Pop Hacks! Make your Creativity and Others Work For You

The following is from my semi-regular newsletter The Smoke(ler) Signal. 

— Ritualize creativity. Far and away the first reason I hear from students and my own head for why creative endeavors don’t happen is “I can’t find the time. I’d like to write/draw/paint/record more but practical shit always get my attention first.”

Solution:  Pair creativity with practical shit. I’ll take a few notes after parking my car. I take a few photos while running a stupid errand. I sketch or doodle for about 90 seconds before morning meditation.

Creativity happens regularly when it feels regular. If it’s workaday, like brushing your teeth, it will happen as often as you brush your teeth. If it must be special and mind blowing and a great communion with the muse every single time, well how often does “mind blowing” happen?

— Read long and short. I’m in the middle of reading a mammoth book right now and while it’s magnificent, it’s also dense, slow and the size of an adult raccoon. Which means I can usually do about 5 pages a day before collapsing from reader’s exhaustion then gazing with lust at the stack of shorter, more fun books that taunt me from the nightstand.

I’m usually a one-book-at-a-time reader. But in this set of special circumstances, I’ve taken to reading my mammoth book and a shorter, fun book at the same time, I get to read the fun one after I’ve finished 5 pages of Gigantor. Candy after broccoli.

— Apple Trailers. You wanna know what movies are coming out, even to just add them to your Netflix Queue? Apple Trailers updates every Monday. I watch 15 minutes of trailers on Monday before getting to work and feel like Roger Ebert. And no, I don’t find trailers spoil the movie for me. Usually all I remember from the trailer is the decision to see the movie or not.

— Music Discovery: Ancestors and Descendants. The AllMusic database is Wikipedia about musicians before Wikipedia existed. More importantly, each artist page (here’s Prince) has a section that lists that artists’ main influences and whom they influence, their parents and their children, musically speaking.

If you find yourself having a hard time discovering new music, start here. Pick 3 of your favorite artists, see who influenced them and who they inspired. You won’t be straying too far from what you already like, musically speaking but you will also have kicked out the back door and gone outside. Which is a great start.

— The Creative Ramp. Every creative endeavor that seems hard has easier, quicker pieces to it–playing scales on a musical instrument, warming up your voice to sing, taking notes to write. Always start with that simple stuff. Because trying out camera lenses or comparing paint colors is easy, right? It’s photo spreads and finished novels that seem hard because they require several staircases to ascend.

Don’t try and broad jump to the top step. Begin with a slow, gentle ramp. then turn and look behind you. You’ll be further up than you think.