Mark McGuinness, Medium

Mark McGuinness

Medium

United Kingdom

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Recent:
  • Unknown
Past:
  • Medium
  • Mark McGuinness
  • 99U

Past articles by Mark:

But Are You Willing to Be Laughed At? – Mark McGuinness –

If you’re committed to achieving your creative ambitions, you’re prepared to make sacrifices — but are you willing to be laughed at? → Read More

21 Insights from 21 Years as a Creative Coach

21 years ago I started to notice a pattern in my psychotherapy practice. Mixed in with the people consulting me for anxiety, depression, work-related stress, relationship conflict, and a host of other problems, was a different category of client. The actor with stage fright. The novelist with writer’s block. The creative director dealing with the stresses of agency life. The entrepreneur on the… → Read More

Video: Dealing with Rejection and Criticism

Video: Dealing with Rejection and Criticism In this video Joanna Penn interviews me about dealing with rejection and criticism when you’re pursuing your creative dreams, drawing on insights from my book Resilience. (If you’re reading via email you may need to click through to the website to watch the video.) Jo is a novelist and publishing expert, so parts of the interview focus on the specific… → Read More

Elizabeth Gilbert: Is Creativity Divinely Inspired?

Regular readers of Lateral Action will know we’re pretty sceptical about the idea of creative genius. You’ve probably noticed we preach a gospel of creativity-as-hard-work rather than the proverbial flash of inspiration. We’ve looked at creators such as Michelangelo, Kurt Cobain, Charles Darwin, David Bowie, Shakespeare and Stanley Kubrick, and shown how their apparently effortless genius can be… → Read More

What Do Your Possessions Say about Your Creative Obsessions?

Photo by interrupt Earlier this week I switched on the TV part way through a documentary about the late, great Stanley Kubrick. Presenter Jon Ronson was obviously a huge Kubrick fan, and was thrilled at being invited to the director’s home by his family and chief assistant. What did he find when he got there? Cardboard boxes. Thousands of them. Big ones, small ones, scruffy ones, neat ones.… → Read More

T.S. Eliot’s Path to Success

> You have to be absolutely determined, otherwise you might just as well write poetry. (Sir Terence Conran, quoted in The Creative Economy by John Howkins) Terence Conran offers excellent advice to aspiring entrepreneurs, but he obviously has a thing or two to learn about poetry. He seems to think writing poetry is easy compared to building a business, and that most poetry is written by shy,… → Read More

How Darwin Devised His Theory of Evolution

This post is part of the Darwin's Big Idea series. When the HMS Beagle sailed into Falmouth, England on 2 October 1836, after a five-year voyage around the world, she carried a new scientific celebrity. The ship’s naturalist Charles Darwin had left Britain a virtual unknown – but the quality and quantity of specimens he had shipped back to London meant he returned with a considerable reputation.… → Read More

Creative Block: How to Start Creating When You Don't Know What to Say

This post is part of the Break Through Your Creative Blocks series. If you have a creative block you’d like some help with, tell us about it – details in the first article in the series. Every creative medium has the equivalent of the writer’s blank page – an empty space waiting to be filled. And every creator knows the numbing feeling of staring at that space without a clue what to do or say… → Read More

Why It Matters Who You Are

It doesn’t matter how good you are. If your face is unknown and your name doesn’t ring a bell, success will be a struggle for you. Your work will be rejected by editors and gallery owners. Your best blog posts will go unread. You’ll have to work hard to generate leads for your business – and even harder to close the sale. But if you’re a big name, everything is easier. Instead of tossing your… → Read More

Creativity: the Least Important, Most Important Thing There Is

Don Draper, the legendary ad man, is facing meltdown. His agency’s clients are deserting. The partners are squabbling. Redundancies will have to be made. Adland has got wind that Sterling Cooper Draper Price is in trouble. Don has just returned from a clandestine meeting with Heinz that he hoped would give them a lifeline – but the prospect rebuffed him, saying he wanted to wait and see “if… → Read More

Why Solving Other People’s Problems Is Easy

You love your friend, I know that. But it doesn’t disguise the fact he’s getting on your nerves. Once again, you’re sat listening to the same old complaints about the same old problems. You’ve been round and round in circles with this, many times. Surely the answer is staring him in the face? Isn’t it obvious? You’ve even told him what he needs to do, several times. But he still doesn’t get it.… → Read More

Is Lateral Thinking Necessary for Creativity?

Lateral thinking is such a familiar concept that it’s virtually synonymous with ‘creative thinking’. The phrase ‘lateral thinking’ is frequently used interchangeably with ‘creativity’. We take it for granted that creative people think different to the rest of us. It’s what makes them creative. The popularity of lateral thinking is testament to the creativity, productivity and promotional energy… → Read More

The Heartbreaking Power of Context

Here’s a creative thought experiment for you: Go to this page on the official Orbital website, scroll down and hit ‘play’ on the track ‘Halcyon + on + on’. Listen to the music before you read the rest of this article. Once you’ve listened to it, stop and consider each of the questions in turn before you move on to the next one. What did you think of that? Obviously, your response will differ… → Read More

How Did You Discover Your Creative Vocation?

One Sunday afternoon in 1920s England, two schoolboys were walking across the fields near their school. One of them asked the other whether he’d ever considered writing poetry. > I never had, and said so, but I knew That very moment what I wished to do. That boy was called Wystan Hugh Auden, and he went on to become one of the greatest poets of the 20th century. The lines are from his poem… → Read More

An Interview with Hugh MacLeod, Cartoonist

For many of you, Hugh MacLeod will need no introduction. Others will be intrigued to discover a creative entrepreneur who has built an unlikely and utterly idiosyncratic business based on “cartoons drawn on the back of business cards”. Hugh’s gapingvoid blog has enabled him to achieve success as a cartoonist and artist without going down the traditional gallery or newspaper routes. It has also… → Read More

The 3 Critical Characteristics of the Creative Entrepreneur

Entrepreneurs have always relied on their creativity to produce wealth, but the modern creative entrepreneur goes further → Read More

Creative Burnout: The Dark Side of Creativity

This post is part of the Creative Rock Stars series. Who wouldn’t want to be a creative rock star? After all, rock stars astound their audience, they get paid to do what they love, they are worshipped by adoring fans, they can be who they want to be and work with other cool creative dudes. Some of them have so much money, fame and influence, they can put them to good use and give something back… → Read More

Is Brainstorming a Waste of Time?

Photo by jurvetson Richard Huntington, Director of Strategy for Saatchi & Saatchi in the UK, has a pathological hatred of brainstorming: > I hate brainstorms. I hate running them, I hate contributing to them and I hate using them to solve problems. They waste huge amounts of time and talent and they are no fucking good at delivering decent ideas. And so six months ago I cleansed my… → Read More

An Interview with David Airey, Graphic Designer

David Airey, a graphic designer from Northern Ireland, has been involved in the creative arts since the 1990s when he enrolled on his first graphic design course. Having honed his skills working in the UK and the United States, he then made a conscious choice to specialise in logo design. Self-employed since 2005, David has amassed an impressive global client-list, including the likes of Yellow… → Read More

Can You Tell a Masterpiece from a Fake?

If you take your creative work remotely seriously, you probably pride yourself on your good taste and critical judgement. Just like Max Harris. In the 1940s, Harris was one of the leading figures of the Australian literary scene. A noted poet himself, he edited the magazine Angry Penguins, which championed avant-garde modernist poetry. Gifted and charismatic, Harris enjoyed provoking Australia’s… → Read More