The Final Chapter of “How To Be Creative”:

30. The hardest part of being creative is getting used to it.
If you have the creative urge, it isn’t going to go away. But sometimes it takes a while before you accept the fact.

Back in 1989, I was in West London, house-sitting a family member’s lovely little flat over the summer. In the flat above lived the film director, Tim Burton who was in town for a couple of months, while he was filming “Batman, The Movie”.
We got to know each other on-and-off quite well that year. We weren’t that close or anything, but we saw each other around a lot. He was a pretty good neighbor, I tried to be the same.
At the time I was in my last year of college, studying to go into advertising as a copywriter. One night he and his then wife came over for dinner.
Somewhere along the line the subject of my careeer choice came up. Back then I was a bit apprehensive about doing the “creative” thing for a living… in my family people always had “real” jobs in corporations and banks etc, and the idea of breaking with tradition made me pretty nervous.
“Well,” said Tim, “if you have the creative bug, it isn’t ever going to go away. I’d just get used to the idea of dealing with it.”
It was damn good advice. It still is.
[FINIS]