Accidental Creative

Get the NEW Audiobook From The Accidental Creative!

Nearly two hours of audio essays on the art of creative productivity from The Accidental Creative Co!

In “30 Days To Creative Rhythm” you will learn how to develop creative HABITS that will help you stay creatively fresh, viable and prolific for years to come. The course is broken into the five components of “creative rhythm:

1. Time
- How do you structure your time for maximum creativity?
- How do you set priorities for your creative life?
- How do you find time to create when your life is already “crammed full”?

2. Energy
- How do you monitor your energy level for maximum creativity?
- What elements can you structure into your life to improve your energy level?

3. Stimulus
- How much stimulus should you take in?
- What kinds of stimulus should you take in?

4. Focus
- What’s REALLY important to you?
- How do you structure your life around your key passions?

5. Relationships
- Who are you spending your time with and how much of it?
- How do you build strategic relationships to increase your creative productivity?
While many creativity books and courses focus on insight, “30 Days To Creative Rhythm” provides practical, rubber-meets-the-road tips and proven suggestions about how to structure your life for more creativity.

Our price: $14.95 | ADD TO SHOPPING CART

The Trap of Metaphor

Please permit me to rant uncontrollably for a minute…call it a philosophical seizure…

There are about twenty thousand layers of artistic interpretation. The beauty of art is that the user can continue uncovering meaning in layer after layer, some of which was unintended by the artist because it’s the result of the user’s unique experience interacting with the art.

When we try to control the user-experience of our art, we risk sucking the soul from it. We can use metaphor to push the user in a desired direction, but the dialogue must leave room for the unique experience of the user. No matter how specific we are, we can never force the user to have our exact experience. It’s more about the baseline common truth we are communicating within the work. This is the foundation upon which all other meaning is built. If the metaphor is true to this foundational truth, then we can be assured that we’re in the ballpark with the user. (Speaking of metaphor.) The metaphor we use must be consistent within this fundamental truth, but can branch off and explore new and even inconsistent meanings outside of this foundation. This is what gives the art its breathing room.

When I sense that artists are taking the cheap route - forcing my POV - I get agitated and even offended. Art points us to meaning. It is a commentary on the state of Reality. It’s not a sermon or an encyclopedia entry.

Push the user to explore. Give them room. Stay true to your foundational elements.

Fun thought of the day…

If you want to be on the cutting edge, you must be willing to bleed.

Until you are, you are simply playing at what you do. If you want to do something truly great, however, you must be willing to put yourself out in the open - exposed and unprotected - and behave as if you have nothing to lose.

Want To Support The Accidental Creative?!?

I am amazed at how quickly the Accidental Creative community has exploded into existence. Really it’s only been a matter of a few months, and there are already thousands of creatives actively participating and engaging with the site. Our per-episode listenership is 10,000+ for the free podcast and our site is attracting thousands of visitors each day.

Thanks. Thanks for your attention, thanks for your support and thanks for your encouragement. Really.

Several people have e-mailed me asking how they can get involved with helping grow the community and make it better and uber-cool. I’ve put together a list of a few ways you can help if you’d like. I’m also preparing to launch a “street-team” which will be organizing and rallying around various buzzworthy marketing campaigns. If you’re interested in being a part of our street-team, watch for the announcement or drop me an e-mail.

In the meantime, here are a few ways you can help:

SUPPORT THE AC!

Ambition Gets The Best…

I have an ugly habit.

This habit involves my inability to leave things alone. You see, I’m an experimenter. I always have been. I’ve always enjoyed playing with things…seeing what makes them tick…getting them JUST right.

I also like to do things. I like to have projects going. I like to create. Nothing wrong with that.

HOWEVER…these things combined have a tendency to produce too many irons in the proverbial fire. I establish ideas and goals in my head that I want to pursue creatively and then I start feeling PRESSURE (?!?) to achieve them. To be clear - these are things that didn’t even exist a few days before, but now that they’ve moved into concrete reality, I feel compulsion to kick them through the uprights.

The pressure to accomplish is self-imposed, of course, but it is still real. Somewhere in the back of my head I believe that I am running out of time and I need to get as much done as possible as quickly as possible. I feel death’s breath on the back of my neck. (Huh?!?)

The irony of the situation is that the more pressure I feel to produce, the less capable I am of making something great. I don’t understand it, but it’s real. The other irony is that this inability to produce great stuff can and will heap even MORE pressure onto the already quivering pile of expectations.

This is common with many artists I meet. Why do we do this to ourselves? Is it a compulsion to let others see what’s inside us? Is it a need to feel useful?

As I was doing some writing yesterday, I accidentally kicked out a phrase that is now affixed to the front of my notebook. It says:

“Purity, Not Utility”

During this season I am focusing on making things that are pure and great and trusting that I will find utility for them. The act is the important thing right now. The purity of my desire to create. This is what is beautiful.

Accidents

“Accidents often produce the best solutions…only you can recognize the difference between an accident and your original intent.”
Jennifer Morla, Principal, Morla Design

Good Enough

“Good enough is good enough if your standards are high enough.”
Steve Frykholm, Design Director for Herman Miller

Swimming In Stimulus

Many of us are SO addicted to media, books, TV, crackberries and the like that we have completely trashed our bandwidth for assigning relevance to individual bits of information. It’s all one giant cultural RSS feed, and our “mental newsreader” is simply taking in information without assimilating or making connections.
While it’s true that our brains can take in significantly more information that we can process consciously, this is not true of information assimilation. In fact, our brain will occasionally shut down if it feels threatened by the amount of stimulus we are receiving. It will only recognize things for which we have a stored pattern, and we can once again end up in a rut. It is important that we take in the right amount of stimulus, but not so much that our brains shift into survival mode.
How much stimulus is too much? It’s different for everyone. Here are a few questions that can help along the way:

1. Do you feel overwhelmed? (too much stimulus)
2. Do you feel bored creatively? (too little stimulus)
3. Are you reverting to the same patterns over and over? (could be either)
4. Does the idea of new information make you queazy? (too much stimulus)
5. Are you frequently agitated or irritable? (too much stimulus)
6. Do you constantly have some kind of media playing in the background? (too much stimulus)
7. Do empty spaces in conversation and silence make you uneasy? (too much stimulus)
8. Do you know who Nick Lache is currently dating? (perhaps too much stimulus)

There are a number of ways to “thin” our stimulus, but sometimes we simply need to go on a stimulus fast to wipe the slate clean and cleanse our “media palette.” I would recommend doing this at least a few times a year. Try eliminating all non-work-essential media, (no TV, iPod, e-mail, etc.), for a season and see if it doesn’t improve your awareness, intuition and sense of appreciation for the world.

More Than Eyes

How much do you care about your art?

I’m not talking about the accolades it gets. I’m not talking about the promotions it earns you or the whispers of genius lobbed in your direction.

I mean REALLY - how much do you care about your art?

Our love - our pure intention - is the genesis of brilliance. In a “create on demand” culture, it is critical that we stay attuned to the purity of our love for what we do. It is critical that we continue to find new ways to discover deeper layers of beauty in our work. As we uncover them, we uncover ourselves and build a reservoir of inspiration.

Find ways to surprise yourself. Improv is the closest thing to real life - as we are improvising we are not only finding the “next thing” we are simultaneously finding ourselves. Be spontaneous. Not careless, but spontaneous. Be intentionally unintentional. Do something that violates “proper” art.

Re-connect with your ability to SEE. See with more than your physical eyes. Act on what you see.

Even if no one else will see it.

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