How to be creative (when you're not a "creative person")
How practical people can create, without being creative
This is my 2nd essay in my new series, How to Become Irrelevant: A guide to not being a big deal. The first was nice and controversial: The joy of having zero New Year’s resolutions
So you want to make something original? Something new and fresh and cool?
Well… too bad.
Because you’re not a “creative person.”
Sorry, you’re just not the type of person that does that kind of stuff. No, you’re a realist. Sensible. Practical. And all those “creative people” are weird, dreamy-eyed hippies who hate capitalism, wear scarves indoors, and waste their lives while calling it work.
So stay focused. Stay useful. Stay (most importantly) employable. And never, and I mean never, do something that’d embarrass yourself in front of people you don’t like.
Sound familiar?
If you’re already overflowing with ideas and constantly shipping them, congratulations. If you’re already in touch with the creative inside, if it hasn’t been stamped out of that dull husk of a human you’ve become, good for you. I’m not here for you today.
I’m not a “creative person.” I never liked art class. Don’t draw. Don’t paint. Never wrote stories for fun or even liked English Class. The only vaguely creative thing I did as a kid was play trumpet in high school, and that was because of a music requirement.1
All this led me to believe:
“Rick, you’re a practical man. Go and do boring things with your life.”
So I did. And it was fine. For a while.
But <insert midlife crisis>, I’ve come to realize I’ve fenced off entire regions of experience. Whole rooms I’ve locked, because I’d decided “that’s not me.” So when I finally picked up something really creative for the first time at the age of 40 (writing fiction), the real question was: “am I even allowed to try?”
A month later, the surprising answer:
“No, Rick. You shouldn’t try.”
No, no, no. That was the first answer. What was the later answer? The one that came after working through all the muck behind-the-scenes, enduring months of questioning. Oh, yeah it was:
“Yes, you can do this.”
So here’s what you can do to anoint yourself, just like I did, as an official “creative person”…
1. Don’t create new ideas, follow existing ones
Okay, sit down and think really hard of something original. C’mon, do it.
Did it work?
Okay, maybe try sitting in a coffee shop with a copy of The Creative Act next to you. Now, do it.
Still didn’t work, did it?
Right. Because ideas don’t arrive like that. I certainly don’t know where they come from. Neil Gaiman says his friend gets them from a little idea shop in Schenectady. Then he says the real thing: idea people are just trained to notice when ideas appear.
The same happened for me. My novel didn’t start as “I have an original concept fully thought out.” I barely had any idea where it would go. Instead, it started as a sequence of unglamorous “what ifs” that I followed:
I like writing, but have only written essays. What if I tried a novel?
Okay, I like post-apocalyptic stories w/ deeper themes. Let’s start there.
My favorite book is The Road. I can picture the setting, the mood, etc.
Now, how about: what happened to the kid in The Road after the book ends? Where does the kid go from here?
That last question became page one. Page one evolved into ten pages. Then, a few months later, my first draft was done.
And, here’s the key thing: I never knew I had that story in me.
2. Stop outsourcing your imagination to others
Conventional advice says:
“Read more.”
“Listen more.”
“Study the masters.”
Or in your world it may be:
“Follow the competition.”
“Learn from an expert.”
“Do more research.”
It’s trying to solve creativity with a constant stream of other people’s ideas. Meanwhile, your own brain never gets a chance to cook up something new because you’re following everyone else’s recipes. In fiction, it’s escaping into other people’s worlds, but never creating your own.
Rather than researching “how do I write a book?” then locking myself away for a few years studying, maybe take a course, maybe get a coach, reading, reading, reading… I just started writing. Then after my ideas were flushed out on the page, I went back and studied how stories are formed and went back to tweak my original creation.
So try this: create first, study later.
3. The best ideas show up on the 5th try.
Or 10th. Or 20th. You won’t know when they’ll come.
When I started my book… it sucked. Like horrible stuff no one would read. I was somehow ashamed of what I’d written, while also being the only person to have read it. (how is that possible?)
But I went through it over and over again. Deleted bad ideas. Added new ones. Kept writing more. And then, finally, the really good ideas appeared.
This is annoying. I wish it were easier. But also, it’s freeing to know you don’t have to have great ideas out the gate. You don’t have to kill your initial bad idea because, hey, it might get better.
4. Make something that doesn’t matter
Nothing will kill your ideas faster than the following practical concerns:
“How will this make money?”
“Will so-and-so think it’s stupid?”
“How will I explain this to people I don’t like, at a party I don’t want to attend?”
It’s all different forms of the same question:
“Will people love me?”
WHOA!
Or, wait, I mean, let’s not get too far out there…
The main question, the more grounded one, you’re circling is:
“Is it worth it?”
It’s the sort of hardcore triage most adults get good at in life to eliminate the unnecessary. And I get it. It’s a valid question. But when it comes to creativity, you only find out the answer to that question later.
These practical concerns are all idea killers and toxic for early creativity. If you want more ideas, you need more low-stakes experiments and projects that are allowed to be pointless, private, and unimpressive.
When inspiration strikes, it’s best not to question it, just follow it to see where it goes.
5. Understand the rules, then break a big one
As you try something new, you’ll invariably run into different commandments:
In business: “Set goals.”
In life: “Don’t blow up a good thing.”
In fiction: “Make your main character likable.”
Here’s the problem with rules: they’re often just patterns that worked for someone else in a different context. They’re average advice for average outcomes. (and they’re probably the same boring crap that AI will develop in massive quantities; i.e. not original)
Similarly, I got the advice from a writing coach who read my manuscript: “you can’t have your character do <this frowned upon thing>.” It was generic advice, the kind you’d see if you were to skim YouTube videos for an hour.
Here’s the thing: I know it’s a rule. And I choose to break it anyways.
Doing something original usually means, by definition, breaking a rule. And maybe the rule is right — but there’s only one way to find out…
6. Only you decide what “creative” means
The minute you make something original, your brain will immediately start looking to judge it relative to some impossible standard. Specifically: “is this creative to other people?”
No, it’s probably not. And most people probably won’t care. What’s “creative” to you, is “cliché” to others. Someone else will always be more creative than you, and you’ll never get there, and down and down you go.
But you don’t avoid exercise because you’re not a professional athlete. You don’t avoid thinking because you’re not a philosopher. You don’t tell your kid not to paint because they’re not Picasso. And it’s hard to know if what you’re creating is creative until the end.
Being “creative” is not a badge you’re even granted, it’s not some universal credential someone gives out. So if I’m the one who originally called myself “not creative,” then I’m the only one who can reverse the curse.
7. Last: Don’t read listicles.
The only thing less creative than reading listicles is writing them.
Want more on the creative transition?
I was recently on the Imperfect Creatives podcast by Michael Carruthers, and it turned out to be one of the best conversations I’ve had about this whole identity shift. At least read the written summary, which stands alone and is worth your time.
A few highlights:
Why the best work is work you’d pay to do
The unsexy reality of how creative work actually gets funded
Why I’m not latching onto my shiny, new identity of “writer”
Available on: YouTube, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Did you know I was first chair? Yeah, I keep telling you guys I’m kinda a big deal…
Biggest theme I felt in here was nonjudgemental action - spend less time thinking, more time doing, and see what ideas come along the way.
Great piece on breaking out of that practical vs creative binary. The create first study later mindset is something I wish I'd internalized earlier, bc I spent way too many years convincing myself I needed to learn everything befre making anything.