Few years ago, out of nowhere, I got a job as a copywriter in an advertising agency. I didn’t ask for it: an old boss recommended me for the position and after an interview I got the job.
At the time I was writing a bit for a technology magazine but I had zero experience of writing for advertising. I panicked. Creative writing scared the hell out of me. I was afraid of not being able to come up with the right ideas and with the right words. So I did what a sane person would do: I bought a quite expensive print of Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies.
Oblique Strategies is a deck of cards designed by Eno and Peter Schmid for escaping creative blocks. You may think that this is a story about Oblique Strategies miraculous power but it’s not, quite the opposite. I’m not saying they Eno’s cards don’t work but the deck quickly became the most expensive paperweight I own and it’s still collecting dust on a shelf.
I bought Oblique Strategies because I was scared. But also because I had a messed up idea of creativity. I thought that creativity was magic. And I hoped that the cards that Eno and Schmid created could be my wand. That by simply waving them I would summon the power of creativity and solve my problems. Of course, they couldn’t and they didn’t.
I usually blame the romantics. The idea that many of us still carry about creativity — that something can be truly unique and that creating something requires something special — comes straight from them. It’s the same idea I had when I started working in advertising. It took me a while to learn (thankfully and luckily, I stumbled in the right teachers) that while creativity is still not fully understood, it’s possible to follow a process that stimulates and enables it.
Basically, it’s how you use and move the magic wand, not the fact that you have a wand.
Leave a Reply