How to be so-so creative

Hugh ‘Cartoons drawn on the back of business cards’ Macleod’s Gaping Void (Usual disclaimer about language etc etc) is another of my regular internet reads. I found this post, ‘How to be so-so creative‘ to be one I particularly related to:

“I drew cartoons there quite obsessively for about a decade; but I’ve slowed down a lot in the last year or two. In retrospect, it’s not difficult to see why I worked so hard at it. A wee voice told me this was my ticket out of the dreary and nebulous world of Madison Avenue. An obsession born out of desperation etc.

Sometimes I miss it.”

Absolutely. Creativity is very difficult to sustain. I too find that as time goes on it becomes more difficult to draw cartoons, though I think the reasons are rather different in my case – I only had about 43 or 44 ideas to begin with and I’ve now drawn 42 of them.

But, somehow, when push comes to shove ‘the deadline was an hour ago’, the ideas do come. But it does seem to be getting harder, which is why when someone sends me a list of ideas or cartoon subjects I really am rather pleased. Not that I promise I’ll draw all of them of course.

But then sometimes the ideas just come. Today I’ve drawn three good cartoons and I have one more top notch idea waiting to be done. I’m pleased.