Creative Steps

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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We are all looking for ways to silence the inner critic. Some of us never manage this and we abandon our creative journeys far too soon, committing ourselves to an almost certain future of drudgery, boredom and dissatisfaction.

Whether you are an amateur attempting to cross a creative project off your life list, a more seasoned artist, writer or musician faced with a creative block, or a creative entrepreneur attempting to bring your ideas to life, if you evaluate your ideas and creative output too early you might be prevented from finishing at all.

Allen Ginsberg, who often seems to act as the creative spokesmen for a generation of beat artists, advocated continuous ’stream of consciousness’ writing as a way to silence the critic:

“The parts that embarrass you the most are usually the most interesting poetically, are usually the most naked of all, the rawest, the goofiest, the strangest and most eccentric and at the same time, the most representative, most universal…That was something I learned from Kerouac, which was spontaneous writing could be embarrassing…The cure for that is to write things down which you know will not be published and you won’t show people. To write secretly….so you can actually be free to say anything you want…

It means abandoning being a poet, abandoning your careerism, abandoning even the idea of writing poetry, really abandoning, giving up as hopeless, – abandoning the possibility of really expressing yourself to the nations of the world. Abandoning the  idea of being a prophet with honour and dignity, and abandoning the glory of poetry and just settling down in the muck of your own mind…You really have to make a resolution just to write for yourself, but just writing what your self is saying.”

In her book The Artists Way, Julia Cameron recommends a practice of writing three (A4) pages of longhand stream of consciousness writing each morning before doing anything else. This writing is not intended to be creative output; it is not profound, or artistic or even coherent. It is probably just nonsense, but it gives you the opportunity to clear all the internal dialogue that is silencing the real you.

As Julia Cameron says, “It is impossible to write morning pages for any extended period of time without coming into contact with an unexpected inner power… the pages are a pathway to a strong sense of self. They are a trail we follow into our own interior…“

In the online creativity coaching course, Creative Steps, How to Coach yourself to Increasing Creativity, I encourage you to engage in daily, ’stream of consciousness’ writing – it is a great a way to silence the inner critic and has worked for countless creative people struggling to overcome creative block.

Is your inner critic dominating you?

Recently the course has been free in return for feedback.  This has not only given me the chance to refine the training course and evaluate what is working and what is not, but also I have got to work with interesting people from around the world, including an Australian musician, two American painters, an Indian entrepreneur and a number of other creative people from the UK.  This has been a stimulating and rewarding experience for me and for this reason I am extending the offer:

In return for feedback on the site you get free access to the site and 5 free, 45 minute coaching coaching sessions.

Contact me if this is of interest and I will forward a coaching intake pack that give more details of this service. I am particularly interested in hearing from writers or creative entrepreneurs who are looking to take their work to the next level.

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