Hemmingway once described the suburb as “a village of broad lawns and narrow minds”, she succumbed.

Hazelgrove’s strange ‘ritual of ascending stairs to a musty old attic’ was born.

Perhaps we should all consider the impact that our workspace has on our creative output and perhaps we should also think of how we use rituals and routines to achieve more of what we want in our creative life.

Here are his own thoughts from his website.

“It is a complicated thing where one chooses to write. I have written in store rooms, basements, bedrooms, attics, spaces over garages, cottages, buttonhole apartments and just about every coffee house in America. Maybe criteria would be as simple as a place where one can be lost and no one will notice the man in the corner scribbling or typing or reading or just staring into blank space. There is nothing holy about one space over another but there must be some sort of anonymity of the sort that allows the writer to become whoever he or she wants for that time.

“While I write in other places as well — I do have an office over a garage that I share with the exhaust and the occasional field mouse — the attic is a touchstone, a place where one gets a glimmer of another time, maybe a simpler time, I don’t know. But certainly, once I am there and settled into my stiff-backed chair and I hear the squirrels chattering in the eaves and stare at the church in the distanced over the rooftops — I am very far away, at least for an hour or two.”

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We know when something isn’t genuine.

We know there is a difference between the novels of a self-expressed writer and those of the author who produces fiction according to a prescribed formula; we know when music is manufactured to meet the needs of the market; we can tell the difference between a great film and a manufactured movie, even if we cannot always articulate what the difference is.

Take Sting. He knows when something isn’t genuine and it gets him quite worked up.

“The X Factor is a preposterous show and you have judges who have no recognisable talent apart from self-promotion, advising them what to wear and how to look. It is appalling”

Not only does he lambast the judges, he also believes that the X Factor has “put music back decades. Television is very cynical.” Take a look at the article.

Simon Cowell is often accused of being cynical; do you remember the uproar associated with his successful marketing of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah through his X Factor platform?

“Perhaps Cowell actually thinks the song is about him. After all, a key line is “you don’t really care for music, do ya?””

Perhaps the root of the issue with Cowell is money: he owned the rights to Hallelujah and was reputedly making over £250,000 per day as different versions of the song took the top two slots in last Christmas’ UK single chart.

Perhaps it is money; perhaps it is because we know when something isn’t genuine.

For the past four years the winner of Britain’s reality TV show X Factor has gone on to become the Christmas number one. This year the battle is on again, but this time it is Cowell who is slamming the opposition as ‘cynical’.

An internet campaign has been launched by a disgruntled British couple with the aim of preventing this year’s X Factor winner Joe McElderry from reaching the UK Christmas number 1 slot.

They are asking those who are bored with Cowell’s brand of music to lodge a protest by buying Rage Against The Machine’s rock/rap protest anthem Killing In The Name (complete with the festive refrain “F*ck you, I won’t do what you tell me”).

In an interview with BBC 6 music Rage Against The Machine guitarist Tom Morello calls the bid to get his song to Christmas number one as a “little dose of anarchy“.

“This is a grass roots effort. It’s nothing against the candidates or the guy that runs the show… I don’t think there is anything cynical about it. In the spirit of great rebel music, and all the best music is rebel music, they are taking up the torch for music in the UK. That top spot doesn’t belong to anybody – any TV show or any ’90s political rock band. Let the people decide.“

Cheryl Cole doesn’t see it that way. The Girls Aloud star has criticised the “mean campaign” threatening to keep her protégé, Joe McElderry, out of the Christmas No 1 spot.

She said: “I would be devastated to see Joe lose possibly the best thing that could happen to him in his life. Every aspiring pop star dreams of a No 1 record.“

Cheryl Cole doesn’t seem to understand that it is not a campaign against Joe McElderry; any one of a number of identikits could be in his place today.

We know when something isn’t genuine.

There is a difference between creativity and expression. The person generating creative output to meet the perceived needs of the market is probably being creative, but they may not be self-expressed. Self-expression has nothing to do with meeting the expectations or perceived desires of another group of people it is about reflecting your own existence.

Writers churning out genre fiction are creative but not particularly self-expressed; neither are the karaoke stars of reality TV.

When we find our own voice the ‘light leaps out’ and magical things can happen; this is when are able to do the work that only we can do; when we become who we are meant to be.

Of course, doing this isn’t easy. It takes time and effort, trial and error, disappointment and the determination.

But the first step towards is getting started. And, it doesn’t really matter where Joe finishes in this year’s Christmas chart, at least he is out there and doing his thing. How many of the critics that slam his lack of originality have released a piece of creative work this year?

Furthermore, I doubt that getting a Christmas number one really is the ‘best thing that could happen to him in his life’ and this seems to say more about Cheryl Cole’s values than it does the importance of a Christmas Number 1.

Wouldn’t it be better if Joe actually managed to truly find his own voice and went on to leave the days of the X Factor behind to become a creative artist with genuine expression?

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Simply put, your creative allies are people who want to see you become more yourself; they want to  help you on your path towards increasing creativity. These are people who recognise, acknowledge and safeguard the potential within you. A rare breed in many ways; their message is simply ‘you are unique and valuable and you have something unique to contribute’. True allies create a context in which you can behave as you’d wish and therefore go on to develop your own abilities and grow and flourish.

Ezra Pound as Creative Ally to T.S. Eliot

In the early part of the last century T.S. Eliot was an unknown poet and author. He had written some poems, most of which were simply lying unread in a drawer like so many unfinished creative manuscripts. Then he met Ezra Pound.

Click here to learn about the weight of unfinished creative plans.

In 1915 Ezra Pound was acting as overseas editor of Poetry magazine; he recommended to Harriet Monroe, the magazine’s founder, that she publish “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock“.

It was clear to Pound that Eliot had talent. Indeed, he was so convinced that Eliot was already a great poet that he refused to let Monroe liaise directly with Eliot unless she ‘insulted’ him by suggesting alterations to his work.

Ezra Pound’s belief in Eliot’s quality was cemented in 1921 when Eliot left the manuscript of The Waste Land with him; he read it and immediately considered it to be a masterpiece.

At this time Eliot was working as a clerk in Lloyd’s Bank of London and the quantity of his creative output had reduced as he was unable to dedicate sufficient time to his writing. Pound recognised this waste and decided to ‘free’ him by attempting to establish a subscription plan called ‘Bel Espirit’, in which up to thirty people would each donate fifty dollars to help support Eliot. Pound himself gave money, as did Hemmingway and Aldington and others.

Despite Pound’s endeavours he was unable to find enough subscribers to allow Eliot to quit his job and dedicate himself to poetry. However, the publicity may have helped raise Eliot’s profile and, indeed, in 1922 Eliot was awarded the $2,000 Dial prize.

All or Nothing Thinking

Eliot did not leave employment to dedicate himself wholly to poetry, but he did continue to write. In 1925, he left Lloyds to join the publishing firm Faber and Gwyer (later Faber and Faber) where he remained for the rest of his career, eventually becoming a director.

Eliot avoided the common ‘all or nothing thinking’ trap by framing success as a poet in his own way:

“My reputation in London is built upon one small volume of verse, and is kept up by printing two or three more poems in a year. The only thing that matters is that these should be perfect in their kind, so that each should be an event.”

(Eliot, T. S. “Letter to J. H. Woods, April 21 1919.” The Letters of T. S. Eliot, vol. I. Valerie Eliot, ed. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1988, p. 285.)

Your Creative Allies

On your creative journey you will meet various types of travelling companion, some of them are allies and some of them turn out to be destructive to your creativity, the most subversive of these negative characters are the shadows and the most destructive are the shape-shifters.

Recognising the allies and guides, shape shifters and shadows can be difficult, but they define your journey. Are you aware of how the people in your life are shaping your creative destiny?

Learn more about how to recognise these people and how to interact with them to help your progress your own creative journey.

Sign up for the Information-Packed, Multi-Media, Online Creativity Coaching Course

Further Instances of Pound as Creative Ally

Pound was a tireless ally to many of the creative heavyweights of his day. When W.B. Yeats introduced Ezra Pound to the early writing of James Joyce, Pound became arranged for The Egoist to print A Portrait of the Artist, both serially and in book form.

Later when Joyce was writing Ulysses, Pound attempted to give the young artist more time to dedicate to his work by sending him money and clothing at his own expense (and anonymously) and also persuading other patrons of the arts to do the same. For instance, at Pound’s persuasion, Yates successfully lobbied the Royal Literary Fund for substantial grant. Pound also got the Society of Authors to send Joyce a bursary covering at least three months of expenses.

Your Creative Allies

You may think it was easy for Ezra Pound to see that Eliot was ‘unique and valuable’ and ‘had something unique to contribute’, after all he is one of the greats, but would you be able to recognise world class?

Rather than worry or wonder who your creative allies are, why not try and be an ally to someone else? Are you able to ‘recognise, acknowledge and safeguard the potential’ within someone else? Could you be a creative coach to somebody?

It seems to me that seeing the potential in others enables you to acknowledge the potential within yourself, too.

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I was having dinner with a friend who had worked on Leonard Cohen’ s 2009 UK tour. She told me something that may or may not be true but is a provocative story that can help with creativity coaching…

But first a question; have you ever wanted to pursue a creative dream but didn’t because you believed you could not afford to?

If you had the choice, what would you choose? Money or creative fulfilment?

Financial worries are a common creative block. Is this something that hinders your creative work?

Consider that question as you peruse this story…

Leonard Cohen was famously ripped off by his ex-manager Kelley Lynch, who not only misappropriated over US $5million from Cohen’s retirement fund but also sold the publishing rights to his music.

A certain Simon Cowell bought the rights to this body of work and fed arguably Cohen’s most popular song, Hallelujah, to a hungry public via his X-Factor TV Show.

In some quarters there was uproar. How could Cowell ruin such a classic by making it Saturday night muzac?

“I hate ‘Hallelujah’ now. It’s mawkish, mewling, so earnest it’d make Halfwit cringe and, worst of all, it’s too damn religious. It makes me want to vomit up my own kidneys so I can ram them down the throat of anyone singing it.”

“Perhaps Cowell actually thinks the song is about him. After all, a key line is “you don’t really care for music, do ya?””

Others thought Cowell was bringing good music to popular attention; noting that Jeff Buckley’s version and the original were also charting.

But I doubt Simon Cowell paid much attention to this debate. Why should he? He owned the rights to all three versions!

My friend told me that Cowell was making £250,000 per day from the three tracks during the period that they all charted. Leonard Cohen was making some money, but nowhere near as much.

So what did the great man think about that? I asked her.

She said, ‘you know Leonard!’ (I don’t) ‘He was resigned and relaxed about it…’

Was he really I wondered? When asked about having his fortune stolen by his manager the Zen Buddhist, Cohen, was quoted as saying: “You know, God gave me a strong inner core, so I wasn’t shattered. But I was deeply concerned.”

So who would you rather be Cowell or Cohen?

Money or creative talent: what would you do if the choice was yours?

If we imagine looking back on our lives then many of us would want to be remembered as great people. Living forward (as we have to) most of us want to be comfortable. How do we get both? When is enough enough? What is the thing we want to be remembered for?

Some interesting themes for coaching and, as always, there are no right answers. Coaching is an ongoing enquiry; it is about getting more of what you want.

What did Leonard Cohen really want – money or creative fulfilment?

In an interview in The Guardian Newspaper, Cohen was asked if he had been fearful of starting a career in the music industry, especially at the relatively old age of 33 (he had previous made his living as a writer).

It may surprise you that, like Paul McCartney, Cohen did it for the cash!

Leonard Cohen: “I’ve been generally fearful about everything, so this just fits in with the general sense of anxiety that I always experienced in my early life. When you say I had a career as a writer or a poet, that hardly begins to describe the modesty of the enterprise in Canada at that time – an edition of 200 was considered a bestseller in poems. At a certain point I realised that I’m going to have to buckle down and make a living. I’d written a couple of novels, and they’d been well received, but they’d sold about 3,000 copies. So I really had to do something, and the other thing I knew how to do was play guitar. So I was on my way down to Nashville – I thought maybe I could get a job. I love country music, maybe I’d get a job playing guitar. When I hit New York, I bumped into what later was called the folk-song renaissance. There were people like Dylan and Judy Collins and Joan Baez. And I hadn’t heard their work. So that touched me very much. I’d always been writing little songs myself, too, but I never thought there was any marketplace for them.”

The interviewer then commented: “Some people would think it’s ironic to go into music to make money, given that it’s not necessarily the most lucrative of professions for most artists.”

Leonard Cohen: “Yeah, I know. In hindsight it seems to be the height of folly. You had to resolve your economic crisis by becoming a folk singer. And I had not much of a voice. I didn’t play that great guitar either. I don’t know how these things happen in life – luck has so much to do with success and failure.”

I am still not sure if Simon Cowell did make that much money from Hallelujah and there are lots of conflicting stories online, but I did find this from England’s Daily Mail which supports her claim. If anyone knows anymore, post a reply; I’d love to learn more.

Tags: case studies, Creativity Coaching
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The Washington Post arranged for Joshua Bell, one of the world’s finest classical musicians, to busk incognito in a metro station.  They wanted to know if the average commuter would spot musical ‘greatness’ if they saw it unannounced. They called it an “experiment in context, perception and priorities.” What do you think happened?

Would you know world class if you saw it?

For 43 minutes, the internationally acclaimed virtuoso performed six classical pieces, “some of the most elegant music ever written on one of the most valuable violins ever made.”

1,097 people passed by, few stopped to appreciate the music and 27 people gave a total of $32.

What does this tell us? On this occasion, in a ‘banal setting at an inconvenient time’ beauty did not transcend. It seems that context is important.

We would perhaps like to think that we would know world class if we saw it, but the truth is that without a context great work can be hard to appreciate.

We see this is other walks of life too: art treasures can be lost in attics; in many fields the greats are only discovered years after their deaths; different stores retail the same product at vastly different prices.

For aspiring creatives this holds a lesson; it can be hard to appreciate the quality of our own work as we tend to see it in a particular ‘personal’ context. Familiarity can allow us to overlook the quality of our work and, conversely, out intentions can cause us to underestimate its flaws.

This story also instructs us not to believe the feedback we receive. Joshua Bell was used to reverential audiences but was ignored in the subway. His work was the same in both situations; it was the context that was different.

Pay Attention

The context on this occasion was the daily commute. People do not expect to see a world class musician performing as a busker and so they tended to overlook it when it actually happened. The other point is that their minds were probably elsewhere; already in work, or perhaps still in bed, or on some other daydream.

If we are able to miss something of this quality then what else do we miss?

Without the ability to pay attention we can miss so much that the world has to offer. And if we are in the business of creating art we might benefit from noticing what is going on around us.

The daily commute can train us to focus inward, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Every time a child walked past he or she tried to stop and watch (and the parent hurried the child along). Is this because the children are more open to having new experiences?

As a general rule we should remember that we need to be present in order to appreciate life and similarly we need to bepresent to create art. We do not know when the next world class performance will be staged right before our eyes.

Pay attention is the third creative steps ebook.

Click here for the Washington Post article.

Tags: creative steps, Creativity Coaching, Feedback, Pay Attention
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I have heard lots of opinion discussing the genesis of genius – born or made?

We all want to know if it is nature or nurture that makes us creative. 

Most of these opinions are interesting because of what we learn about the speaker and the times in which they live, rather than what we learn about genius.

Take this apparently anachronistic study by a man named Galton in the 1860s. 

Galton devised a system to grade natural ability in a range from genius to idiocy in ‘14 classes of mental ability each being separated by its neighbours by equal grades’.

He then set out to discover if there was such a thing as ‘Hereditary Genius’ by seeing if the family members of illustrious or eminent men were more or less likely to be illustrious or eminent themselves.

(In Galton’s classification being ‘illustrious’ was better than being ‘eminent’ which in turn was better than being at the next grade; a grade he called ‘judge’)

Galton, who coined the phrase ‘nature versus nurture’, studied men from many walks of life and this is what he discovered from the creative world:

Poets – nature versus nurture?

56 poets were studied and 40% were found to have eminently gifted relations and these relations were largely confined the poet’s immediate families. He concluded “poets are clearly not founders of families.” He believed that the rare combination of qualities required to be an eminent poet was not sustainable in inheritance. He felt that the “inheritance of the strong sensuous tastes of the poet without the controlling faculties may lead to complete failure.”

Musicians – is it in the genes?

26 of the 120 eminent musicians studied had illustrious relatives. As with the poets these eminent kin were found mainly among the closest relatives. There was a notable absence of eminent relations through the female line among the musicians.

Painters – what about them?

42 painters were studied with the following conclusion: “the rareness with which artistic eminence passes through more than two degrees of kinship is almost as noticeable as in the case of musicians and poets.”

What do we learn?

Poets don’t make good fathers?
If you want to be a musician make sure there are no musicians in your mother’s family?
Don’t start to paint if there is an eminent painter in your family?

150 years later…. do we now believe that it is nature or nurture?

I recently spoke with the parents of a keen and talented 8 year old guitar player.  They were angry and frustrated that their child’s teacher had told their son that he would never make it as a musician because “your parents are not musical”. Although angry at these comments, something seemed to tell the young boy’s parents that the teacher might have a point.

We all have beliefs about our own position in life – what could we have done with slightly different genes or slightly better parents? And beliefs guide our choices in life…

What was that music teacher’s belief? Why was he a teacher and not he a musician?

And why was Galton inspired to study Hereditary Genius? Perhaps it was the influence of his illustrious cousin, a certain Charles Darwin.

Tags: Belief, Creative Genius
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Stop suffering and write the symphony…You have probably seen the classic 1952 comedy musical ‘Singin’ in the Rain‘; the story of Hollywood’s transition from silent films to “talkies.”

In the film, Cosmo Brown (Donald O’Connor) fears that the change to ‘talkies’ will make his role redundant – he plays the piano to accompany the silent movies. In a conversation with the head of the film company he jokes about his predicament: ‘at least now I can start suffering and write that symphony’.

R.F. Simpson, the head of Monumental Pictures reassures Cosmo. He tells him that he won’t be out of a job and that, in fact, he will now be promoted and will write full music scores. Cosmo quips: ‘at least I can stop suffering and write that symphony!’

Like many of us, Cosmo is a ‘someday one day’ thinker; creative, no doubt and probably talented too, but apparently destined never to ‘paint his masterpiece’ because the particular alignment of circumstances doesn’t quite allow it…yet. But it might someday, one day.

Someday one day thinkers squander their talents and often go to their grave doubting their abilities. They set inappropriate goals and don’t give themselves any opportunity to succeed.

Can creativity coaching help these people? Yes, of course.

A creativity coach would help in a number of ways, for example;

• Get your mind off the masterpiece and on to the work in hand
• Get you into action and keep you accountable
• Champion your efforts and help you understand your own motivation
• Give you the tools you need to coach yourself

A creativity coach might also help you replace all or nothing thinking with a more helpful way of thinking…something that works for you.

For example, when asked by journalist Kurt Loder, of Rolling Stone magazine, if he had ‘painted his masterpiece’, Bob Dylan replied: “I hope I never do”. He is still touring today.

What effect would this belief have on your ability to produce regular creative work?

I am still looking for two more people to help me test the Information-Packed, Multi-Media Online Creativity Coaching Course, Creative Steps, How to Coach Yourself to Increasing Creativity.

Have a look at this link and if it appeals, contact me.

Tags: , Creativity Coaching
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There is no doubt that some of us experience an urge to create; a very real experience, the absence of which leaves us feeling ‘less ourselves’. But why would that be?  Darwin suggested art has its origins in sexual selection, but is this right?……

…is it all about sex?

An interesting New Scientist article cites studies conducted by Geoffrey Miller at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque who likens art to the peacock’s tail – “a costly display of evolutionary fitness”.

Miller’s studies have shown that when women are at their monthly peak in fertility, they chose creative men in preference to wealthy men (Human Nature, vol 17, p 50).

These same studies also show that both general intelligence and the personality trait of being open to new experiences correlate with artistic creativity. In this way artistic expression may offer prospective mates an idea of what we are like.

But the direction of cause and effect is by no means clear. As Miler himself points out sex alone may not explain the evolution of art. “It might have originated for some other function, and acquired the sexual display function later.”

So what other purpose might art serve?

The New Scientist article highlights other suggestions into the purpose of art, it suggests the following:
• “the drive to seek out aesthetic experiences could have evolved to push us to learn about different aspects of the world – those that our brain’s hard-wiring has not equipped us to deal with at birth” (SubStance, vol 30, p 6).
• Art is “a form of intellectual play, allowing us to explore new horizons in a safe environment” (New Scientist, 23 May, p 44).
• Art is “all about making an object or event “special” by appealing to the emotions through, say, colour or rhythm.” The function of this is to increase bonding and raise collective survival chances.

I am sure there are a thousand other theories. I personally like the idea of us wanting to let others know we exist – a more sophisticated way of marking our territory than a dog would choose!

Anyway, whether there is an evolutionary pay-off or not, what is clear is that some people simply enjoy it! And as we stand here today that is surely enough.

For the New Scientist Article click here:

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I find that this question is often asked by younger writers who feel that drawing on their own experience is somehow cheating. It can become a serious creative block and so is a great topic for creativity coaching.

I have found that one way to help people overcome this creative block is show example of people who have taken their experiences to make worthwhile art and this next example is fascinating….

I was reading a great book about stress, Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers by Robert Sapolsky. The book has nothing to do with creativity coaching, but it goes to show that we get influenced by everything we experience (see, hear, touch, smell etc) and it is an interesting and worthwhile read.

The section in question was discussing the effects of stress on a growing body and the capacity for severe psychological stress to trigger dwarfism and it gave an example that occurred in a British Victorian family and shows how great writers use their own experiences….

“A son age thirteen, the beloved favourite of the mother, is killed in an accident. The mother despairing and bereaved, takes to her bed in grief for years afterward, utterly ignoring her other, six year old, son.

Horrible scenes ensue. For example, the boy, on one occasion, enters her darkened room; the mother in, her delusional state, briefly believes it is her dead son – ‘David, is that you? Could that be you?’ – before realising: ‘oh it is only you [the younger son].’

On the rare occasions when the mother interacts with the younger son, she repeatedly expresses the same obsessive thought: the only solace she feels is that David died when he was still perfect, still a boy, never to be ruined by growing up and growing away from his mother.

The younger boy, ignored, seizes upon this idea; by remaining a boy forever, by not growing up, he will at least have some chance of pleasing his mother, winning her love. Although there is no evidence of disease or malnutrition in his well-to-do family, he ceases growing. As an adult, he is just barely five feet in height and his marriage is unconsummated.”

 The book then goes on to inform us that the boy became the author if the beloved children’s classic, Peter Pan.

“J.M. Barrie’s writings are filled with children who didn’t grow up, who were fortunate enough to die in childhood, who came back as ghosts to visit their mothers.”

So, should we draw on our own experiences? This brief story shows how wonderful creative output can have its roots firmly in our daily experiences, however tragic.

It is worth remembering that even imaginative output is probably just the synthesis of various sources. So it isn’t the original experience that we should question, it is how we let it combine with other experiences and take life of its own.

Tags: Creativity Coaching
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