When was the last time you removed your creative straightjacket?
Briefs are good. Nice and tight, to keep all the bits from flapping about.
As a commercial ‘artist’, constraint is our friend. Because if anything goes, nothing sticks.
Like a river, we need banks to stop us flooding all over the place.
No brief = chaos. And as a Copywriter, no brief = no talk = no work.
But that’s also a problem.
Not for solving the particular creative challenge we’re grappling with, but for our wider creative growth.
Doing the same thing, sticking to the same rigid set of rules, over and over, will eventually end in creative constipation.
Just because you’re a Copywriter, who says you can’t draw?
Or sculpt, or juggle, or make origami frogs…
It’s really healthy to unshackle yourself from conformity now and again. A bit of mental anarchy loosens your nuts and bolts. Go floppy, go loopy, paint your face with a rainbow. Play the bongos, knit a kitten cosy, slap the nonsense that’s rattling around in the scarier recesses of your mind on a great big canvas.
Or do what I do. Team up with a fellow creative who eats mayhem flakes for breakfast.
We’re all going on a summer holiday
For the last three weeks, I’ve had the exhausting pleasure of looking after/being terrorised by my 6-year old granddaughter. Besides answering the eternal question, “How long ’til you finish your work?” we’ve been drawing together – lots.
And when you splice two divergent brains together, the results are, well, you be the judge:
It’s a great way of freeing yourself from the creative inhibitions you didn’t know you’d built up. As soon as you think you know where the picture’s going, your creative co-pilot changes course, with no warning.
You try to put the flaps down, then she opens up the throttle. Banzai!
The benefits are threefold:
1) It strengthens the bond between two humans, who by rights were born to play.
2) It stops you drowning in a sea of creative sameness.
3) It’s fun, and we all need as much of that as we can get.
So, my recommendation, next time you feel the squeeze of a creative rut – do something creative, but different, and do it just because. And if the timing’s right, do it with others.
And if you’ve got a couple more spare minutes, here’s some more extra extracurricular creative frippery:
Creativity doesn’t stop when there’s no brief
Doodlers unite!
Love and patience.
Jonathan x
Jonathan Wilcock (that’s me) is a Senior Freelance Copywriter.
You can drop me a line here, or email jonathan@sowhatif.co.uk