Telling someone how to be creative is as challenging and presumptuous a task as telling them how to be good at math, or how to have good hand-eye coordination.

To a large extent, you are born with either a lot or a little. Any self-conscious attempts to acquire it can often result in the opposite effect.

Take hope, ye marginally creative.

Because, like math secrets, there are certain, secret shortcuts to maximizing creativity. Much ink has been spilled on how to capture and bottle creativity. I’ve read these books, and have compiled the best suggestions, along with my own take on the topic.

In this recipe, you’ll fill your lunchbox with bright, shiny strategies and shortcuts for creative copy.

Isn’t it enough to simply be authentic? What does creativity give us that not being creative would never achieve?

In all honesty, you do not need to be creative in order to have effective marketing communications.  Just as you do not need to be creative to be a successful chef.

But this recipe is for people and companies who aren’t content to simply do the minimum. For whom boredom is the enemy. People and companies who want to be engaging, remarkable, and inspiring.  The purple cows of the world, to borrow from Seth Godin.

Prep Time

60 minutes

Ingredients

• OMG, I Can’t Believe It’s an Outline!
• Research Roast
• Delicious Discovery Questionnaires
• All-Purpose Benefits
• Problem Tarts Brulee

Instructions

1. The first step to being creative is to be very, very Uncreative. Get all the boring stuff out of the way first. This means: Outlines. Research. Customer Questionnaires. Benefits. Problems. Outlines. Did I say Outlines?
2. Allow yourself to write what the masters call a Crappy First Draft. It can be the most uncreative thing you’ve ever written. When you read it over in a day or two, you may find it’s not as boring as you thought.
3. Take your target audience to the movies. This takes time, and if you’re just starting out, you should focus on getting to know your target market before you try to be creative. If your target market doesn’t appreciate your particular brand of creativity, then you’ll have to find a way to change either your target audience or your copy.
4. Take a nap. Seriously. First, think about what you want to say and whom you want to say it to. With those thoughts in mind, allow yourself to doze off. Set an alarm for 30 minutes later. As soon as the alarm rings, start writing. You’ll be surprised how much you can accomplish in that trancelike state before your inner critic kicks in.
5. Write and write without thinking. Your goal is simply to get those raw ideas on paper. Do not stop moving your hand. And do not, under any circumstances whatsoever, read back over what you have written.
6. Wait as long as possible. Preferably 2-3 days, but a minimum of 24 hours. Why wait? Because your inner critic cannot occupy the same space as your inner creative person, and you must give your creative person permission to create freely, without any fear of punishment or of being wrong looming over her head. You’re likely a better writer than you think. Tell the critic he’ll have his day. Just not today.
7. Flip everything upside down. Write the opposite. Why shouldn’t a professional wrestler appear in a shampoo commercial for women, shaking his long, lustrous hair? Approach everything with a contrarian perspective. Say the opposite of what you mean.
8. Every so-called “blocked” writer should read “The War of Art,” by Steven Pressfield, and “Becoming a Writer,” by Dorothea Brande, and report back. These books, when applied together, are guaranteed to do away with writers block for good.