So you want to live a more passion-filled, purposeful and creative life . . . riiiight after you watch that Seinfeld re-run, organize your Tupperware drawer, talk to your cat Professor Snuggles, and water your cactus plant. Sound familiar? The anxiety over starting a creative project and making it perfect can be so overwhelming at times that we’d rather do almost anything else. Solution? Do it—and make it ugly. In fact, Make it Mighty Ugly says Kim Piper Werker, the author behind the motivating handbook for vanquishing creative demons.
Sad Mag: Tell us a little bit about yourself:
Kim Piper Werker: I’m a writer and editor in Vancouver. I’ve worked for the last decade in the crafts industry, editing magazines and writing books. In 2010, I started a project to address some of the issues I kept bumping into personally and professionally—it involves making something ugly. On purpose. Personally, this addressed a nagging habit I had of feeling very concerned that people would discover I wasn’t actually very crafty. I was so plagued by this feeling that I’d often sabotage my own projects. If something was going really well, I’d sort of intentionally mess it up, to save myself from feeling the pressure to keep it going well. Nuts, I know. But that self-doubt (or, maybe, that certainty that I wasn’t talented or creative or skilled enough to make something great), fear of failure and perfectionism are pretty much universal – everyone feels some of all of that at some point or another (or all the time). Anyway, the ugly thing really stuck with me, and it’s been my primary focus for the last few years.
More personally, I was born in Brooklyn, New York, and moved to Vancouver twelve years ago. I love to read books, chill with my family, and I’ve gotten a little obsessed lately with making soap.
SM: I admit that I’m a little envious of your New York roots. What was growing up in Brooklyn like? What drew you to Vancouver?
KPW: I grew up in a lower-middle-class neighbourhood of Brooklyn called Canarsie—probably one you haven’t heard of, eh? My family lived on the top floor of a post-war three-story walk-up, and I really and truly had that childhood where I played in the street with the neighbour’s kids and my mom would yell out the window for me to come inside for lunch. I walked to school by myself from the time I was six, and I was heartbroken when my family moved to a suburb of another city in New York State when I was ten. I was a city kid, man. The suburbs seemed like another planet to me.
At the same time, I really loved the open space of living closer to the country, and because I spent my summers in day camps or overnight camps way out in the middle of nowhere, that love of nature created some confusion for me and my simultaneous love of the city. So when I was in university, I decided, without ever having been there, that San Francisco was my obvious goal. I’d move there and have both city and a slower pace and some nearby open spaces.
Then, when I was in grad school when I was twenty-three, I met a guy I ended up marrying, and he had grown up in Vancouver. He’s the only person I’d ever known who couldn’t wait to move back to his hometown, and when he brought me to Vancouver for the first time to visit, I discovered that it had everything I’d wanted out of the mythical San Francisco, and I fell in love with Canada, too. So after we got married, we moved here, and though I find the city a little slow for my taste sometimes, and a little lacking of the gruffness and openness of urban life I really value as a New Yorker, I love it here.
SM: What inspired you to write Make it Mighty Ugly?
KPW: I’d been doing Mighty Ugly workshops for a couple of years when I had the idea of writing a book inspired by it. In my workshops, I walk people through making an ugly creature that’s intentionally hideous. It’s a great challenge for a lot of people, and very liberating for others. Every time I’d lead a workshop, I’d have at least one utterly fascinating conversation with someone about the exercise. One day I decided I wanted to explore the idea in-depth—how and why it’s important to me, how and why I think it can help people address their own creative demons, etc.
SM: Why make something “mighty ugly?” How does this process liberate the artist within?
KPW: It’s just something we’re never, ever asked to do. Which makes it a very different sort of exercise, and difference – and the discomfort that comes with it – can be tremendously liberating. Making something ugly on purpose forces us to be aware of how we consider beauty/aesthetics/marketability/appeal in ways we usually just take for granted when we make things. And for people who don’t consider themselves creative, who may not focus on beauty/aesthetics/marketability/appeal in the course of their daily lives, making something ugly on purpose removes the pressure they feel (for surely they feel it, whether they realize it or not) to make something that possesses those qualities, something they’re inclined to say off the bat that they can’t do.
SM: Why do you suppose fear of failure is the ultimate enemy of creativity?
KPW: That assertion was pretty much marketing copy. I think perfectionism is no less powerful an enemy of creativity. But fear of failing is a fabulous excuse to give up on an idea before you even try it out. So I suppose maybe it really is the ultimate enemy of creativity, because we use that fear as a reason not to even try.
SM: How do you make time for creative projects? Do you follow a schedule or are you more spontaneous?
KPW: No schedule for me. I’m doing a project this year called #yearofmaking, for which I’ve committed to making something—anything—every day. Sometimes it’s spaghetti and sauce from a jar for dinner. Sometimes it’s starting an art journal or knitting a few rows on a scarf. Sometimes it’s making a batch of cold-process soap. So for at least a few minutes every day, I make something.
SM: How do you set the mood for creativity?
KPW: I don’t. I just make stuff or write stuff. If I get really into it, I allow myself to push other things aside so I can follow it through, but I don’t think creativity is some divine sort of thing that requires a particular mood. As author/artist Austin Kleon wisely says, creativity is a tool. I make sure I use it frequently.
SM: What music are you listening to right now? What book is by your bed?
KPW: I’m not! I have a timer ticking in the background to help me focus (go Pomodoro Technique!), and my dog’s barking at someone walking by outside. The book by my bed is The Faraway Nearby, by Rebecca Solnit.
SM: What advice do you give aspiring creatives?
KPW: Stop aspiring, start creating.
Kim will be joining two authors, Leanne Prain (author of Strange Material: Storytelling through Textile) and Betsy Greer (author of Craftivism) – on a book tour in October. Details can be found online.
Also, check out her blog, and the Mighty Ugly website (with a book-group guide and more info about the book, etc.). Other online stuff: kpwerker on Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest.