Werker - Make it mighty ugly: exercises and advice for getting creative even when it aint pretty

Copyright 2014 by Kim Piper Werker
Illustrations copyright 2014 by Kate Bingaman-Burt

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form, or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published by Sasquatch Books

Trade paperback editor: Gary Luke
Trade paperback project editor: Michelle Hope Anderson
Art director: Anna Goldstein
Illustrations: Kate Bingaman-Burt
Design: Joyce Hwang
Copy editor: Rebecca Brinson

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

eBook ISBN: 978-1-57061-915-1
Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-1-57061-914-4

Sasquatch Books
1904 Third Avenue, Suite 710
Seattle, WA 98101
(206) 467-4300
www.sasquatchbooks.com

v3.1

You could fill a very big boat with books like this one, about creativity and overcoming creative challenges. If that boat were to start taking on water, you might be able to find among those books enough titles worthy of sharing space on your lifeboat and still have enough room to save some of your travel companions from a watery death. Those books are smart and wonderful. The rest, though. Well. Its possible part of the reason Im writing this book at all is because the rest of those books seem to share a couple of troubling qualities that defeat the purpose of encouraging creativity and new habits. Those useless qualities are cheerleading and hand-waving . Nothing makes me want books to drown more than cheerleading and hand-waving.

When youre running a race and you get to the point where you feel like dying would be a relief, people shouting, You can do it! You rock! can be a very effective motivator. But when youre reading a book, theres just got to be more. Why? Why do I rock? How do you know I can do it? When the author then rolls in the egomaniacal hand-waving of, Just do what I did and youll be as blissfully happy all the time and filthy rich, like I am! or the even less helpful, Just do the work! its time to just gently set the book back on the shelf and walk away.

Dont get me wrong. I appreciate enthusiastic encouragement, I really do. What I dont believe, though, is that a book thats 90 percent cheerleading and 10 percent vague advice is actually useful. And I dont want to live my life like other people, anyway; I want to live my life like me. I bet you want to live your life like you, too.

So heres how things are going to go with this book.

Were going to assume I believe you can do itwhatever it isand were going to leave it at that. If you start envisioning me waving pom-poms as you read, send me an e-mail and tell me Ive done it wrong.

Theres work you need to do (I do the same work, so dont think Im just pointing at you from afar here). The work does not consist of, Follow these steps that I took so you can achieve tremendous success and make several dozen masterpieces every week! Listen to these vague platitudes about how you should develop a routine like mine and eat a special kind of diet like mine and get a pet like mine! No. Im going to tell you about my experience, not because I think theres anything in the details that can or should be copied or emulated, but because I want you to know that youre not alone in wanting some help; that youre not alone in struggling, in feeling confused or lost, in being blocked, in feeling youre not creative (but secretly wishing you were).

This knowing youre not alone part? Dont underestimate the power of that. ( SPOILER ALERT: If you get nothing from this book other than the knowledge that youre not alone in your creative struggles, Im going to call it a win, because theres so much you can do with that knowledge. I dont need to be a part of it; do with it what you will, and I hope what you do makes you happy and helps you work through the struggles to the good stuff.)

Im going to tell you about my own experience because its the story I have to tell. I created Mighty Ugly in an effort to help myself and other people both fight and embrace creative demons; I have demons, you have demons, we all have them. Ive spent quite a lot of time getting to know mine, and that I win more battles against them than I lose these days is possibly my crowning achievement. But more than that, my acceptance that my demons will never, ever fully diethats the thing that gets me out of bed in the morning. That there is no end in the grand creative adventure; its an adventure we get to enjoy forever and ever.

So thats it. Dont trust me because Im a celebrity (Im not). Dont trust me because Ive gotten rich (I havent; Im probably watching Buffy and knitting in my pajamas and eating nachos while you read this). Dont trust me because I have credentials and awards that appease your concern that Im full of crap (I dont; Google wont unearth much of anything beyond lots of blogging and a few books Ive written and some photos of my dog and crafts). Trust me because Im being honest with you about the ups and downs, and because I think we should have coffee someday and talk about it all. Or, you know what? Be a skeptic. Dont trust me at all unless you feel like it.

EMBRACING THE DARK SIDE

This book is not about killing your creative demons. Creative demonsthe dark side of creativityare important. Like the bacteria in your gut that help you digest your food, your demons keep your creative engines purring. Without them, youd be stuck making stuff from a place of benign blandnesseverything would be rainbows and unicorns and paint-by-number and sunflowers after a summer rain. Your demons, mean and challenging as they may be, are what make your experiences unique and your creations meaningful.

We will fight our demons, yes, but well do it knowing that they never die beyond a state of mostly dead . Thats OK. Part of getting past the demons to the creativity and the making of stuff is accepting that the demons exist and learning to cope with them. People who have no demons are robots. Cool as robots are, people are cooler.

Right. Since I already said Im not a fan of you-can-do-itism, these pages contain, in equal(ish) measure, tales of my own battles in hopes you might relate to them in ways that will help you with your own; exercises that are designed more to give you something concrete to try than to be used as a cure-all; wise words and anecdotes from people who are not me, because my stories can get old real fast and theirs are different and wonderful; and tips and notes about other places to seek out information and inspiration for your continuing adventures. As I said, this book is but one amongst dozens, if not hundreds, on this topic, many of which are filled with ace ideas that transcend vague cheering (theres a bibliography at the end of the book for you to mine when youre so inclined). And the internet! Filled with brilliance.