This Guy Falls Down

Interesting Madeleine L'Engle quotes

Stacey Gagne at INFUZE Magazine recently chimed in about Madeleine L'Engle, being inspired by other artists, and taking notes in the margins.

I do my brand of sumo. I do my best.

I just finished reading From Where You Dream by Robert Olen Butler. This was one of those providential library finds (I love those!), so reading it was a little unexpected and surprisingly good. There were several interesting passages, but the one that resonated with me the most was when he talked about his love of sumo wrestling. Whenever sumo wrestlers are interviewed, they invariably give answers along the lines of "I do my brand of sumo. I do my best." Translating this to the realm of creativity, this is a very freeing concept. We are called to create, not to imitate. Therefore, any true act of creation will necessarily involve you practicing "your own brand of sumo". And all you can do is your best. No more, no less. There can be a lot of guilt and anxiety associated with creating. You're looking around at what other people are doing. You do the compare thing. And it's easy to just try and mimick the popular trend. But you're selling everybody short here. Just do you own brand of sumo. And do your best.

Look for a full review of the Butler book soon. No guarantees as to whether you'll actually get one, but if you look for it, at least you're doing your part.

Another kind of creative

We often presume creativity is the domain of youth, that great artists are young geniuses, brash and brilliant iconoclasts. Arthur Rimbaud, Pablo Picasso, T.S. Eliot, Orson Welles, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Jasper Johns all revolutionized their artistic disciplines in their teens or 20s. Picasso created the first cubist paintings at 25, and Welles made "Citizen Kane" at 25. These artists made dramatic, inspired discoveries based on important new ideas, which they often encapsulated in individual masterpieces. But there's another path to artistic success, one that doesn't rely on sudden flashes of insight but on the trial-and-error accumulation of knowledge that ultimately leads to novel manifestations of wisdom and judgment.

Read the entire article HERE.

Diane Warren Interview

If you are a creative person of any form or fashion, or if you desire to be one, this 1987 interview with renowned songwriter Diane Warren is a must read. Warren's catalog is so vast and diverse that it is simply staggering. Not only has she had songs recorded by the likes of Aerosmith, LeAnn Rimes, Toni Braxton, Celine Dion, and Edwin McCain, but in most cases her songs are those artists' biggest hits. It wouldn't be an overstatement to call her the most successful songwriter of the current generation. So that makes this glimpse into her work habits all the more imperative. She has definitely lived out the adage that genius is 99% perspiration...

10 Barriers to Creativity

From author Linda Merton of BestBooks.com comes this interesting and practical list:

1. Believing you have to be an artist
   Even if you don’t have artistic talent, you can learn to create successfully. Don’t let your perceived lack of artistic talent cause you to avoid creative projects. Creativity is as much skill as talent. You can learn and develop your creative skills.
2. Not learning the fundamentals
   Every type of creation is based on fundamental principles that have been developed over years of analysis. You need to know these fundamentals so well that thinking about them doesn’t interfere with your creativity.

   For instance, if you’re a writer, your grasp of grammar and mechanics are basic fundamentals. It’s difficult to write creatively if you are worrying about where to put commas or how to spell words. Or if you’re a designer, your knowledge of balance, emphasis, consistency and other design principles must be developed to the point that you don’t have to think about them as you design.

3. Not collecting samples of favorite creative projects.
   Another part of learning is learning from others. If you collect samples of creative projects that you like, then you will have creative ideas at your fingertips. By reviewing your samples and your accompanying notes, you’ll begin seeing possibilities for your creation. This must not involve copying or stealing others’ ideas, but learning from and adapting potential creative solutions.
4. Waiting for your muse.
   Do you think that creativity is an elusive condition or burst of insight that comes and goes of its own accord? If so, then you likely procrastinate while waiting for inspiration. Although it’s true that sometimes creative insights burst upon you, more often creativity evolves from gathering information, making decisions, and systematically planning projects. Creativity is a problem solving process.
5. Failing to take a systematic approach
   This problem solving process requires a systematic approach that gets you started. You start by analyzing your target public, purpose and key message. Then you apply what you’ve learned about fundamentals, the emotional connotations evoked by different treatments, and your publics’ preferences for those treatments.
6. Not learning about your target public
   Visual communication research has found that good design evolves from the relationship between the item, the creator and the intended audience. For instance, if you are designing a publication, it is the item. You are the creator, and the intended audience is your public.

   Just as your relationship with friends improve as you learn more about them, relationships with publics improve with knowledge. To create effectively, you must learn as much as possible about the public for your creation.

7. Not understanding your purpose
   Every creation has a purpose. Until you gather information about our purpose, your attempts at creating a solution are premature. You need to identify your purpose, understand the difficulties in meeting it, and the problem behind it. To create effectively, you must first know the goal of your creation.
8. Not knowing your key message
   Next you need to know the information and the emotion that you want to communicate to the target public. Called a key message, this includes what you want them to do. Before you start writing or designing, you should be able to write a concise sentence stating the key message.
9. Letting your conscious do all the work
   Creativity requires a combination of conscious and unconscious work. Start the conscious work by gathering information about your public, purpose and key message. After you’ve done this analysis, allow yourself time for the subconscious to work.

   Take a break, do something that relaxes you, or sleep on it. This will enable your subconscious to work. That’s why you’ll be most creative when you work on even small projects for at least a couple of days. Now, this isn’t as time intensive as it may first seem because you can work on several projects at a time. Just don’t rush any project to the point that you don’t give your subconscious time to work on it.

10. Settling for your first attempts
    Time is also necessary to allow you multiple attempts at creating the most effective solution. You may be willing to settle for one of your first attempts that will provide a satisfactory solution. However, after multiple attempts, you may create a great solution.

    To make the most of your time as you work on that great solution, you evaluate the potential of each option without taking the time to produce each completely. Then choose two or three best options and develop them in more detail, possibly blending options until you get that great solution.

    For instance, if you’re writing, you can use outlines for different approaches to an article. The outlines provide multiple solutions without you having to write multiple articles. Likewise, if you’re designing, you can produce thumbnails of different designs. Thumbnails are quick sketches that enable you to visualize designs with minimal effort.

Robert Fritz on Twyla Tharp

At the recommendation of one of my mentors, about a year ago I picked up Twyla Tharp's The Creative Habit. While I've skimmed passages and found it encouraging, I have yet to read it. I considered it a wake up call when I read this passage from Robert Fritz's monthly email:

Tharp talks about her work habits, often repetitive, often ritualistic. About her daily exercise routine, she writes, "It's a simple act, but doing it the same way each morning habitualizes it – makes it repeatable, easy to do." And she advises, "It's vital to establish some rituals – automatic but decisive patterns of behavior – at the beginning of the creative process, when you are most at peril of turning back, chickening out, giving up, or going the wrong way."

People in the arts know this principle as fact. The creative process is not a product of inspiration, rather it is a product of what we might call a creative state of being. Yes, there are moments of inspiration. But those moments can be as much a distraction as a help. What really counts is the habit of creating on days you don't feel like it, creating when the circumstances are not quite right, creating no matter what else is going on in your life.

I highly recommend Robert Fritz, particularly Creating. And, based on association, I recommend Twyla Tharp as well...

I'm back, baby!

Well, I've officially been "back" from my jaunt to the Southern Hemisphere last week, and I've almost recovered. If there's one good thing about traveling a lot, you do get better at it with time. You start to realize what you've got to do when you're trying to get back into the groove after a long trip. It's much more difficult, in my experience, to travel west to east across several time zones than it is in the other direction. The main reason is that you're sleep schedule is literally reversed. When you're supposed to be asleep, your body wants to be awake, and vice versa. The key is that you stay up until the normal bedtime, no matter how tired you are. Then you make yourself get up, no matter how tired you are. After three or four days of this you start coming out of the haze. I'm just starting to get to that point.

While I would consider myself "back", I've had a hesitancy when it comes to blogging. It's funny how when you get away from something, you see it differently when you come back to it. In this case, I've realized how much my online time has cut into other areas of my life. I make fun of television, but this is really no different. It's time spent that I can be doing other things. Not that it's bad - it's just that there's so many hours in the day and you've got to be careful how you spend them. Looking at this from a bigger picture, you only have so much life, and it's vital (pun intended) that you choose wisely where you use it.

All that to say, if I were you, I would expect to see slightly fewer posts around here. But I hope to make up for it by increasing the quality. As always, I reserve the right to change my mind in five minutes :)

10 Steps for Boosting Creativity

You know how sometimes you read a book and think you know it, and then read it again a few years later and it's completely different than how you remember it? I almost skipped over this link when I first came across it. "Creativity? Got it. Next topic." I felt a little guilty for having such a feeling of, well, smugness, so I headed to the list. Bach? Carrying a notebook? A dictionary? These are some pretty good tips that could go a long way towards getting out of a rut...

Get goaling

From an intriguing site I found called Creativity for Life comes some wisdom on setting goals vs. hollow resolutions. I know, I know. You've heard all of this before. But the question of the hour is, are you doing it?

Creative people revel in making something out of nothing, so when a new year and a blank calendar appears, the possibilities seem endless. Suddenly, impossible editors aren't so intimidating, artistic debuts are only one workshop away and sales goals are easy to achieve.

But John C. Norcross, author of Changing for Good, says that 36 percent of those who set New Year's resolutions give up by the end of January, and a full half of all resolutions are abandoned within three months. So, if you want to make this year your best creative year yet - and actually stick to your resolutions - it's time to get goaling!

Read the rest of the article HERE.

Robert Fritz on "the idea behind the idea"

As I've probably mentioned before, I've been gradually working my way through Robert Fritz' excellent Creating for several weeks now. I was reading a chapter called "What Matters to You", when this passage hit me like a lightning bolt:

Sometimes I have a particular creation in mind. It may not be especially good or important or meaningful, but I create it anyway. Perhaps it is a painting I have in mind. Once I paint it, I am able to conceive of an even better painting, one that I may not have thought of before. In a way, I have to get the first painting out of my system before I can go on to the next, even though the new painting may have nothing in common with the previous one. But the relationship between one painting and the next is more than sequential; the new creation rests on the previous project. Because I brought the first painting to completion, I can easily move to something new, something I might not have done had I not painted the first. Once one painting is completed, I can go on . The feeling is that of rejuventaion, or freshness.

This lines up with a previous post of mine on "the idea behind the idea". Let me tell you - this is something that I experience, and experience often. It should serve as motivation to go ahead and work on that thing you've been putting off, even if you think it might be lousy. You never know what's lurking behind it.