How to keep the enemies of originality at bay

1. The 14 assassins of creativity
Or, how to keep the enemies of originality at bay.

2. • In the last thirty years, I’ve been an illustrator, graphic designer, cartoonist,
greeting card writer, children’s storywriter, textbook illustrator, art director,
teenage painter specialising in portraits of teenage girls in the hope of dating
them, part-time model for an anti-fungal cream, pseudonymous provider of erotic
drawings for a soft-core magazine, unsold film scriptwriter, graphic novelist,
novelist, playwright and non-fiction writer at different times.
So pretty much every rupee I’ve made (which I keep under my pillow because it’s
loose change), if you discount my stint as a very unsuccessful manager of a granite
quarry belonging to a friend, has been made in the creative field.
Before me, my father, my grandfather, my great-grandfather and his father, etc.,
did pretty much the same, without the brief forays into erotica or mining, of
course. My legacy, a horde of white ants feeding off their first drafts, reviews and
unsold stock, currently planning a hostile takeover of Madras, is proof.
So, I don’t know, there could be some truth in here when I warn you about these
assassins at large.
Introduction

3. Assassin 1: Trends
• So everyone’s wearing those narrow-bottomed pants in pink, turquoise and
chrome. Just like everyone is retelling the Ramayana and Mahabharata. And you
want to, too. Even if yours is from Kumbhakarna’s point of view, don’t. No one
wants 280 pages of zzzzzzzzzzzzz. Just like no one wants to see a fat slob in tight
trousers. Trends are set by creative people. The uncreative merely follow.

4. Assassin 2: Technology
• So you got yourself this new Macbook Double-Blah Pro Extreme on Steroids that
can shoot out mercury-tipped bullets and has its own built-in satellite dish that’s
directly connected to Kim Kardashian’s most famous part. And you think you’re so
cool and creative, right? Did you invent this thing? No? Then, show me an original
piece of work you have produced with it. The creative produce; the rest consume.

5. Assassin 3: Being a Fanboy
• Don’t tell me Gone Girl is great or quote from Game of Freakin’ Thrones. All it tells
me is that you are the creative equivalent of the straggler in a herd of migratory
wildebeest. Have the man parts to actually stand up and champion something no
one has heard of. Be the first to like someone. Sing the unsung. This one is
especially for people who make money off creative people. Agents, curators,
reviewers, editors, producers, hark!

6. Assassin 4: Self-obsession
• If you’ve been to a lit fest, you can’t be blamed for rethinking your Class 3 science
lesson that tells you the sun is a star and the planets revolve around it. Because,
here, it’s quite easy to believe the sun actually rises and sets in the orifices of a few
writers. Don’t ask me how they do it. They all take turns or draw lots. It’s very
complicated. This is equally true of fat dancers, atonal singers and spittle-
showering poets. My question: can one be creative with a fiery ball up the rear?

7. Assassin 5: Committees
• Good, honest art that matters can emerge only from the vision of one artist. Don’t
put your stuff out there to vote. One writer apparently asks his fans how his books
should begin, where they should be set, what the protagonist should be wearing,
and dutifully incorporates their suggestions. What a guy! Pity I’m not on his
mailing list. So, know you’re in trouble when you ask friends for suggestions or put
up half-formed ideas on FB for the instant gratification of ‘like’s and ‘Hottieees!’
‘Not by committee’ applies to films, too – just about the most collaborative of art
forms. If a film turns out any good, you can bet your bottom rupee it’s because the
unwavering, sometimes despotic, vision of one person prevailed over the random,
rudimentary ideas of all the other necessary-evil folk.

8. Assassin 6: Stinginess
• Don’t hoard, you little Scrooge. Go ahead, praise a fellow writer. Share your
resources. Buy a round of drinks. Let the other guy speak at the lit fest.
Acknowledge the old writer who helped you in your book. How can anything
creative spring forth from a tight ass or tight fist? Unless you are into that kind of
thing. In which case, film it and put it up on one of those sites.

9. Assassin 7: What’s in it for me?
• I know people in the creative field who are better suited to be pawnbrokers. You
can see in their eyes, clear as ticker tape on a digital screen, the benefit they hope
to accrue in clear mathematical terms from every handshake, nod, smile, sidle,
clap, ‘like’, positive comment they ‘invest’. Here’s an accurate estimate of your ROI.
You’ll get anywhere between 0 and
-11.3% on your MRP from discerning readers for investing all your life into being an
a$$#*!&.

10. Assassin 8: Dishonesty
• If you are a murderous, two-timing, unhygienic self-pleasurer in real life and you
write a fluffy romance strewn with pink hearts and roses, it won’t work. Your
reader will see through it in a minute. Write, sing, sculpt and paint like YOU. Write
a book about the unborn babies you flush down your toilet every day as you plan
to kill your wife with the help of your girlfriend. Bestseller.

11. Assassin 9: Agenda
• Don’t create art hoping for an award. Or with a goal of selling twenty-five
thousand copies, of which you buy 24,960 yourself. Or with the idea of force-fitting
some half-baked philosophy into something pretending to be a novel. Boring. No
one cares. Write only if you have a story worth telling.

12. Assassin 10: Closed-mindedness
• Other than the fist and the rear, a certain relaxation of that all-important
muscle, the mind, too, is necessary, nay, integral to creativity. Be open to other
points of view. Be open to liking stuff you least expect to like. And the reverse.
Don’t be stuck on Fountainhead because you thought it was cool when you
were eleven. Also, you can’t be a bigot and creative (yeah, yeah, Hitler painted)
– except in that specially designed torture chamber in the basement, I suppose.

13. Assassin 11: Age
• Old is mould. Be young. And by that I don’t mean wear a floral printed shirt or an
LBD with your flappy bingo wings on display and pose with a blue drink at some
random bar at age fifty-six. That doesn’t say ‘young’. That says ‘pathetic loser
having a midlife crisis’. Be young at heart. Be youthful in your enthusiasm. This
applies equally to the chronologically young. So many people in their twenties
today look so jaded, slouching over their phones, with their bitchy resting faces,
waiting for the world to pay up what they think it owes them directly via Twitter or
WhateverthehellsApp. Sorry. You’ll never do anything creative in your life. Not with
that attitude.

14. Assassin 12: Cynicism
• So the world is a dreadful place where everyone rips off everyone and nothing
good comes out of anything, right? Partially right. Because, with that outlook,
nothing good or creative will come out of you. It IS a shitty world. But good stuff
happens. Retain your innocence. Creativity comes from those who know there is a
war going on but still continue to be amazed by puppies.

15. Assassin 13: Monomania
• I know some creative folk who spend twenty-four hours a day in pursuit of their
passion. Let’s say it is music. They eat, drink, sleep, snore and defecate musically.
Any time spent in the non-pursuit of music, according to them, is punishable by
law. So that’s all they do. At the expense of everything else. I searched the
dictionary for the right word to describe them, and found it after several hours –
bores.

16. Assassin 14: Unlimited Resources
• If you’re writing a book in which you think it’s integral to describe the fur of a Polar
bear in one passage, I don’t think it’s necessary for you go to the North Pole (or, as
in the case of this writer I know, the South Pole, after which he hastily changed
Polar bear to Emperor penguin in his book) with your own camera crew and bear
handlers. You can Google it instead. And use that magic weapon that writers are
supposed to have – imagination – to fill the gaps. It does help when a creative
person has access to resources to do some of the things she needs to do for her
work. But not so much that she can do all the things she wants. If you are in the
creative field, pray you don’t get too rich. A real life where you have to think a bit
before paying your bills, and worry when your paycheque is late – now that’s what
you need.

17. Conclusion
• Krishna Shastri Devulapalli is the writer of the novels Ice Boys in Bell-
Bottoms and Jump Cut. Armed with a lightsaber, he spends his average
day fighting Assassins 1 to 14 along with his imaginary dog, Typo.
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