Playin' the Blues For Creative Clues

For around nine years now I've been learning, little by little, how to play the guitar. I've experimented with various different flavors of playing style, but the one that currently has a firm grasp on all ten of my musical digits is blues. After about ten minutes of playing the blues I enter into, what I can only describe as, musical reverie. I stop caring about whether I'm playing notes that sound good or even make any sense. I close my eyes, let my mind turn off, and let the ten little creative brains inside my fingers turn on. Suddenly, I find myself living in the moment and I'm not following the rules that, ten minutes ago, kept me from being creative. What's great about all of this is that playing the blues also helps me get into the creative mindset for other ventures, such as advertising as well. It allows me to dictate the song I hear in my head into audible sounds some would consider music, which is a simple metaphor for how we think up things in advertising. We feel the ideas in our heads, we just need to dictate them into things that some people would call effective advertising.

What I'm really trying to say is that, for me, sometimes I need a guitar or a B.B. King album to get creative, but everyone should have a creative outlet to plug into. Brian Clark has a great article on this same topic http://www.copyblogger.com/mental-blocks-creative-thinking/ explaining how many times we create our own mental blocks to creative thinking, but I'm taking it one step further. I strongly encourage you to find your creative outlet. From painting to fishing, poetry to knitting, virtually anything can become your new power cord to the creative outlet. So sit back, relax, and find something you love to do. You just might find it easier to channel your creativity into something that resembles effective advertising.