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    21 Insights for 21st Century Creatives
    21 Insights for 21st Century Creatives
    21 Insights for 21st Century Creatives
    Ebook89 pages59 minutes

    21 Insights for 21st Century Creatives

    By Mark McGuinness

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Insights to help you thrive as a creator amid the demands, distractions, and opportunities of the 21st century

    Mark McGuinness has spent 21 years coaching creative professionals to achieve their artistic and career ambitions.

    In this book he shares 21 of the most powerful insights that have emerged from coaching conversations with hundreds of creatives - as well as from his own practice as an award-winning poet.

    Whether you are a fine artist, a performer or entertainer, a commercial creative, or a creative entrepreneur, many of your biggest challenges are the ones that are familiar to all creative professionals:

    * Finding—and staying true to—your deepest sources of inspiration
    * Carving out time to produce great work amid the demands and distractions of 21st century life
    * Balancing creativity, money, and your professional ambitions
    * Giving yourself a break from the relentless perfectionism of your Inner Critic
    * Creating your own security in an uncertain world
    * Believing in your vision when people around you just don't get it
    * Deciding whether to approach publishers, record companies or other middlemen, or to "go direct" to your audience
    * Attracting an audience from scratch, or breaking into a tightly networked industry as an outsider
    * Dealing with rejection, criticism, and plain unvarnished failure
    * Dealing with fear and anxiety—about your work, about your audience, about the critics, about failure, and even about success

    Perhaps the biggest challenge faced by a 21st century creator is the one it's easiest to overlook when you're preoccupied with the demands of the day: 

    How can you chart your course and make meaningful progress when you set out on an original path, where there is no conventional career ladder, no job security, and the usual rules don't apply?

    This book tackles these challenges head on, and it provides answers you won't find in books of traditional career advice:

    1. Everything is powered by love
    2. Reach for the stars
    3. Something old, something new
    4. Your creativity is your security
    5. Forget the career ladder—start creating assets
    6. Personal development is professional development (and vice versa)
    7. Your struggle is a clue to your superpower
    8. There are four types of work (and one matters more than the others)
    9. Desire beats discipline
    10. Your motivations are always mixed
    11. Play the game you want to play
    12. Pick two out of money, fame and artistic reputation
    13. Find your medium, choose your media
    14. Stay small, go global
    15. Learn from the best in the world
    16. Don't let the crappy part put you off
    17. Be thankful for your Inner Critic
    18. Hustling is part of your job
    19. Stop trying to earn money—start creating value
    20. You can have all the excuses you want
    21. Courage may be the missing ingredient

    Mark has deliberately kept this book short, so that you can burn through it in one sitting for a burst of inspiration. Or keep it handy on your phone and consult it in the quiet moments of your day, or on those days when you need to dig deep for motivation.
     

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLateral Action Books
    Release dateAug 24, 2018
    ISBN9781916471405
    21 Insights for 21st Century Creatives

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      Book preview

      21 Insights for 21st Century Creatives - Mark McGuinness

      21 Insights for 21st Century Creatives

      21 Insights for 21st Century Creatives

      Mark McGuinness

      21stCenturyCreative.fm

      Published by Lateral Action Books 2018

      Copyright © Mark McGuinness 2017-2018

      LateralAction.com

      Cover design copyright © Irene Hoffman 2018

      IreneHoffman.com

      ISBN 978-0-9575664-9-1

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

      Mark McGuinness is an award-winning poet, a coach for creative professionals, and the host of The 21st Century Creative podcast. He is the author of four books of career guidance for creative professionals, and also contributed to the 99U bestsellers Manage Your Day-to-Day and Maximize Your Potential.

      Mark McGuinness is a rare cat – part poet, part coach for creative professionals, part old-time, overeducated Brit who thinks deeply about stuff you and I have never heard of … a man who has lived the life and who has watched and worked intimately with hundreds of others who’ve done the same.

      Steven Pressfield, bestselling author of The War of Art

      Of all the writers I know, I have learned the most about how to be a productive creative person from Mark. His tips are always realistic, accessible, and sticky.

      Jocelyn K. Glei, Host of the Hurry Slowly podcast and Founding Editor, 99U

      Contents

      Introduction: 21 insights from 21 years of coaching creatives

      1. Everything is powered by love

      2. Reach for the stars

      3. Something old, something new

      4. Your creativity is your security

      5. Forget the career ladder—start creating assets

      6. Personal development is professional development (and vice versa)

      7. Your struggle is a clue to your superpower

      8. There are four types of work (and one matters more than the others)

      9. Desire beats discipline

      10. Your motivations are always mixed

      11. Play the game you want to play

      12. Pick two out of money, fame, and artistic reputation

      13. Find your medium, choose your media

      14. Stay small, go global

      15. Don’t let the crappy part put you off

      16. Learn from the best in the world

      17. Be thankful for your Inner Critic

      18. Hustling is part of your job

      19. Stop trying to earn money—start creating value

      20. You can have all the excuses you want

      21. Courage may be the missing ingredient

      The 21st Century Creative podcast

      A free course for you

      More books by Mark McGuinness

      Coaching with Mark

      About Mark

      Thank you

      Introduction: 21 insights from 21 years of coaching creatives

      This is a book of insights to help you thrive as a creative professional amid the demands, distractions, and opportunities of the 21 st century.

      By creative professional I mean that you either earn a living from your creative work, or that you do it to a professional standard, even if you work in a relatively non-commercial art form.

      The insights cover a range of challenges and topics, including the psychology of creativity and success, the struggles of obscurity, the temptations of fame, the pros and cons of technology, the challenge of making a living, and how to get your most important work done.

      The thread running through the book is the fundamental challenge faced by all creatives at this point in history:

      How can you chart your course and make meaningful progress when you set out on an original path, where there is no conventional career ladder, no job security, and the usual rules don’t apply?

      In tackling this challenge, I have come up with answers you won’t find in books of traditional career advice. And I didn’t pluck them out of thin air—they emerged from two decades of conversations with hundreds of creative professionals like you, who were wrestling with these issues for real.

      The book began as an article I published in December 2017: 21 Insights from 21 Years of Coaching Creative Professionals. In many countries, 21 is the start of adulthood, so my 21 st anniversary as a coach seemed like a good time to reflect on the previous two decades and share some of the key insights that had emerged from the thousands of one-to-one conversations I’d had with creative professionals over the years.

      I got started as a coach by accident. Back in 1996, a year into my practice as a psychotherapist, I started to notice a pattern emerging. Mixed in with the people consulting me for anxiety, depression, addictions, work-related stress, relationship problems, and a host of other issues, was a different type of client. The actor with stage fright. The novelist with

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