Creativity Interview: Dave Ursillo, Author

My upcoming free digital guide (working title: How to use value and connections to Create & Conquer) includes interviews with inspirational creative people in different fields.

I wanted to share with you an interview I did recently with Dave Ursillo, Author of Lead without Followers [no aff].

1. How do you create an environment where you do your best creative work?

Solitude is often a necessary requirement for the creative process of writing. You need to be alone with your thoughts. Too much clutter and noise will only hamper the creative process. For me, being creative means allowing something that’s already there to make itself known and heard. In solitude, as Henry David Thoreau once wrote, is “genius.”

2. What’s the hardest part of the creative process for you?

Probably feeling like I “ought” to be more creative, at a higher frequency throughout the day or night. Real creativity isn’t forced, though. You need to nurture the right environment, circumstances, and mindset to allow it to be manifested.

3. Can you, briefly, describe how you take and idea from your head to finished product?

I assess the worthiness of the idea from my own perspective — how it affects or will help me — and meanwhile I try to assess how worthy it would be of others’ time and attention. Will it help people? Will it inspire people? Ideally, the idea should have a strong mix of both benefiting me and others. From there, I try not to overthink the process of creation: I trust instinct and intuition and allow them to guide me throughout the creative process.

4. What are your favourite and least favourite parts of your creative process?

Creativity is pure liberation. It feels freeing, and I think as human beings we all long for that level of freedom. The least favorite part of the creative process would be enduring the self-imposed stress of worrying how others will receive your work.

5. What pressures do you feel to create amazing work?

Most pressures are wholly self-imposed. Excuses, fears, and so on hold us back from creating freely. They are natural, but can be overcome with patience and determination.

6. How do you decide something is “good enough” to release to the world?

You can never know, you can only Trust.

7. Is there anything you have been wanting to create for a while that you haven’t yet (and you’d be willing to share even in a cryptic way). What’s holding you back?

I am in the process of writing an alternative leadership book called Lead Without Followers that has been a 3-year-in-the-making journey, a journey that has included quitting my job to pursue my own path. I wanted to pursue traditional publishing means first, but with events developing as they do outside of our control, I decided this summer to write it and self-publish. You can find out more at LeadWithoutFollowers.com

8. How do you measure your creative progress? Time, output, percentage through what you are creating, something else?

I don’t measure. I don’t really believe in measuring an intangible like creativity. In the end, measures are mere attempts to mollify an insecurity or attempt to feel validated by a usually-arbitrary number or statistic.True worth comes from within; from a sense of purpose, meaning and fulfillment. These can’t ever be measured. You need to feel them and trust them.

9. How do you seek to create amazing value in your creative pursuits?

Value is great, but you need to be careful with how you define value. More is often less, and less is often more. Value is not simply an exchange of a large quantity of stuff for the lowest possible sum of money. Value is a worthy idea, convincingly expressed in a widely-accessible avenue and, as I prefer, in a highly inspiring way.

10. Having awesome connections is pretty essential for the success of creative works. What tips can you share to help people create better connections?

Be a person that’s worthy of being connected with. In other words, be helpful, be genuine, be giving, be love. Be a good person. The more you help, the more you give, the more that helpful people will gravitate toward you.

11. What things do you wish you had or could create?

I would love to write music, specifically, rockin’ electric guitar riffs. Nothing says I can’t or won’t, but at this time, it’s not something I’m very driven to do. In the future, I’d also like to write music lyrics for some big shot musicians, too.

12. What inspires you to create?

People, quite simply. And the fun and the personal challenge of achieving for achievement’s sake.

13. Can you share any personal or other people’s creative stories to inspire people in to action?

Automate arbitrary tasks and time-wasters, and practice your time management. This gives you more free time to be creative and dedicate yourself to the process.

14. I find, when writing, that taking work from draft to finished product the hardest part. Do you have any tips to share?

You could feasibly work on something forever. All art is incomplete. It really is a matter of allowing it to be what it is, trusting that it is as complete as it can be, and letting go.

15. What are your creating at the moment and when can we expect to see it?

My book Lead Without Followers, which will teach anyone how to become a highly effective and influential leader in any walk of life by nurturing a quiet but profound sense of inner leadership, will be released on Amazon.com and found through DaveUrsillo.com and LeadWithoutFollowers.com in mid-September. You can sign up for updates on the book at LeadWithoutFollowers.com as well.

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Thanks Dave for taking the time to share your creative process with the Create & Conquer readers.

Please leave me a comment and let me know if you found this interview helpful.