I did not feel like writing yesterday, nor today.  I thought of all sorts of excuses not to sit down at my desk.  There was some laundry to be done–maybe a sweater or two…and two pairs of jeans.  There was that bill that came in the mail on Saturday; I really should be paying it–oh, and the new Poets & Writers Magazine came…and Cookie Magazine, too!  Couldn’t I write better if I sat and read and filled up my soul?  Perhaps listen to a little music?  Ah, yes, that’s the ticket, then tomorrow I’d write, tomorrow I’d be astonishingly creative!

Except that I ignored those voices in the end, and sat down in my chair, grimacing, and got right to it.  It doesn’t mean I was brilliant in the end; it simply means I showed up.  I’m convinced that’s all it takes.

Twyla Tharp, a well-known American choreographer, has written a book on the subject.  She agrees.  She says, “Creativity is not a gift from the gods, bestowed by some divine and mystical spark.  It is the product of preparation and effort, and it’s within reach of everyone who wants to achieve it.”  The Creative Habit is really a compilation of lessons she’s learned in her thirty-five-year career.  A gift, in fact, to all of us who like to hear what makes other artists tick.

What follows are a few samplings from her book.

Tharp starts by giving examples of how some artists have preparation rituals they might perform, which gets them into the mood for creating.  Composer Igor Stravinsky played a Bach fugue every morning.  One of her writer friends can only write outside.  One painter does her art with “propulsive music pounding out of the speakers.”  She says it’s different for everyone.  “….Moving inside each of these routines gives you no choice but to do something.  It’s Pavlovian: follow the routine, get a creative payoff.”

I found this next piece of advice especially helpful.  I’m guessing that it would work for most projects, but I’m applying it to novel writing, since a novel can become an unwieldy thing very rapidly.  “Immerse yourself in the details of the work.  Commit yourself to mastering every aspect.  At the same time, step back to see if the work scans, if it’s intelligible to an unwashed audience.  Don’t get so involved that you lose what you’re trying to say.  This was the yin and yang of my work life: Dive in.  Step back.  Dive in.  Step back.”

She has a great Creative Autobiography questionnaire on page 45, if you’re interested.  There are 33 questions in all.  Here’s a sampling with a few of my own personal answers:

1. What is the first creative moment you remember?  My mother showing us how to glue two pieces of paper on top of each other, cutting small doors and windows out of the top layer only, so we had peek-a-boo artwork, with open-up doors and windows.
2. Was anyone there to witness or appreciate it?  Yes, my mother…and me!
3. What is the best idea you’ve ever had?  To stain my wood floors with a geometric design, to look like parquet flooring.
4. What made it great in your mind?  Because it turned out so beautifully, and because everyone coming through our house thinks it’s real.
5. What is the dumbest idea?  Thinking I’m Super Woman.
6. What made it stupid?  There’s no such thing as Super Woman.  I’m me, and I can only be me.

She talks about muscle memory, which I remember vividly growing up, as I entered all the state piano competitions.  If I turned off my brain, and let my fingers fly, I was okay; woe to me if I started thinking.  I’d stumble and fall, and that was not good in a recital.  She gives another example.  “Let’s say I asked Rose Marie Wright, a dancer with whom I worked thirty years ago, to teach dances she performed for many years to another generation of dancers.  If she demonstrates the dance without thinking about it, she will re-create each step and gesture perfectly on the spot the first time, as though she were a medium in a trance.  That’s muscle memory.  Automatic.  Precise.  A little scary.  The second time through, however, or trying to explain the steps and patterns to the dancers, she will hesitate, second-guess herself, question her muscles, and forget.  That’s because she’s thinking about it, using language to interpret something she knows nonverbally.  Her memory of movement doesn’t need to be accessed through conscious effort.”  She goes on to talk about a writer (I’ve talked about this particular exercise on my blog already…): “I know one novelist who taught himself the craft of fiction by retyping the stories of his favorite authors.  The act of typing someone else’s words–rather than simply reading them–made him stop and think about how the author chose words, constructed sentences and paragraphs, arranged dialogue, and structured a narrative.”  I’ve done this.  I’m here to tell you it works!

“The first steps of a creative act are like groping in the dark: random and chaotic, feverish and fearful, a lot of busy-ness with no apparent or definable end in sight.”  What does Tharp do about it?  She calls it scratching, “digging through everything to find something.  It’s like clawing at the side of a mountain to get a toehold, a grip, some sort of traction to keep moving upward and onward.”  She goes on, “What people are really asking, I suspect, is not ‘Where do you get your ideas?’ but ‘How’ do you get them?’”  And here she quotes an exchange between the writer David Mamet and the movie producer Art Linson, as found in Linson’s book What Just Happened?

The first rule of producing is to find a writer with an idea, or get an idea and find a writer.  Since David Mamet and I had done The Untouchables together we’d developed a good professional working relationship: You get me a lot of money, I get you a good script.

I placed the call: “Hi, Dave.”

“What’s the shot?” he asked.

“I got a new deal.  I’m looking for you to write a new script.”

“Fine.”

“There’ll be lots of money.”

“Good.  Let’s do it.”

“It’s not that easy.”

“Why?”

“Because if you don’t tell me what it’s about I can’t get you the money.”

“Fine.  What do you want it to be about?”

“I don’t know, that’s why I’m calling you.”

“I understand.”

“Dave, how about an adventure movie?”

“Fine.”

“Something castable.  Two guys, maybe.”

“Fine.”

“C’mon, Dave, I need more to go on.”

“O.K….How ’bout two guys and a bear?”

“It’s a start.”

Two guys don’t cut it.  It becomes more of an idea–a story, actually–when you add the bear.  “You don’t really have a really good idea until you combine two little ideas.”  And as E. M. Forster distinguishes between narrative and plot: “Plot is ‘The queen died; the king died.’  Narrative is ‘The queen died; the king died of a broken heart.’  One man’s bear is another’s brokenhearted king.  That is all you need to know about good ideas and bad.”

Okay, so once you have your idea, you have to be able to do four things with it.  Some people can do a few, but not all four.  Work on the one you’re not good at.  You might need some brainstorming help. These come from Harvard psychologist Stephen Kosslyn.  “First you must generate the idea, usually from memory or experience of activity.  Then you have to retain it–that is, hold it steady in your mind and keep it from disappearing.  Then you have to inspect it–study it and make inferences about it.  Finally, you have to be able to transform it–alter it in some way to suit your higher purposes.”

And last but not least, how do you build a creative bridge to the next day’s work?  There’s nothing worse than ending a fabulously creative day, asking yourself, “Can I do it again tomorrow?”  Tharp calls this the Hemingway bridge.  “Ernest Hemingway had the nifty trick of always calling it a day at a point when he knew what came next.  He built himself a bridge to the next day.”  Tharp adjusts this for her dance routines and stops when there’s energy still left in the room, and everyone is not completely exhausted.  If you were to use the example of a comedian, she would know when to quit her riff, so that her audience is begging for more.

There’s plenty of forgiveness built into the book, because of course, you’re going to fail, and that’s all right.  When that happens (not if), you get back up, dust the dirt off your knees, and go back to the plow.

It’s what an artist does.

[Post image: Washing Day by cpriest on stock.xchng]