Dan Germain, Head of Creative, innocent drinks.
"Ask any ten-year-old if she can write and she says, "Of course I can!" That self-assurance wears away as we grow older. John Simmons' Dark Angels helps to free us from (often self-imposed) constraints, to explore and regain confidence in our own creativity."
Sarah McCartney, wordsmith, Lush Cosmetics
BOOK DESCRIPTION
This book is about writing: about encouraging writing at work to be more creative. As the business environment continues to change, companies, brands and organisations of all kinds need to be more creative in the way they operate. Only by encouraging greater creativity can businesses ensure that they keep generating fresh ideas to survive and thrive in the twenty-first century.
One way of developing creativity is through language and words – the most accessible and available resource that people and companies have. Writing emails, reports, letters, memos, proposals – these are activities that we do on a daily basis at work. Everyone uses words at work. But few use them as a source of inspiration and creativity. By doing the latter, we become more persuasive, original and even motivated. Words and language have the power to make a difference at work.
Writing will help you to communicate more clearly, to make arguments more effectively. But, if we go further, more expressive writing will help you to establish greater personal authority and be respected as someone who should be heeded. If we go further again, more creative writing will help you tell stories better, engage with people, make emotional connections that mean other people really enjoy what you are communicating.
John Milton, writing Paradise Lost, made a heroic figure of the fallen angel Satan even though the objective of his work was to demonstrate the power of God’s goodness. There is an aura about Milton’s Satan that none of the ‘good’ characters achieve. And part of Milton’s message, part of the attraction we feel as readers, is that Satan is an angel still: He has extraordinary powers of resourcefulness, creativity and persuasion. Would he have these powers, would he convey this attraction, without the opening up of his mind to other possibilities? In this book, John Simmons shows how we can bring out the dark angel in us.
It’s just a matter of spreading your wings.
