Issue #3 Rishi Dastidar and a jittery kangaroo
Welcome to RIP: a tribute to every great idea the world never gets to see
Every morning I wake up and do a few laps of my local park. A sort of commute, if you will. Just me, my keep cup (saving the planet is cool guys) and the dulcet tones of whatever podcast host I’m pretending is my BFF for the next 30 minutes.
This morning it was David Tennant (and BOY, are those are some dulcet tones), and he and his guest, Tim Minchin, got to talking about creative careers.
Being an artist was something Tim did on the side until well into his 20s. It was never his main source of income, and he figured it wouldn’t be until he received some form of recognition for it. But to get that recognition he realised he had to put his ideas out there, instead of simply squirrelling them away until they were perfect.
I’m sure there’s an over-Pinterested quote somewhere preaching, “if you wait until you’re ready, you’ll be waiting the rest of your life.” And that’s often how the creative process goes. Sometimes you just have to hit share, press publish, send the damn email, even if you’re not ready.
Especially if you’re not ready.
Despite my best British efforts, this is a mindset I’ve tried to embrace over the past couple of years, and I now regularly find myself doing things before I’m “ready.” From performing in live improv shows to speaking at this year’s Copywriting Conference – which is where I met the brilliant Rishi Dastidar, poet and head of brand language at Brandpie.
As usual I asked Rishi to dig around in his drafts for a Rest in Progress. Plus he shares some beautifully-written advice about “the first flush of creation.”
What’s your idea and what happened (or, better yet, didn’t happen) to it?
I thought I had a scamp to show you, an idea so perfect that when me and the art director I was working with at the time came up with it, we actually hugged we were so pleased with it. Is it saved on my hard drive of stuff I’ve worked on over the last 20 years? Of course not. *sigh*
So instead: a poem. Now, of course, there is a strong argument that poems are never finished, only abandoned (not my thought, I hasten to add, but that of Paul Valéry), and I think there is some truth in that. And of course, every poet writes a tonne more than they ever might be fortunate to publish, so amongst that larger pile there will be some that you do wish you could make work so that someone else might love it too.
Here’s one of mine. This draft is from 2013:
I mean, it’s fine (and of course, most of you reading this won’t know my poetry, so won’t have any baseline to judge it against), but no editor deemed it good enough to publish in this state (this is version 7 maybe), and I have pretty sharp memories of taking it to a workshop where it landed with a heavy, leaden thud where no one liked it.
Now, I should have just left it, moved on. But no: here’s a more recent version (I think I’m up to 13 or so now) from 2017:
Better? Perhaps, perhaps. It’s more particular now, it has a steal from Electronic’s Getting Away With It, and it feels more like a poem that has a chance of connecting with someone who’s not in my head (which is after all part of the point of writing poems). But still, it’s not persuaded anyone else than me, which means it needs more rewriting.
What is it about this idea you can’t let go of?
I think it’s the image of the kangaroo – it’s so silly and yet so true… I refuse to believe there isn’t a way of making it work in a love poem that also decries modern capitalism at the same time. Come back to me in 2023, I guess.
We met during this year’s Copywriting Conference where you (very impressively) wrote live poems in real-time based on everyone’s talks. Do you think having less time to sit with and ‘perfect’ an idea can make us less critical of it?
Ah thank you, that’s very kind of you to say. Generally I’m of the ‘have an idea, make it, have another idea, make that’ school, and so generally I like working quickly to flesh out an idea as fully as possible, then putting it away for ages, and then looking at it again, and seeing what it might need to move towards being perfect (not that I think anything can ever be perfect, FWIW, but that’s another discussion, I suspect.)
Broadly speaking, poems – and ads, any copy for that matter – at least in the first flush of creation need us to be as uncritical as possible. There’s always time to tweak, change, improve, rewrite, but you can only do that once you have the first draft out. If that comes to you slowly, brilliant; but if you find the words emerge as slowly as golden syrup from the tin, try writing really fast and without caring (much). I’d hope you’d be pleasantly surprised.
🛎️ BONUS ROUND 🛎️
Three things that have made lockdown more bearable...
The cats (one of which, see above), runs around Battersea Park and buying lots of baseball caps. (My midlife crisis appears to have arrived early, and is going to be singularly undramatic, by all accounts.)
What TV series/book/podcast are you binging right now?
I have far too many books on the go; on the bedside table is The Anarchy by William Dalrymple, Angels With Dirty Faces by Jonathan Wilson, a massive PG Wodehouse anthology, lots of poetry – you have to read Poor by Caleb Femi, it is incredible.
TV-wise, currently cranking through Mrs America which is fabulous, and a part of history to my shame I knew very little about before starting to watch.
Podcasts: it’s American football season, so most of my listening (with the exception of Backlisted which, if you’re a bookish type you really should subscribe to) is NFL-related right now: The Osi and Jason podcast, The Nat Coombs show, Around the NFL. Xs and Os until February.
What’s your favourite rhyme you’ve ever used in a poem?
What, ever ever? No idea! I guess the fact that I can’t remember one off the top of my head rather suggests that I’ve not come up with it yet… Let me share one with you from the most recent thing I’ve written. This year, I’ve been writing a weeknote in the form of a sonnet – I thought it would be a slightly different way of keeping a diary; and then pandemic… so the tone of them has changed a bit as the year has gone on. Anyway, I haven’t missed a week yet (!), so 43 sonnets and counting; the one I drafted this weekend features a ‘continue / sinews’ collision which is OK, I suppose.
Thanks for sticking with me, it’s a long one this week. But I hope you feel inspired to take on something scary. In the meantime, here’s some things that made me smile over the past month:
This fascinating photography project which satisfies both a need for intimacy and a nostalgic longing for gossip
That Tom Hollander piece
Every single word on the Entireworld website but mostly, “Beanies: Legume-ies if you will”
Why the best stories need empty space
This short from WePresent and Polly Nor about the loneliness of lockdown
Tenacious D’s bonkers cover of Time Warp (and my annual realisation of how wildly attracted I am to Tim Curry in fishnets)
Why is this so wholesome?
How does the creative process work for you? Are a golden syrup first drafter, or more of a get it down and watch it grow? Don’t be shy, hit reply – and tell me about your own RIPs.