A Lovely Thing

I spend a good deal of time, perhaps more than I should, delving into the experiences and observations of writers, musicians, artists and creators of all kinds, as I attempt to understand more about this mysterious thing we call ‘the creative process’. Inevitably I gravitate towards those whose work I…

Coffee. I love its viscous, black, deliciousness. It’s inconceivable to me that I could begin a day without it. But when it comes to creativity, to having ideas, is it an aid or a hindrance? Had I posed this question to the celebrated French novelist Honoré de Balzac his response…

Often in the workshops I run for creatives I’ll ask them to bring along a commercial they love. And of all the hundreds of commercials that have been shared there is one that pops up again and again. Which is kind of surprising, given that it’s a 15 year old…

I recently stumbled across a long overlooked essay by the science fiction writer Isaac Asimov. Before being shared on the MIT website, ‘On Creativity’ had been gathering dust for nearly fifty years in a filing cabinet at the Allied Research Associates, a thinktank tasked with generating ‘outside the box’ ideas…

Today is a big day for me. It’s the UK launch of my book ‘Creative Demons & How to Slay Them’. I’d like to share 7 things I’ve learned about writing a book in the hope that it’s helpful to any other unlucky soul burdened by the suspicion that they…

Well, let’s start with the obvious: the image of the boy. This is no ordinary photograph of a child. Those grey green eyes blast you out of your complacency as you flick through the newspaper. They’re big, in close up and they break the fourth wall. Yet Kiran Master’s image…

Most of the time when we encounter a work of art it is because the artist sought an audience. Painters hang their paintings in galleries, musicians play gigs and make records, and writers write to be published. So it’s rare to encounter an exceptional creative endeavour whose intended audience was…

If you’re a creative person, perhaps someone who makes a living from their imagination, then there’s a good chance that you were first inspired to pick up a pen, a camera, or a paintbrush by looking at the some of the best work in your chosen medium. You encountered the…

There is a great deal of mysticism about the creative process. And justifiably so. No one truly knows where great ideas come from. The trouble with this mysticism is that it’s not terribly helpful when you know you have to come up with an idea quickly, say in response to…