I am crap at large timeframes. I mean really crap. I need deadlines. Over the past couple of weeks, we have often spoken about creativity only being possible when there are constraints. That’s the problem I find myself having with my novel, that’s been half-done and gathering dust now for longer than I have actually worked on it: there are no constraints anymore since I finished my BA and didn’t have to work on it. I need deadlines. I need imminent deadlines even more. Some people can’t cope with pressure, and while on some level I can understand that, I must feel pressure to deliver. I don’t need someone to watch over me (indeed the more you watch over me, the more I will refuse to do any work), I need someone to give me a deadline. Not a deadline that’s six months away, but a deadline that’s one week from now, with just enough work that I can humanly manage to do. A deadline that’s six months away has no significance to my mind (unless it is one big deadline with smaller ones on the way), a deadline that’s right in front of my face has my brain firing neurons and come up with ideas that would otherwise have stayed dormant for the rest of my life.

I have spent the last couple of months racking my brain about what to do for my dissertation. When I say racking, I mean I thought about it, more or less vaguely, because, you know, there was still sooo much time left. When Catherine, our course director, today mentioned that we needed to tell her by next Friday what we wanted to do for our dissertation, there was a short moment of panic. The most viable idea I had come up with so far, and that I had spoken to her about already last term, was to do research about Creative Commons and Copyleft. While that is a subject which really intrigues me it has one major problem: it won’t have any value whatsoever to me when I try to get a job, because I don’t actually want to work in that sort of legal environment. I am a creative. I love writing, I love art, I love video-editing, I love technology. I also toyed around with the idea of doing something with children’s publishing, but all the ideas I kept having would have involved the nightmare of parental permission slips. Too time-consuming, too much hassle for a dissertation that I have only four months to do.

It is ironic that in Catherine’s class this morning, Managing Creativity and Innovation, we were talking about how the mythical Eureka! moment does not actually exist. Ideas don’t come out of nowhere, the brain is constantly making (un)conscious connections, and eventually all the different components fall into place. And for this to happen, I need a deadline. (Hiking does it as well, but I haven’t done that since I left Wales. I do miss the Taff Trail!) The short moment of panic did it for me. Even though Catherine told us not to panic, it was exactly what I had needed all this time. Something clicked, and finally all the different ideas that I’d been playing around with the last couple of months – more with the objective of a plan B in case I didn’t find a job and needed to go self-employed – fell into place. What if I could do it as my dissertation, as it is, in my opinion, very relevant to publishing and the creative economy in general… I drew a mindmap right that moment and wrote a whole page about what I would have to do (yes, it was a lecture, but it was either do it right there and then, or lose it all). It’s a practical project; I think I have finally come to realise that I am not an academic researcher. As much as I romanticise the idea of being one, I’m just not and I need to accept that before I make a mistake. (Incidentally, today I also learned that there is a practice-based PhD, so maybe, someday, people won’t have to call me Dr Heles as a joke anymore.) Within that practical project, I would be able to make use of all those passions mentioned in the previous paragraph. And that makes me incredibly excited!

I need to talk to my course director first, of course. And, who knows, maybe I will still end up doing something completely different. But, damn, it feels so good to finally have a very precise idea and a rough outline of what I need to do to achieve that. The proposal is due on April 15, so I feel I am still mostly on track. And if I am allowed to do that project, I could still turn it into a business after I graduate, having everything in place right when I get out of university.

Watch this space.

Last Friday, we looked at what makes a successful advert. This got me thinking which advert I could actually recall and knew what they were about. The first of my top three is the Groupon advert with the great Timothy Hutton, broadcast during the Super Bowl 2011. If you know me in real life, you know that I have quite an offensive humour myself, so this one is right up my alley.

The next one goes in a completely different direction and is beyond stunning. Created by the Parisian based agency Ogilvy, it’s a piece of visual poetry for a company that, let’s face it, I would normally never be interested in: Louis Vuitton.

Last but not least, here’s an advert with international superstar Conan O’Brien, who exploded on the global market when NBC decided they could do without him and millions of people gathered to get him back on screen (he now of course has a show on TBS, over which he has complete creative control). So it’s obvious why, during the mega-hype surrounding the launch of his new talk show Conan, American Express decided to use him for their latest campaign. And what an advert it is!

Which adverts would you select as your favourites?