What is a "Creative"?

As a hard-sell direct marketing copywriter, I never liked being called "creative." It suggests writing just to impress. I write to influence and sell. As I wrote before:

David Ogilvy said "I occasionally use the hideous word 'creative' myself, for lack of a better."
Too much of what passes for marketing is based on creative whim. General advertisers often shoot blind, trying to make "impressions" instead of targeting sales.
As they used to say at Benton & Bowles Advertising agency way back in the 1930s: "If it doesn't sell, it's not creative."

Steven Pressfield, a former advertising copywriter, has become a celebrated novelist. Pressfield is also author of The War of Art, a warrior's manual for to the inner battle with "resistance" to doing your real work. On his blog, Pressfield has a unique insight to "creatives" that makes me more open to the title.

See What I Learned in the Ad Biz, Part Two and let me know what you think.