White Room

This morning I picked up Twyla Tharp's The Creative Habit at the public library.  I'm only through the first chapter and finding it encouraging and insightful.  The core message is nothing new, it can be summed up to the classic "Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine per cent perspiration"; however, it breaks the "perspiration" part down into pieces and then gives exercises to work through.

{excerpts from Chapter 1: I Walk into a White Room}

"To some people, this empty room symbolizes something profound, mysterious, and terrifying: the task of starting with nothing and working your way toward creating something whole and beautiful and satisfying. It's no different for a writer rolling a fresh sheet of paper into his typewriter (or more likely firing up the blank screen of his computer), or a painter confronting a virginal canvas, a sculptor staring at a raw chunk of stone, a composer at the piano with his fingers hovering just above the keys. Some people find this moment - the moment before creativity begins - so painful that they simply cannot deal with it. They get up and walk away from the computer, the canvas, the keyboard; they take a nap or go shopping or fix lunch or do chores around the house. They procrastinate. In its most extreme form, this terror totally paralyzes people."

"After so many years, I've learned that being creative is a full-time job with it's own daily patterns.  That's why writers, for example, like to establish routines for themselves.  The most productive ones get started early in the morning, when the world is quiet, the phones aren't ringing, and their minds are rested, alert, and not yet polluted by other people's words.  

...in other words, they are disciplined."  

p. 5 - 6

 "It takes skill to bring something you've imagined into the world [and] 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. "

 "Everything that happens in my day is a transaction between the external world and my internal world.  Everything is raw material.  Everything is relevant.  Everything is usable.  Everything feeds into my creativity.  But without proper preparation, I cannot see it, retain it, and use it.  Without the time and effort invested in getting ready to create, you can be hit by the thunderbolt and it'll just leave you stunned."  

p. 9 - 10

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Took a trip to the Museum of Natural History yesterday, posted some of the photos to my instagram (which is linked at the bottom of the page under elsewhere).  My sketches may all be butterflies and dinosaurs for the next week or two.