Book cover of 21 Insights for 21st Century Creatives

A real Swiss Army knife of all-around mental ammunition for those of us slugging it out in the trenches of this new century.
Steven Pressfield, bestselling author of The War of Art

A short book for experienced creative professionals

You’ve built a substantial creative career. You have a body of work, a reputation, perhaps a few awards. From the outside, it looks as though you’ve arrived.

On the inside, it feels more like a threshold.

21 Insights for 21st Century Creatives is a concise field guide for that moment. In 21 short essays, I draw on many years of work as a poet and creative coach to illuminate the next phase of a long creative life – and to help you approach it with clarity and courage.

Three questions at the heart of the book:

What does success mean to you now?

Not when you started out, but at this stage of your life and career. Several insights invite you to rethink old definitions of success, acknowledge the necessary trade–offs, and shape a version that feels true to you.

What is your real security?

If you work in the arts or creative industries, you don’t need anyone to explain precariousness. You’ve lived it. These chapters suggest that your deepest security lies in your creativity itself – in your ability to generate ideas, works, relationships and opportunities – and in the assets you build from them.

What inner work is your next chapter asking for?

By mid–career, many of the real obstacles are internal: doubts, mixed motives, familiar stories about what you can and cannot do. Here, the focus is on the psychological and emotional side of creative work – how your struggles can point towards your superpowers, and how, at a certain point, the missing ingredient is not another strategy but courage.

A few of the insights you’ll encounter

Why your creativity is your greatest form of security – and what it means to act as if that were true.
How personal development and professional development become the same project for a creative person.
Why the problems you can’t stop thinking about may be clues to the work only you can do.
How to think more clearly about the trade–offs between money, fame and artistic reputation.
How to recognise the moment when you have enough information – and need to decide.

Each piece is short enough to read in a few minutes, and designed to be read differently as your circumstances change.

Who I wrote this book for

I wrote 21 Insights for 21st Century Creatives for experienced creative professionals – artists, writers, performers, creative directors, producers, studio and agency leaders, founders of creative and cultural businesses – with at least a decade of serious practice behind them.

It will resonate most if you’re recognised for the quality of your work, sense that you are at a turning point, and are willing to look at the inner as well as the outer shape of your creative life.

If you are an accomplished creative professional standing at the threshold of your next chapter, 21 Insights for 21st Century Creatives offers a compact, candid companion for the decisions that matter most.

Mark McGuinness portrait photo

About me

I’m a poet and creative coach. For almost three decades I’ve worked with experienced creative professionals across the arts and creative industries, helping them to do their best work and build careers that are true to their talents.

I host The 21st Century Creative podcast, have contributed to international bestselling 99U books published by Amazon, and I’m the author of several other books for creatives, including Resilience, Productivity for Creative People and Motivation for Creative People.

My poetry has appeared in leading literary journals and won national prizes in the UK, and my podcast A Mouthful of Air has been selected by The Guardian and Podcast Review as one of the top poetry podcasts.

Mark McGuinness is a rare cat—part poet, part coach for creative professionals, part old-time, overeducated Brit who thinks deeply about stuff you and I have never heard of … a man who has lived the life and has watched and worked intimately with hundreds of others who’ve done the same.
Steven Pressfield, bestselling author of The War of Art

Of all the writers I know, I have learned the most about how to be a productive creative person from Mark. His tips are always realistic, accessible, and sticky. It’s not just talk, this is productivity advice that will change your life.
Jocelyn K. Glei, Host of Hurry Slowly and Founding Editor, 99U

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