An online test to discover if you are 'right-brained' or 'left-brained' yielded an odd result for me.
As you may be aware, the theory of 'right-brain' training to boost artistic effectiveness spawns myriad best-seller books.

• Artists, we're led to believe, display predominant use of the right hemisphere of their brains.
  People who use mainly the left hemisphere are found behind desks in banks and accounting offices or chalking equations on blackboards.
  

Imagine my surprise to find I'm 'left-brained,' via the online test.
Conclusion: a lifetime wasted on painting and writing instead of something more suited to my left-leaning brain.
Perhaps I should try for a job in merchant banking or teaching mathematics.
For the folk who bought my paintings or commissioned portraits and other works, this must be a let-down.
Also for those who bought - and even read - my first novel and those who did the same as each of my illustrated books was published.
These people, and I, were all barking up the wrong gum tree, if we take the popularised view of 'Right-brain equals creativity' at face value.

• Artists aren't the only creative people, of course.
  An economist can be creative, as shown by the world-changing example of Professor Muhammad Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank.
  This is a system by which small cash loans, requiring no collateral except the borrower's honour, are extended to enterprising villagers.
  It serves people with no hope of raising credit from a regular bank but who want to use their skills to make money and improve life for their families.
  In the poorest rural areas of Bangladesh, this outside-the-box thinking resulted in raising the status of women and provided education opportunities for their children.
  

Neuroscientists now know a lot about how our brain works.
Evidence from their studies results in a new understanding of what we call 'creativity' and how anyone can learn to harness it.
Recent research shows how areas of both hemispheres communicate.
History shows us the 'temperamental diva' personality is not a requirement for making art.

• As an artist, you're already filled with a sensitivity that can be described as 'creative.
  ' You've no need to put it on show with public displays of private emotions.
  All is revealed in your work for those who have the heart to see.
  

Even so, it's helpful to everyone involved in your career if you form business-like habits of behaviour from the start.
A daily routine for making your art is the way to go.
Whether it's a one-hour session at the keyboard or a two-hour stint at the easel, any schedule will work as long as you stick to it.
This isn't so glamorous as the Hollywood image of the mad, bad, stoned genius.

• It's the proven way, however, to move your ideas from the invisible regions of your mind into the world where other people can read, see and enjoy them.
  

The rapturous right-brain shoots off on multiple pathways, gulping in bits of unsorted data that sometimes collide in the brilliant explosion we call 'inspiration.
' The logical left-brain plods in steady progression along the highway, marking each mile post and weighing the value of each diversion that beckons.

• Why settle for a single system, when as a mated pair, both hemispheres can work together to help your achieve your dreams as an artist.
  

Take advantage of the knowledge gained by neuroscience and use both sides of your brain.
In the pre-frontal cortex, the multiple connectivity of the right side provides those flashes of insight or inspiration, the logical left side will show you how to organise your career.
May you achieve success by whatever standard means the most to you.