The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp

I stumbled across this book about a year ago at the library. I liked the title, The Creative Habit – Learn It and Use It for Life. I decided to check it out because I’m so interested in the creative process and am always looking for creative ways I can enhance my life experience. When I got the book home I looked through it, jotted down some notes and did one of the book’s exercises and that was about it. Then back to the library it went.

A few months ago I was at a bookstore and saw the book again and decided to buy it. I knew there was something for me in the book, something I needed to look at that would help me not only live more deeply and creatively but would also help me creatively move through some of the blocks I’ve put up in my life. But for some reason I wasn’t quite ready to begin it so I bought the book and put it on my bookshelf knowing there would be a time for me to pick it back up again and that time is now.

From Chapter 1:

“It takes skill to bring something you’ve imagined into the world; to use words to create believable lives, to select the colors and textures of paint to represent a haystack at sunset, to combine ingredients to make a flavorful dish. No one is born with that skill. It is developed through exercise, through repetition, through a blend of learning and reflection that’s both painstaking and rewarding. And it takes time. Even Mozart, with all his innate gifts, his passion for music, and his father’s devoted tutelage, needed to get twenty-four youthful symphonies under his belt before he composed something enduring with number twenty-five. If art is the bridge between what you see in your mind and what the world sees, then skill is how you build that bridge.”

I’m ready to build that bridge.

My intention in reading and applying the concepts in this book is to learn the creative habit and to use it to improve my life. And I’m looking forward to sharing my experiences and insights with all of you; I will be blogging about it every Friday until I finish the book.

Regarding Work

I've been reading "Poise and Power" by Christian D. Larson and I thought I would share some excellent suggestions he has for approaching our work. I hope you find them as inspirational as I do.

1. Go to work with the idea that you are to spend a whole day directing energy into constructive channels and that you are to pass through a series of exercises that will develop your entire personality.
2. Work because you desire to exercise muscles and brains in such a way that you may daily grow and develop into a stronger person, a more competent person, a greater person.
3. Look upon all work as a constructive process in yourself and use all work for building up mind and body. You will make a good living now, and you will make yourself a better and better living every year. At the same time you will be making for yourself a better life.
4. Think of growth while you work; feel the expansive process of development all through your system whenever you move a muscle or think a thought.
5. Work in the spirit of joy, and know that every action is a stepping-stone to greater advancement.
6. Work in the realization of the great fact that the more you produce in the world, the more power, life, ability and capacity you produce in yourself and that the greater things that you construct, the greater you, yourself become.