“If you can see your path laid out in front of you step by step, you know it's not your path. Your own path you make with every step you take. That's why it's your path.”
— Joseph Campbell
Hello and welcome to Circle of Magic! If you’ve stumbled upon this letter but haven’t yet subscribed, here’s how you can:
While I’m in babyland bonding with our second child and recovering from birth, I’ll be sharing some of my favorite readings along with prompts for personal reflection.
Today we have a reading from Twyla Tharp, dancer and choreographer. Random factoid: Twyla and I were both born on farms in Indiana. I highly recommend her book The Creative Habit which emphasizes the importance of making routines and rituals for our creative practice rather than waiting for inspiration to strike.
“After so many years, I've learned that being creative is a full-time job with its 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. They might set a goal for themselves -- write fifteen hundred words, or stay at their desk until noon -- but the real secret is that they do this every day. In other words, they are disciplined. Over time, as the daily routines become second nature, discipline morphs into habit.
It's the same for any creative individual, whether it's a painter finding his way each morning to the easel, or a medical researcher returning daily to the 6 laboratory. The routine is as much a part of the creative process as the lightning bolt of inspiration, maybe more. And this routine is available to everyone.
Creativity is not just for artists. It's for businesspeople looking for a new way to close a sale; it's for engineers trying to solve a problem; it's for parents who want their children to see the world in more than one way. Over the past four decades, I have been engaged in one creative pursuit or another every day, in both my professional and my personal life. I've thought a great deal about what it means to be creative, and how to go about it efficiently. I've also learned from the painful experience of going about it in the worst possible way.
It is the perennial debate, born in the Romantic era, between the beliefs that all creative acts are born of (a) some transcendent, inexplicable Dionysian act of inspiration, a kiss from God on your brow that allows you to give the world The Magic Flute, or (b) hard work.
If it isn't obvious already, I come down on the side of hard work. Creativity is a habit, and the best creativity is a result of good work habits. That's it in a nutshell.”
- Twyla Tharp, excerpt from her book The Creative Habit
Prompt: Trying on a routine
Get inspired by Twyla Tharp, and try on a creative routine this week.
This might look like journaling first thing every morning after you wake up, doing a quick drawing before going to sleep each night, or dancing for a single song in the middle of your day during a lunch break.
Whatever you choose, try doing it every day for one week.
Then ask yourself: what did I learn from this experience? Is there anything I might like to turn into a longer term practice?