I finished reading this book a couple months ago and I recommend reading it.
I was groomed as an engineer. In the machine of organized education, I was taught to reduce problems within feeble reach of some equations I had crammed in my head. Then, I was taught to use said equations to make something that worked to solve more "tangible" problems [still from a book, of course]. What happened was that the carefree, creative animal in my brain that likes to draw, imagine things, ask the "why not" questions, and color outside the lines was transformed into a dim-witted dribbling idiot. Unable to articulate what I wanted rather than what was "needed," I entered into the workforce only to realize that it's a great place to have my creative animal shot and killed.
I like creativity. Some argue that it's still in all of us, hidden in fear of being noticed and therefore never fed [the creative animal analogy stops now].
It's this very desire to want to be creative again that drew me to this book. Hugh MacLeod wrote a book borne of experience living somewhat of a creative life, written for people who've forgotten creativity.
Really, it's a simple book of forty, unapologetic chapters taken from MacLeod's life. Simple adages. Sound advice. Encouragement. Warnings. They can all be found in this book, and what's refreshing is that MacLeod doesn't pretend it's anything more than lessons he'd scraped together from being a YMCA-resident to a hit author and creative consultant. His experience helps to lend the book some credibility. Throughout the book there are random business cards with drawings. That's his thing. That's how he got started: drawing on the back of business cards. I can see why he would include them in the book, and though some of them are witty, I wasn't a huge fan.
It's a short, easy read. It's even inspirational, if not fun.
An excerpt:
You don't know if your idea is any good the moment it's created. Neither does anyone else. The most you can hope for is a strong gut feeling that it is. And trusting your feelings is not as easy as the optimists say it is. There's a reason why feelings scare us - because what they tell us and what the rest of the world tells us are often two different things.
And asking close friend never works quite as well as you hope, either. It's not that they deliberately want to be unhelpful. It's just that they don't know your world one millionth as well as you know your world, no matter how hard they try, no matter how hard you try to explain.
