Five amazing creativity lessons...

...from indie sleaze oral history masterpiece Meet Me In The Bathroom

Hello and welcome to this weekly edition of the CCC, Five Things On A Friday. This is for paying subscribers - and if you haven’t signed up yet but you’d like to join the gang, the lovely people at Substack have created a special offer code that works for the annual and monthly subscription. (I never usually offer a monthly discount, so if this works for you, it might be worth jumping on it.) This will get you into our monthly masterclasses with wise, wonderful experts (which you can watch on demand). And you can binge the archives, get discounts on my courses and get full, delicious access to everything.

If you caught my awkward unboxing video, you’ll know that my novel LIMELIGHT is out in shiny paperback in a couple of weeks. I’ll be going on a Substack tour - more details soon! - and if you’d like a signed, dedicated, personalised copy, The Margate Bookshop will hook you up, and deliver anywhere across the UK. Hit this link, fill in the form and say who you’d like it signed to, etc. On 7 February I’m having a real life launch at The Yard in Hampshire. Everyone’s invited, the details are here. And I’m planning to have a virtual launch too. FINALLY - if you’d like to read a romantic comedy about why work will never love you back, my novel Careering is a February Kindle Mega Deal - you can get it for 99p here! Phew! Here endeth the self promotion.

Now - I’ve been meaning to read this book for nearly SEVEN YEARS. I finally got to it. I LOVED it. Here’s what I learned. I hope you like The Strokes! But I think all of this advice is good and useful even if you only listen to Philip Glass or Kajagoogoo.

You’ve got to be bad to get good

‘I was singing along and I thought “Man, look at me go! I’m ripping this song up!” Then I listened back and I was just so devastated and hurt at how bad my voice was…I thought “Wow, okay. Well, that’s the end of that.’

Julian Casablancas, lead vocalist, The Strokes

If that had been the end of that – well, it might sound dramatic to say the world as we know it would be entirely different – but it’s possible that there’d be no Regina Spektor records, no Kings Of Leon and no Vampire Weekend.

We make art, because we love art. And we learn from artists who have been practising their craft for a long time. We compare our first attempt with the beautiful, astonishing, life altering piece of work that was years or decades in the making, because that’s what humans do. And then we get very upset with ourselves when our greatest effort isn’t good enough.