creativity – Page 4 – Andy writes!

Real creative effort: a copywriter’s perspective

Yeah, most of what I post about here pertains to the so-called “creative” writing arts — the short story, novel, novella, poem, etc. But I cut my teeth in journalism, then public relations and marketing, and some of the best lessons I’ve learned about writing and creativity have come from those fields and from great copywriters like Andrew Boulton, the author of Copywriting Is…, which is a great resource for anyone who writes promotional or ad copy. Boulton is also a frequent poster on LinkedIn (worth a follow), where he recently posted this gem about the source of “real creative effort.”

How are you directing your creative effort?

‘You can do something extraordinary’

‘… if you have the opportunity to work on your gifts, it seems like a crime not to.’

I’ve played the guitar, on and off, since age 14, when I first picked up a well-word acoustic with a bowed neck for $10 because I wanted to learn how to play the opening to Led Zeppelin’s classic, “Stairway to Heaven.” (This was in the mid-1970s, long before the ditty became labeled as the forbidden riff supposedly banned from guitar stores the world over.)