The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp

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work begins with the blank space to create

It's scary – habits help you deal with starting.

Creativity augmented by routine and habit.

There are no natural geniuses.

Creative requires preparation

There’s a process, that can be learned, and made habit.

Exercise/practice to develop creative skill.

Everything is inspiration if you're ready

Rituals

The ritual to get started - not what you do but when you have officially started.

Rituals - automatic but decisive patterns

eliminate the need to decide to start.

Rituals on autopilot – no decision t decide against, done once decision point's passed

Not a thought exercise, involves taking action

Rituals provide confidence and self-reliance.

Rituals of starting, of facing fears, of focusing on goals, on removing distractions.

Subjectiveness

Internal creative code or style or personality

How do you prefer to view/interact with your work- what distance?

What do you value in what you do and what you like?

What are your values, rolemodels, how do you react?

You experience the world through your own eyes – what you notice is always subjective

Metaphor

Memory – not just recall.

Art is metaphor: connecting experience now with experience before

Muscle memory – feeling your way through an action over and over

Virtual memory – generating emotions from past or future visualization in the present.

Sensual memory – tastes and smells associate strongly to emotional situations

Institutional memory – picking up ideas from putting yourself in the situation of others in the business

Ancient memory – cultural or genetic elements encoded below the level of personality, to identify aspects of being

(improvisation/spontaneity may go here too)

Boxed projects

Put your 'stuff' for a project in a container of some sort.

The first step in starting a project is to define it as its own thing. IE, the box.

Capture your ideas and inspirations. Research stuff. Sketches.

Project goal(s) (what you hope to accomplish with the project)

Research. Notebooks. Tokens of things that will go into the project.

Scratching/Ideation

The first steps – groping scrabbling seemingly-futile

Idea – turns the verb into a noun (paint to painting, sculpt to sculpture)

Scratching – exploring outside your mind for ideas

It looks desparate and lost.

Where to get ideas? Anywhere, inspiration is everywhere. But how?

Good idea turns you on, bad idea shuts you off. Blocking vs exploring, static meaning vs evolving meaning.

Good idea: combine two or more little ideas.

Big idea: just an idea with an ulterior motive. Don't look for these. More of a goal than really an idea. Cannot survive without little ideas to fill them

Little ideas: the tiniest kernel of an idea

Scratching is also improvising – implementing the ideas to feel how they work. You only generate ideas when you act, not in your head. (an idea in your head will keep recurring)

Key is not blocking, not switching to editing mode. No filter.

Four stages to ideas: generate, retain, inspect, transform

Read. Everyday conversation. The Arts. Mentors and Heroes. Nature.

Can't stop with just one idea. These are building blocks, you need a whole chain.

Be in shape – make it a habit because it only happens efficiently when you're doing it all the time.

Get high quality inspiration; don't look for inspiration from source you know will be mediocre.

Scratching is about new experience, don't go over old haunts

Go all in- this is takeoff, so floor it.

Spontaneity/Luck

No plan survives the encounter. Planning is preparation, not execution.

Often the best ideas will spark away from the plan; so don't resist them to stick to the plan.

(plan out your keys then run straight ahead through them)

Luck is a skill. Preparation and luck are attached- luck is what happens when you're prepared to take advantage of the random.

Relying on other people can break a plan – work with them but don't rely on them per se.

Perfectionism will create paralysis, and the perfect situation won't help either.

Limits create opportunities to improvise.

Consider reframing the scope – some projects work best in certain formats.

Obligation breaks motivation – it's not commitment, and a terrible motivator for work.

Insisting on a specific set of materials breaks when those materials break.

Unlimited resources will destroy your work.

Spine

Spine begins with your first strong idea – even tho it's not the idea you get from scratching.

Spine is the statement you make to yourself outlining your intentions for the work – core story, theme, structure, basis, etc.

It's the “line of action”, underlying theme, motive for coming into existence.

Spine, story, theme all different aspects. Story is what happens, theme is what it's saying, and spine is the structure that makes it come together.

Inspiration is not spine – it's the ground plane the line of action leaps from.

Spine is not necessarily visible in the end result unless it's spelled out.

Colleague can help you find it – editor “What are you trying to say?”

Ritual - “explain it to me as if I'm 10 yrs old”

Recall original intentions

Spine can also function as theme or story if necessary.

Spine from music.

Spine gives your project a beginning and end – what to do, and when it's done.

Skill

The better you know the nuts and bolts of your craft, the more fully you can express your talents.

The best creatives are so because they have mastered the skills of their domain.

Skill gives ability to more clearly translate mental images to reality, gives confidence, which lets you take risks.

Technical exercises will never stifle creativity, but technical talent is not creativity.

Some skills come from adversity – how do I solve this problem without a cheat?

Skill to DIY.

Personality is a skill. Charisma, humility, seduction, confidence

Practice doesn't make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect; even practice is a skill.

Practice with a purpose – develop skill where you're lacking, not where you're good at it.

Inexperience is also a skill – staying balanced precariously to avoid cynicism that says not to try.

“Style” - habitual ways of creating that don't challenge.

Skill allows you to channel your intensity for greater effect. Skill and passion require one another.

Ruts and Grooves

Ruts

A rut is failure to gain traction in your work.

Rut is not creative block (which just is a fear-based reaction that just needs you to do anything)

Signs of rut: the work irritates everyone even you and you just want it to stop.

Rut caused by bad idea – why did I start this?

Rut caused by bad timing – project is not compatible with the current situation

Rut caused by bad luck – circumstantial failure over and over

Rut – consequence of sticking to predictable methods that aren't applicable to here and now.

See you're in the rut, admit something's broken, get out of it/repair.

Mother of all ruts: depression/pessimism. [She doesn't have a solution but I do – allow irrational then look for the expectation.]

Ruts can be caused by circumstance, not the work.

In a bigger rut, what you need is a new idea – set a high quota to force you to turn off the censor and go

Challenge your existing ideas and see if the assumptions they're based on hold up.

1) Identify the concept that isn't working. 2) Record your assumptions 3) Challenge the assumptions 4) Act on the challenge

Reverse your way out of the rut – try reversing the assumptions

When a work doesn't grab you, imagine reinventing it as if you're solving their rut.

Grooves

The best place in the world

You know what you're doing and you feel like doing it.

You have perfect traction and a clear path.

Flow state, in the zone. Awareness of it can break it unless you build that skill too.

Usually preceded by a breakthrough idea, and can last for hours, days, weeks, months

Sometimes megagrooves that last years.

(My suspicion is that the breakthrough cause is because working in that rut got everything else lined up)

Grooves can come from the right people, timing, circumstance, subject, etc.

Grooves make creating fun

An “A” in Failure

Failure is incredibly useful, particularly in private.

It allows you to remove the ideas that don't work.

You cannot fail through laziness – being sloppy is not failure. Failure only happens with sincere attempts at success.

Fail privately to try to avoid public failure.

When dealing with failure, rebound and keep moving, particularly for public failure.

Best work after biggest failures – you've learned and there's nowhere to go but up

Forget the pain of failure but remember what you learned from it.

Acknowledge the injury and get ready to continue.

Failure of skill: You can't pull off what you want to yet. Get to work and develop them.

Failure of concept – your idea doesn't work. Recognize it and abandon ship or replace the idea if it's early enough.

Failure of judgement – You left in what should have been cut or cut something necessary. Remember only you are going to be judged, not your advisors; stick to your guns.

Failure of nerve – just don't worry, looking foolish is good for you.

Failure through repetition – rehashing isn't creative. Doing the same thing over again isn't creating something new.

Failure from denial – Deny fears, not flaws.

The Long Run

There is no inevitable petering out of talent – you can keep going with it and getting better as long as you like.

Creating in the bubble – set aside a time and space to work free of distraction.

Isolation from nonwork can come from being busy too.

Work towards mastery.

Mastery is elusive, but feels like optimism- you know how to do this.

It allows you to start with nothing, and end up with something.