Will Self: How To Be Creative

#willself #creativity #creative Will Self knows first-hand what it means to live a truly creative life. An artistic polymath renowned as an essayist, broadcaster and novelist - author of eleven novels, latterly Shark and Umbrella, as well as seven short story collections and seven essay collections - few are better placed to teach us how to realise the infinite possibilities of the human imagination.
In Part 1 of his How To Academy event, Will teaches you how to begin the journey to find your 'creative wellspring', how to understand creativity as the only true freedom, and why creativity is really 97% perspiration, 3% inspiration.
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Welcome to The How To Academy: The Home of Big Thinking. From Nobel laureates to Pulitzer Prize winners, we invite the world’s most influential artists and thinkers to share their insights and ideas in livestreams and live events. We also help businesses inspire clients and staff, and make books, podcasts and films to spread knowledge and innovation across the globe. Visit howtoacademy.com/​ for our upcoming events.

[@martinlawrence8427]

I love Will in all his moods, and this was a particularly inspiring performance!

[@victorblackley8372]

He's mellowing with age. Time was when it'd only be eight seconds before you got your first "epiphenomenal imbroglio" and an obscure reference to David Hume.

[@sherlockholmeslives.1605]

You worded this comment quite eloquently, David. I think he is a very intellectual person but his gift is with the written word and variations of that discipline, such as novelist, prose writer, essayist, and art lecturer so I think that he perhaps is not a true polymath. Polymaths are like Goethe, poet, novelist, playwright, scientist, lawyer, theatre director, philosopher, statesman, critic, polyglot, and painter, to just skim the surface of Goethe's great myriad intellect and polymathic plasticity of mind.

[@HughMorristheJoker]

Avicenna is the greatest polymath I know about.

[@jake_runs_the_world]

What an absolute legend

[@thecount3965]

Will is a genius

[@paulcityrocker]

A great man.

[@thedolphin5428]

What a great lecturer! Totally focused on the monitor (ie, the face of the real person in front of him, the actual student, the questioner) not the camera which leads off to the world of viewers/audience.

[@markrowe5992]

This was good. Likeable fellow too.

[@sde751]

I am six minutes in and hooked..

[@derekspitz9225]

Creativity in language is, for me, very much comparable to creativity in other art forms, especially sculpture. Writing and creative editing in particular are very much like working a medium-the medium being the words on the page, or the block in which a beautiful form is hidden, revealed by the artist's labour. It's like the potter's wheel too. The clay being semi stream of consciousness writing, slapped down onto the wheel (the page) and then worked and worked until one has a reasonable pot (or page or chapter or poem etc.).

[@karinturkington2455]

I love this video.

[@deebee8290]

this is really good- (strange that his detractors seem to watch and listen to him anyway!)

[@mr.h3134]

The most elongated preamble I have ever heard!

[@samusande6461]

😀❤️

[@alexismarquez3674]

MY FRIENDS IN ATENEO DE ZAMBOANGA UNIVERSITY ZAMBOANGA CITY ARE THE NICE ONES 🙏

[@ranro7371]

why isnt he talking about israel?

[@MannyJazzcats]

Because he's got some fucking common sense

[@haraldodunkirk1432]

Why should he, because he’s Jewish?

[@geoffreynhill2833]

I had to look up "fungible" but still didn't understand. Am I too Jung? 🤔

[@geoffreynhill2833]

read my green fire tommy & ruthie's blues amazon 🌈🦉

[@alexismarquez3674]

IT'S MY FIRST COUSIN-IN-LAW DR. KATHLEEN VALENTON AZURIN WHO INSPIRED ME IN MY STUDIES SINCE HIGHSCHOOL DAYS AT ATENEO DE ZAMBOANGA UNIVERSITY ZAMBOANGA CITY. THE FIRST TIME MY FIRST COUSIN MARK AZURIN INTRODUCED KATIE TO ME BEFORE THEY GOT MARRIED BACK WHEN I WAS STILL IN HIGHSCHOOL ♥️ I KNOW MY FIRST COUSIN MARK AZURIN MARRIED A ELOQUENT WOMAN. SHE'S SIMPLE AND WHEN SHE TALKS, SHE'S VERY POLITE. IT'S THE ATTITUDE OF MY FIRST COUSIN-IN-LAW DR. KATHLEEN VALENTON AZURIN THAT I LOVE.

[@alexismarquez3674]

MY NIECE KAIRA LEDESMA DEL ROSARIO LOVES READING TOO. MY NIECE KAIRA LEDESMA DEL ROSARIO IS A SMART PERSON.

[@patrickmccormack4318]

I know where his foundation lies...nah, nahnah, nah, nah, nah.

[@alexismarquez3674]

MY VOLUNTEER DUTY MATES IN ZAMBOANGA CITY MEDICAL CENTER HOSPITAL DOESN'T KNOW WILL SELF. I'M KNOWN TO BE A SMART PERSON IN ATENEO DE ZAMBOANGA UNIVERSITY ZAMBOANGA CITY.

[@patrickmccormack4318]

many, many, many...many, many, many...many, many, many...many, many, many... Somebody stop him from "many, many, many" off the page.

[@13strange67]

This has aged like a fine Milk

[@thedolphin5428]

Hmmm ... the captions ... 1. "How to Be Creative" and 2. "Creativity Will Set You Free". 1. I used to believe that everybody/anybody was intrinsically creative and, with encouragement and practise, could become more so. But in my 6th decade I have concluded that some people, many many in fact, ARE JUST NOT creative and could never become so. Firstly, the world actually needs uncreative, automaton types. Some people are made for nothing more complex than putting lids on widgets, following the rules of building construction, writing budget papers, digging coal in a mine. You offer them better alternatives and they fail. They just cannot rise above a certain IQ of thinking and acting. I now believe that those who are truly, innately creative are made such. They break rules from childhood. They swim against the tides. They are born society's black sheep. The rest are the white sheep. Creativity and imagination can be mutually exclusive. They should not be conflated. Imagination can lead to mayhem and destruction, not necessarily grand ventures in creative outcomes. I think that Will, in his supreme, idiosyncratic creativity, can only preach to those already along the path. For those, and as I have discovered, no coaching/coaxing is needed. If you've got the gift/leanings towards creativity in general or in any field, you just get on with exercising and expanding it impulsively. No-one has to remind me each day to be creative, or make suggestions as to how I could be more so. 2. Expanding creativity does not automatically "free" you of anything. It is a vanity to believe so. Oftentimes it compels you into financial losses, loggerheads with the uncreatives, a life of psycho-emotional and physical loneliness. It can be hell being more creative than 90% of the people you know. And if you just live in a bubble of other like-minded creatives, that too can be stultifying and pretentious. So, I conclude that The Real Creatives of The World have a cross to bear. It is in fact a pretentious arty farty indulgence to preach "be more creative". Like the Dotcom creatives, the Silicon Valley creatives, the crypto creatives, the trendy formulaic PhD writers and artists of many kinds -- all just wanky fads by profiteers. Man already creates too much retail shit, industrial shit, literary shit, media shit. Better quality than quantity. Stop trying to turn selfish greedy morons into creatives. I actually find it best to just shut up about your creativity, one's "special talents". Just do your art or craft, and humbly let others imbibe your outputs.

[@TheBundleofkent]

A polymath? Self? You have to be joking. He is staggeringly overrated and makes the cardinal error in “trying too hard”. He strikes me as a very insecure man.