It’s like those novels that roll along in a particular fashion that is easy to read, contains all the right references to history (usually as studied to A level) contain a shocking twist and which turn out, nine times in ten, to be written by someone with an MA in creative writing. They’re not bad,  quite the opposite in fact; they are just all targeted towards a very specific audience.

Advertising can also fall into this groove. Many of us want to write a VW ad or a Honda ad and, as a result, a tone can be detected when it really oughtn’t to be.

I have written headlines I don’t like. They don’t appeal to me in the slightest. And every time I write such a line, I feel as though I’ve done something well. Something appropriate. Because I’m not every type of consumer and some products aren’t aimed at me. And even when they are, they aren’t just aimed at me.

Creatives need to look beyond “like”. That often means understanding the kind of person we wouldn’t, under normal circumstances, be seen dead associating with.

Recently I overheard two young women talking on a train. They were well educated, studying to work in Law from the sounds of it, and clearly financially quite privileged.

They were talking about women who had a tattoo on their back, the sort just above their backsides and which can often be seen peeking out from under a short cut T shirt.

You might know what I’m going to call these tattoos, I hadn’t heard of them referred to in this way before but you might.

They called them “tramp stamps”.

It was a magnificent, condescending put-down. Not just of the women who had themselves tattooed in that way but of a whole class of people. By drawing attention to them so quickly, I was given a clear picture of the clothes, the music, the backgrounds of these women.

I don’t mix with anybody who could be snubbed in that way but I do know I’d be able to write ads for them. And enjoy doing so. Because I know they have their likes and dislikes, their cultural reference points and motivating triggers the same as the two women whose words so comprehensively dismissed them.

There is more to writing ads than coming up with a clever line to appeal to broadsheet readers and University students. When we write ads for well educated clients and ignore the wonderfully diverse audience out there, creatives can be just as dismissive.

©2012 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.

Everything in life can be boiled down to a scene within a movie. Worse still, everything can be gently steered towards a scene within a movie.

This simple, but invasive truth is colouring every move I make.

When a friend tells me about teaching English as a foreign language I immediately think of the scene in Good Morning Vietnam where – well, if you don’t know it then chances are you should probably leave this blog for now.

Similarly when I’m mid-flow in an argument I might say something straight from a film. I do. I can’t help it. If the time is right then it just has to play out that way because it felt so good when I saw it played out by Pacino or, ummm… Cage.

It doesn’t stop there.

I’ve even steered an argument towards being able to deliver a line. I haven’t yet managed the “sell crazy someplace else” line but I know exactly how I could push someone towards it.

Clearly, there’s a problem.

The thing is, life and relationships are one thing. It’s easy to start arguments just to be able to deliver a killer line. Life and relationships aren’t serious enough to take steps to prevent myself from doing it.

But creativity, dear god creativity, is.

Imagine my horror, yes, the horror, the horror, as I stare at a piece of copy I’d spent five WHOLE minutes on writing only to realise that somebody else had written it before me.

It’s embarrassing is what it is.

It’s also an area to be keenly aware of throughout the creative process. Sometimes an idea can feel so good, so reassuringly familiar, that it must have been done before. And often it has.

Death is not the end of course and our culture is filled with talented people who make use of this creative saturation and make it their own. Look at Spaced – filled with snippets of other works it remains decidedly its own creature throughout. Self-awareness, keenly expressed, is its hallmark and its creative territory.

Then there is the love-him-or-hate-him Tarantino whose oeuvre is built upon references to popular (and not so popular) culture. Again though, it’s his own spin on these things. His own experience which is brought to bear upon the subject matter that makes the difference.

And that, in the end, is key. It is experience which guides our hand in all these matters. Personal experience. And that’s something that turns a mediocre argument into a divorce settlement.

©2012 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.

Of course opinion is also vital to creativity. All that toil and all that polish can get you lost in a dark place, namely up your own arse and that’s somewhere nobody should be lost.

Experience lessens the importance of the opinions of others. Over time a writer or artist learns the impact of their work and how it is interpreted by others. That wonderful, frightening word, “interpret” is certainly one to watch out for as readers bring their own approach to bear upon carefully crafted work. Yet, as I say, experience tempers this element and folds it into the substance of the work. Ambiguity is employed as a tool rather than left dangling, ready to unravel meaning, and technique becomes adept at preempting any dissent in the ranks.

Years ago, way before I’d learned any formal writing technique, a friend read over a poem of mine and said he didn’t much care for it. My work, he offered, was becoming too practised, too glib. I agonised over the comment (and still do) undecided whether it was a good thing. In part he meant the technique I was learning to apply, the structures I was reaching for that would enable me to direct ideas rather than just have them. But he also meant that he missed the roughness and energy a wider understanding of technique often smooths out.

I remember being captivated by The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks. It was a short novel filled with ideas and surprises. Little of his later work has ever matched that power; growing less with each novel. Many writers lose that edge as their technical ability to structure, to wordplay, increases. Ultimately, it is about how to balance the two and where and when to bring in opinion. After all, it is easy to spot a writer who has studied at UEA.

©2012 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.

Between my finger and my thumb

The squat pen rests: snug as a gun.

Under my window, a clean rasping sound

When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:

My father, digging. I look down

The poem is a lovely one. It addresses the relationship between Heaney and his ancestors and the way in which Heaney has to find his own craft, knowing, as he does, that he has “no spade to follow men like them”.

Heaney’s skill is in words and he uses this poem to explore that skill and show respect for men like his father who bring food from the earth.

In 2010, I explained to a client, I want to do two things. Just two things.

I want to improve my writing and I want to grow potatoes.

That made me think of the poem which, in turn, made me think about finding your own path in life; digging your potato drills.

That way you end up producing the kind of work you’d want to eat.

©2012 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.

It was great. Now if only it would last for just a season. Big impact drama and less of the soap opera. That, I’d stick with.

That’s not going to happen of course so, reading the reactions in the aftermath and wondering about Dimitri, GBO man and why the hell Mark didn’t just put the bracelet on his other wrist, I began thinking how easy it would be to write a show like this by throwing a thousand “what-ifs” into the air and sitting back whilst the creative network out there began gathering and piecing them together again. There would be nothing quite as powerful as listening to the way a million creative minds attempt to explain the inexplicable. Given half a chance we can make a muffin out of nothing and then claim the Government put it there.

It’s also a great way of gauging the bits of a story that grabs the imagination. Like focus testing but less contrived and more in line with the way everyone is banging on about social marketing. The Mosaic website angle in Flash Forward is a superb addition. A little clumsily inserted into the narrative perhaps but it still manages to work.

It all helps us feel a part of the story. It moves us on from passive viewers to active (superficially at least) participants. It gives us a degree of ownership of the story and a stake in the show’s future. Apple did something similar years back when they launched the iPod and encouraged consumers to create their own iPod ads. It appeals to the creative in all of us, often with great results.

For the lazy adman this option can be a dangerous thing but for those genuinely interested in creating something wonderful it can be a rewarding tactic. There’s nothing as potentially powerful as the collective creative and shows such as Flash Forward demonstrate how this could be used and how other forms of media such as video games, comics and even novels, could tap into an open desire to just create.

©2012 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.

The more I think about The Museum of Whatnot the more I see myself and the process that brought it to my attention. This isn’t going to be a post about the usefulness of Twitter – I’ll leave that to other people or another day. It’s more about the way in which I use Twitter as a stream in which to stand. I’m happy not to get too caught up in it, not to collect each and every post from people like Jonathan and I wonder if that’s common. Because if it is then are other people, like me, eschewing the collecting of other things? Do people still collect stuff to litter their homes with? Or is this idea being replaced by purchase and disposal as we invest our finances in consumer electronics and transitory entertainments?Is de-cluttering just another way of urging us to forget the past and buy into the future?

To give you an example or two, I’ve just signed up to Spotify. Where will this leave my desire to collect music? I used to enjoy owning the LP, then the CD, then I was content to have a hard drive full and move my CDs to the attic. If I were to get a Kindle then would my room busting collection of books go a similar way (and then how would I respond to late night discussions in which I currently often dart into another room and come back with an old paperback)?

Even as I type I’m aware that pressing the publish button consigns these thoughts to an archive, soon to be trawled by a diminishing number of people. But then, maybe that’s where the pleasure truly lies – of being one of just a handful of people who discover that dusty museum and then share the rarest of loves.

©2012 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.