Ideas don’t really grow on trees, or do they!?!

Gearing up for a major trade show usually means “show specials,” or specific promotions designed to help spur business at the show. The other day a colleague asked me if I was finished creating a flyer for a promo we had discussed. After spending most of a day in promo flyer mode, I didn’t have any ideas left to start work on that one. So what did I do? With a lot of other projects I was working on, I turned my attention to some work that had been on the back burner. Something totally different. I related to my colleague the story of the “Battle of Evermore” from Led Zeppelin’s fourth album. The song is a radical departure from what you’d associate with Led Zeppelin. The song has very little instrumentation, just an acoustic guitar and a mandolin. Very soft percussion. The vocals, a duet with Robert Plant and Sandy Denny, are sung in a whisper. Band leader Jimmy Page once explained why he wrote “Battle of Evermore,” saying he picked up bassist-keyboardist John Paul Jones’ mandolin, and made up this quiet song to clear his head. The idea came to him quickly, and it was unique. So I explained that in order to clear my head and focus on the promo flyer, I needed to work on something different.

Sometimes you have too many ideas going through your head and they are not connected. Sometimes you get stuck. There are a lot of ways to get unstuck, connect the ideas, and get the juices flowing again. I wrote a blog post about retraining your head. My blog post Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters is about taking something familiar and placing it in an entirely different context.

You may not have to learn a new instrument to have a new idea. Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics was asked to identify the secret of his success as a songwriter and producer. He said if you’re struggling for an idea, put it away you’ll get another idea eventually. Work on something else. Trust your creativity. And that from a guy who has been on the ballot for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and has produced Mick Jagger, Daryl Hall, Bob Dylan, and a few other people you may have heard of.

The idea is to do what you have to do to keep your creativity fresh despite deadline pressures, writer’s block, and an ever-mounting workload. Put it away if you have to and come back to it. You’ll find the idea tree full of fresh fruit before you know it.