I confess: I am a shameless junkie when it comes to books on writing, creativity, art – anything that feeds the incessant stream of words, images, and colors that constantly flows through my mind. I also confess a terrible inability to organize my time, thoughts, and what comes out of my head. So when I stumbled across Twyla Tharp’s book, The Creative Habit: Learn It And Use It For Life, the title alone intrigued me enough that I went to Amazon and looked it up, snagging it with my trusty 1-click button. (That button gets a lot of use.)
I am constantly amazed by how we tend to barrel into projects with no clear-cut idea of where we’re going, what we plan to do when we get there, and what we expect from the effort. I spend a lot of time on the road in pursuit of interesting and fascinating research, and I go a lot of places I have never been before. I would no more think of heading to an unknown location without a map, a MapQuest printout, and my GPS than I would try to fly there with my eyes closed and hands tied behind my back. Yet I tackle daunting creative projects with no sense of beginning, end, or outcome. That could explain the piles and stacks of books, chicken-scratching, and photos I cleaned and organized all day Saturday.
I envy those who can simply throw words down on a screen (or paper) and have no mental distractions or endless stream of internal chatter to deal with. I have never known that kind of peace.
The definition of “overwhelmed” is sitting in the floor of your office, surrounded by mountains of filled notebooks, boxes of photos, stacks of reference books, and binders bursting with notes, maps, and printouts of everything from your own articles to bits and pieces of ephemera that you may or may not recall what interested you about them. It’s enough to reduce anyone to a tearful mess. In fact, I’m not entirely sure how I managed to churn out one novel in the midst of the chaos and I am quite certain I wouldn’t be able to produce a second one in the state my workspace (and head) was in before The Great Cleanup of July 2009.
I didn’t become that unorganized overnight and I won’t conquer the issue overnight but I am on my way to understanding my thirst for yet another piece of knowledge, and what on earth to do with it. Twyla doesn’t present a step-by-step “out” for the compulsive creative; rather, she goes back to the beginning, to the foundation of what and who we are. She presents exercises to help us understand where our desires are rooted and how to nourish them into blooming beauties. I am in the process of answering questions about myself now that I never thought of before, and understanding where my impulses are coming from.
I have known all my life that I wanted to be a writer, but why did I know it? What switch flipped in my brain, at what age, that established me as a person who would work with words as a “reason for being?” Twyla’s book helps understand the process, and lays a foundation for productive inventiveness whether in art, writing, dance, or any other pursuit. In fact, I rather like how she melds art, movement, and words into a sort of “connected” creative thread. It seems to give me more “dimension” in my thoughts and I hope influences my words as I arrange them.
I know this is a book I will refer to many, many times in my life; in fact, it is taking me longer than usual t read it because I go back and re-read chapters so I completely understand them. Every time I re-read, I find something new; it’s as if the book has a life of its own. Thank you, Twyla, for the perspective and the encouragement.
Posted by summer1565 
