Advice for the First Day of Summer– How To Be (More) Creative

Posted on June 21, 2011 by galarzamonsalve

A while back I wrote a series titled “Living the Creative Life”.   I’m reading it again for inspiration and thought I’d share it with you.  Check out the advice these amazing people dish out:

I’m also reading (sometimes at the same time– does multi-reading count as multi-tasking?)  Creativity researcher Keith Sawyer’s Explaining Creativity which summarizes current findings about how Creativity works.  Sawyer has a new book out as well, Group Genius, but I thought I’d read his stuff in chronological order. In Explaining Creativity, Sawyer makes recommendations for anyone wanting to be (more) Creative.   Check out his list below:

  1. Make sure that you are doing something you love.  Creativity takes years of hard work and dedication.
  2. Get involved with a group of like-minded people, share ideas and collaborate.
  3. Don’t worry about who gets credit.  When everyone genuinely collaborates, everyone ends up being more creative.
  4. Build on past ideas, whether or not they are yours.  Stay on top of what everyone else is doing, and be open to inspiration from other people’s ideas.
  5. Create a large network of colleagues, and stay in touch constantly.  Put yourself at the center of a creativity web.
  6. Don’t expect the solution to come fully forged in a flash of insight.  Creativity takes time and involves many small sparks of insight, which you need to work hard at weaving together.
  7. Put yourself in an environment that rewards failure.  Creativity is risky;  successful creative people are also the ones who fail most often. 
  8. Creativity is inefficient.  Don’t expect every idea and every project to pan out.  Know when to cut your losses and move on. 

This to do list is a bit overwhelming especially when summer has just begun.

The cure?  Turn back to simplicity.

So this first day of summer, here’s MY one line advice to you–

Just get to work baby!

Filed under: Advice | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | 9 Comments »

Lessons from The Music Room No. 2: “Just Do” Cold Showers and Write Short Lists

Posted on March 21, 2011 by galarzamonsalve

For one year– from Spring 2010 to Spring 2011,  I turned my growing family into a laboratory.  My purpose– to set each of us on a Creative path of our own.  We began in the grand central space we call The Music Room.  Our old piano is here and our shelves are stuffed with great books.  There are Kapla blocks to build with and a wooden castle with queens and kings to play with. For one week I’m writing about what I’ve learned this year– about Creativity and what it takes to live it. Yesterday I wrote The Creative Life is a Struggle.

The Nike slogan Just Do It works well enough as my family’s current task-accomplishment (including all things creativity-related) plan.  I hope this is only temporary because I’m a big fan of the perfectly tuned schedule.

When my first daughter arrived my mother said,  She’ll take over your life until you get a good schedule.  But once you’ve got a schedule you’ll have time for anything you want.  And so it was.  At six months my tiny girl woke at 6 a.m.  I bundled her up, strapped her into a jogger-stroller and ran several miles before breakfast.  We ate at 7:30.   Then I sat her facing the bathroom shower on a bouncy chair with toys so I could shower in peace.  We took walks, sang songs, giggled and read books.  I made her baby food from scratch and tried complicated recipes (i.e., Shitake-mushroom fried polenta topped with tomatoes, slivered almonds and parmigiano-reggiano) for dinner and she watched me.  Twice a week my lovely mother-in-law took over, while I took off for grad school.  I’m barely scratching the surface here.  More than a decade later (I may not be young), I still believe a perfectly tuned schedule is best.

That’s why I’ve tried all sorts of plans and schedules this year to put this creativity thing on rails. But all of them required more energy than they generated.  I nixed each plan when it turned more needy than a child.  Who wants a needy schedule?  I don’t.  Real kid voices (expressing human needs) filter into my dreams at day-break Sunday through Saturday. Check out my current (not-so-needy) 5 item schedule:

  1. I nurse the baby.
  2. I head for my semi-private wake-up chamber–  the cold shower.  (Did I use the word “cold’?  Freezing is more appropriate this time of year– Freezing showers are perfectly safe. I choose to do this, OK?)
  3. I dry my body with the available clean towel.
  4. I pull on my best jeans, dab on the lipstick.
  5. I run the rest of the day (it’s kind of a blur– except when I follow my two-year-old outside and read at the same time, or when I drive to kid-classes or when I lecture at the University. And all running stops when I write.  Which I do almost every day. Some days I even write three pages of long-hand free thought.

Someday I’ll return to a perfectly tuned routine– all Highly Creative people fashion favored schedules.  To read some favored routines I’ve come across check out my series: Routines.

But back to now.  Let me tell you, with five children under twelve–  it’s just impossible to follow a perfectly tuned schedule.  For children each little habit expressively worked on (e.i., flushing the toilet after use or signing every piece of artwork) takes thirty days of practice.  Perfectly tuned schedules are built of a thousand little habits.  You do the math.  So instead, we all meet in The Music Room and make short lists (one for each person above five-years-old) and each finds a way to do it.  On Sundays,  I often have only one item on my list– Write.  And I do.  Of course I still bathe the baby, drive the kids to hit tennis balls and make lunch.  But those things tend to get done list or not.  A one-item “To-Do” list makes you happy at the start but turns exhilarating when you’re finished.

Just Do It is the motto of the determined desperate.  The person who came up with the motto (don’t tell Nike)–  a serial killer about to die for his crimes and ready to get dying over-with, was certainly desperate.  I admit I’m not always determined or desperate.  But this post is proof Just Do It is working out for now.

—————————————————————————

Today (March 21, 2011) is…

…The exact One Year Anniversary of Creating Brains!

To my faithful readers:

Thank you for sticking with me. Just knowing you’re there adds intensity and relevance to every word I write. Thank you!

To those who’ve left comments:

A capital THANK YOU!  Your feedback keeps me thinking–  what a gift.

To all my Hitters (is that a word yet?)– Creating Brains has been visited over 9,000 times so far!  Whoop-y! Hurray!

Thank you all for visiting.

Filed under: Lessons from The Music Room, Making Time, Mantras to Increase Creativity | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments »

Sleeping Around in London

Posted on March 13, 2011 by galarzamonsalve

Before I start today’s post, I must disclose.  I sleep some,  but not enough to think and walk at the same time. My 11-month-old still nurses through the night.  I get up when she cries at night because I want her to fatten up and grow long.  And, she is my precious baby after all. So, against medical advice (my physician sister-in-law looks out for me–  she thinks I need more sleep),  I sleep some and figure, someday I’ll sleep more. And besides,  I can always find a chair to land on if I feel a thought coming.

It turns out, you don’t need a set amount of sleep at precise intervals to think original  thoughts.  Creativity scholar Mihalyi Csikzentmihalyi found highly creative people work with their bio-rhythms.  They arrange their lives to sleep when tired but work when they’re sharp– regardless of hour.  My current baby-controlled schedule is not ideal ( i.e., running a 5k this morning seems impossible) but it’s not horrible for creativity.  I’ve had plenty of brilliant insights in between mid-night naps (unfortunately, I don’t always remember them by morning)  and I’ve found my sharpest hours seem to fall between 1:00 a.m. and dawn (if, I’ve slept early and deep the previous three nights).  I’ve made peace with my sleep issues and continue. My good friend Jennifer says, In a year, things will be different.  She’s right.  I can imagine longer nights a year from now.

Some friends– a high-flying London couple, are about to have their first baby.  She’s a novelist.  He’s a club DJ by night,  international lawyer by day.  Their spacious Hackney flat has plenty of space for the gear they’ll need and they both love kids. They’re more than ready;  they’re giddy non-stop with anticipation.  There’s only one small problem.  They love their current party-almost-every-night, sleep in, work late and do it all again life rhythm.  Last time I visited them,  the guy asked,

Do kids HAVE to go to bed early?  I mean,  that doesn’t make sense.  My sister is adamant.  She says, Just wait.  You’ll see.  Kids HAVE to go to bed super early. It’s just the way it works. But why would that be?  I mean, as long as they get the amount they need–  you know, like 8 hours,  or whatever.  Right?

I said,

I don’t know. I suppose you could convince your baby you live in another time zone–  you could carry around a full-spectrum light lamp in your diaper bag and shine it on your kid’s face at sundown.  And shut the blinds in her room in the morning,  so she still thinks it’s night. That shouldn’t be too hard–    days are pretty dark here in London anyway. I don’t know.  I haven’t tried it.

I don’t remember where our conversation went from there.  But now (two years later) I wonder if they’ll try to make the baby adjust to their time.  Will they lug her around London’s night-scene in a sound-proof bassinet?  I doubt it.  I think the novelist will nix any exceedingly silly plan.  But she is pretty flexible and does like to try things out.

In any case,  the man’s question is a good one.  Do babies need to sleep when 7:30 p.m. hits wherever they are?  I’ve always stuck to a traditional bedtime.  But, I’d love to watch the London couple trick their baby into sleeping exactly when they’d like her to sleep. If they pull this off,  they should write a book and I bet it would hit the bestseller list on Day 1.

Filed under: Biology, Creative Families, Following Rules, Living the Creative Life, Music, Parents, The Child | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments »

Must Squash Play-dough?

Posted on January 27, 2011 by galarzamonsalve

This morning, while the baby took a nap in her stroller, my two-year-old and I opened our little beach pop-up tent to full size in the Music Room. She ran to the game closet in the hall and brought back a small container of play-dough, entered the tent and zippered the entrance shut.  I sat inside the tent, on the carpet with her.  She took the play-dough out of its container and squashed it into a lumpy pancake. Then she poked the pancake with the container in time to the music playing. She had no plan–but kept herself totally occupied for at least a half hour.  Then suddenly, she stood and said, Mom, can you make chocolate milk?

My daughter plays without a plan all the time.  Until she needs help.  And she does need help often.  Toddlers generally need help every three or four minutes. Their impulses are bigger than their capacity. Still, she needs less minute-to-minute attention than my ten-month-old. Babies and toddlers require so much adult help on so many levels.  I often marvel at the resources necessary to raise just one little person to adulthood. But why is this so?  Why do young humans need so much care?  Why can we not be more like, say, puppies, maturing much sooner? Wouldn’t we progress faster as a species if adults weren’t so preoccupied, so much of the time, with the needs of children?

Cognitive psychologist Alison Gopnik has studied babies for more than a decade. She says,

The evolutionary answer seems to be that there is a tradeoff between the ability to learn and imagine — which is our great evolutionary advantage as a species — and our ability to apply what we’ve learned and put it to use.

Children are like the R&D department of the human species. They’re the ones who are always learning about the world. But if you’re always learning, imagining, and finding out, you need a kind of freedom that you don’t have if you’re actually making things happen in the world. And when you’re making things happen, it helps if those actions are based on all of the things you have learned and imagined.

The way that evolution seems to have solved this problem is by giving us this period of childhood where we don’t have to do anything, where we are completely useless. We’re free to explore the physical world, as well as possible worlds through imaginative play. And when we’re adults, we can use that information to actually change the world.

My two-year-old can keep the electric mixer steady in the batter bowl when she helps make pancakes and she can dress herself pretty well. Still, she spends hours following her whims–trying things out.  She hops. She puts on lipstick.  She cleans the interior of my car with baby wipes.

We all used to play this way, but most of us live very directed lives as adults.  Yet, Creativity requires us to play with thoughts, ideas and mediums, pointlessly–like a two-year-old.

Improvisational violinist Stephen Nachmanovich says,

The most potent muse of all is our own inner child.

Writer Julia Cameron suggests you take time to find this inner muse by taking yourself on an Artist’s Date.  She says,

The Artist Date is a once-weekly, festive, solo expedition to explore something that interests you. The Artist Date need not be overtly “artistic”– think mischief more than mastery.

If my two-year-old’s impulses are bigger than her capacity–my capacity is bigger than my whims. Looks like I need an Artist’s Date–but I doubt I’ll spend it squashing play-dough!

Filed under: Art Concepts, Childhood, Making Time, The Child, Time Alone | Tagged: , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Nature is Leaden to Me–But I Figured Out Why

Posted on January 25, 2011 by galarzamonsalve

My previous post was a challenge.  I spent the better part of an afternoon sorting through random, uninteresting thoughts for a single exciting idea.  The children were around and as quirky as usual. I had plenty of time to write while they played with friends. Loads of books surrounded me. Still–I came up empty.  Ralph Waldo Emerson said,

To the dull mind nature is leaden. To the illumined mind the whole world burns and sparkles with light.

Although Emerson makes it seem like you have either a dull mind or an illuminated mind, most people experience both extremes in different ratios. All humans are dull–sometimes. But a key to Creativity is to be illuminated and excited by the world more of the time.

Recently, I’ve been reading Laura Vanderkam’s highly practical book–168 Hours:  You Have More Time Than You Think. She thinks planning days in 24-hour-blocks limits your creative accomplishments. Instead, she recommends looking at time as week-long blocks. She says,

The way I see it, anything you do once a week happens often enough to be important to you, whether it’s church, a strategic thinking session at work, you Sunday dinner with your parents, or your softball team practice.  The weekly 168-hour cycle is big enough to give a true picture of our lives.  Years and decades are made up of a mosaic of repeating patterns of 168 hours.  Yet there is room for randomness, and the mosaic will evolve over time, but whether you pay attention to the pattern is still a choice.  Largely, the true picture of our lives will be a function of how we set the tiles.

The poet Robert Louis Stevenson planned his schedule by weeks.  He said,

Even if the doctor does not give you a year, even if he hesitates about a month, make one brave push and see what can be accomplished in a week.

Your Creative energy often depends on your schedule–what gets a piece of your life and what does not. A huge part of creative accomplishment is simply getting your work done.To lose weight, you look at what you are eating and plan your meals to achieve the desired outcome–a slimmer you.  Looking at your schedule by the week functions like a food diary to show you what to cut and what you must keep in.

Schedules cannot be commoditized.  What fuels your Creativity or shuts it down is personal. Nobel Laureate for Peace Elise Weisel reads, travels and writes. But he won’t stop by the Louvre if he’s in Paris .  He says,

What is being lost is the magic of the word.  I am not an image person.  Imagery belongs to another civilization:  the caveman.  Caveman couldn’t express himself so he put images on walls.

But the philosopher Albert Camus saw things differently. He said,

A man’s work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened.

The point is– images stayed out of Weisel’s schedule because they dulled his Creative appetite.

Yesterday, when I realized how slow my mind moved, I looked at my previous 168 hours and immediately found what was going down. Every day, the past week,  I made time for coffee. On the day I had trouble waking to the world and posting on this blog–I did not.   And, having spent most of the previous night talking, not sleeping– the effects of skipping coffee were blaring. Could a simple cup of coffee make my world burn and sparkle with light?

Writer Martha Beck says,

Almost all my middle-aged and elderly acquaintances, including me, feel about 25, unless we haven’t had our coffee, in which case we feel 107.

But the point  isn’t to feel young.  It’s to add sparkle and light to your world–so you can do what you love, well.  I like what the highly Creative mathematician Paul Erdös said best.  He said,

A mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems.

This morning–I won’t forget my coffee.

 

Filed under: Brain Care, Choices, Passion, The Writer | Tagged: , , , , | 1 Comment »

Characteristics of Highly Creative People: Focusing Energy Towards Creation (Part 10)

Posted on December 8, 2010 by galarzamonsalve

For ten days I’m writing about what it really takes to be Highly Creative and whether greater opportunities make for greater Creativity.  Yesterday, I wrote Walking Into the Unknown, in the Dark.

Highly Creative people are passionate on many levels and they bring it all– their passions, their knowledge, their observations, their entire lives, to the Creation table.

Some are lucky enough to grow up in an intellectually rich environment and they grow up surrounded by passion for life and learning.

As a child, British theoretical psychologist Nicholas Humphrey ran around his family’s huge house  and its gardens with his four siblings, two orphaned cousins, fifteen other cousins who lived within walking distance and many friends, including the young Stephen Hawkings. Humphrey’s mother, a psychiatrist who worked with Sigmund Freud’s daughter, Anna Freud, and his father–a Peace activist and Nobel Laureate who also directed the National Institute for Medical Research, where he did seminal research on antibody formation, ran a busy household.  Humphrey says,

We went around in droves and stayed with one another in nearly unmanageable numbers.

But the major event of each week was the visit to my maternal grandparents, the Hills.  The company at these Sunday parties usually spanned three and sometimes four generations, with my grandfather’s colleagues and students invited to sit down with his offsprings’ offspring–high chairs on one side, wheelchairs sometimes on the other.

As children, we lived and breathed science.

The guests at Humphrey’s grandparents were all scientists.  His aunts, uncles and both of his grandfathers were also all scientists.

When the children finished their tea, they would be excused and sent out to play in the acres of land surrounding the mansion. Humphrey says,

My grandfather would not neglect us for long.  Almost every week he devised some new game or experiment: frog races, archery, kite-flying, or perhaps, if the weather was bad, a magic lantern show.  On one memorable occasion, he produced a sheep’s head acquired from the butcher, and placing it on the kitchen table (to the cook’s great distress), he dissected it in front of us.

Humphrey grew up with a sense of intellectual entitlement.  He could ask anything, provoke, pry and go where he pleased in his pursuit of knowledge.  Humphrey says,

To be a good scientist surely requires such audacity.  How else dare anyone do what a scientist is required to do:  to challenge Nature to undress before one’s eyes?

Yet, Humphrey thinks all this privilege could have a downside.  He did nor have to struggle to become a scientist.

I have never experienced any real surprise or sense of achievement at having made it.

I wonder whether, in the end, having been born to be a scientist has not undercut my right to call myself a scientist at all.

Of his grandfathers, both first generation scientists, Humphrey says,

The passion they put into their work was the passion of scientists who daily counted their blessings for being allowed to do science–and who were determined to pay a debt with single-minded dedication.

In order to have passion, you must be exposed to something worth being passionate about.  Humphrey had plenty of exposure on the wonders of science. He did wonder and stand in awe of Nature, but such passion was handed down to him, and so he felt not quite worthy.

Other Highly Creative people are lucky enough to have parents who support them wholeheartedly in much smaller, but immensely meaningful ways.

Rodney Brooks, founder of iRobot and Director of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, grew up as the star-child in his Australian working class family.  He says,

My father and mother had ninth- and tenth-grade educations…none of their friends had finished high school either.

But Brooks could manipulate numbers in his head at a young age.  He says.

I had an obsession with the regularity of arithmetic.

When his parents built a carport next to the house, some extra backyard space was freed up and Brook’s father built one bench each for his two children so they could tinker with wires and other extras he had left over from his telephone repair business.

Brooks’ parents could not give him their passion for inventing, because they did not have it themselves to give. But they gave him space, some materials, lots of time to try things out and a book titled Giant Electronic Brains. which described the binary system and how computers could outperform an abacus expert doing arithmetic. Brook’s energy for Creative work and passion grew with time spent on doing what he loved to do as a child– inventing and tinkering with wires and numbers.

Creativity scholar Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi says,

Creative individuals have a great deal of physical energy…they work long hours, with great concentration, while projecting an aura of freshness and enthusiasm.

This does not mean that Creative persons are hyperactive, always “on”, constantly churning away.  In fact they often take rests and sleep a lot.  The important thing is that the energy is under their own control.

The first enemies of Creation are apathy and satisfaction with the status quo,  but the biggest is the lack of ability to focus your energy towards Creation.

A good friend of mine grew up in a home where perfection was expected of her and her siblings in every area of life and achievement.  She remembers a constant sub-clinical fear of not being good enough but also not knowing what good enough could ever be.  Several months ago she began attending Al-Anon meetings, which are groups where relatives of alcoholics or other addicts, including “clean” addictions, like perfectionism meet to support each other towards healing.  When I asked her what she was getting out of her Al-Alon group time, she gave me a bookmark with some of the core Al-Anon sayings like the following three I picked out:

  • Just for today:  I will have a program.  I may not follow it exactly, but I will have it.  I will save myself from two pests: hurry and indecision.
  • Just for today:  I will have a quiet half hour all by myself and relax.  During this half hour, sometime, I will try to get a better perspective of my life.
  • Just for today:  I will be unafraid.  I will not be afraid to enjoy what is beautiful and to believe that as I give to the world, so the world will give to me.

When I read my friend’s bookmark, I realized some of the Al-Anon sayings describe how Highly Creative people find ways to Create, no matter whether they grew up well supported or not.

Ivan Pavlov, famous for his dog experiments wrote in his final testament:

Remember that science demands from a man all his life.  If you had two lives, that would be not enough for you.  Be passionate in your work and your searchings.

Passion for Creative pursuits is built by giving to that work you love–everything you have, regardless of your opportunities.  Sometimes your grow into a life that respects Creative work, like some grow up in emotionally healthy families.  But not all Highly Creative people are so lucky.  Those that do not have their pasts on their side teach themselves to harness everything they have for Creation, just like a child of an alcoholic teaches himself to live a healthy life.


Filed under: Characteristics of Highly Creative People | Tagged: , , | 1 Comment »

Sometimes You Need Boredom, Sometimes You Don’t

Posted on October 27, 2010 by galarzamonsalve

Highly Creative people need rich food for thought and plenty of time spent alone to digest it.

My brother-in-law recently moved his family to live on a lonely 200 acre respite in the Midwest. Yesterday, my 6 yr. old asked her now-Midwestern-cousin in a phone-call,  So. How are you? He paused and said,  Ahh.  Really bored.   He has plenty of time to figure out his world alone in his new place, but he’s also hungry for more life to digest.

My little girl commiserated. She said,  Me, too.  By the sudden tone-down of her voice and lopsided half-smile, I could tell she wasn’t really bored at the moment. She was happy to be catching-up with her cousin.

Last week, my older daughter had almost the exact same conversation with the boy’s 11 yr. old sister. The difference was that this daughter did not say Me, too.  Instead she said, How can you be bored?  You live next to a lake, in a forest!

My 11 yr. old usually comes home full of energy, laughing easily and generally happy, from her time at school.  She loves group projects, parties and listening in on adult conversations.  She also prizes her time alone as if it were a scoop of ice cream to top off a delicious meal.  Time alone is the dessert on a well-spent day. But to feast on alone-time all day, would make her sick.

Creation demands food for thought from an outside world and firsthand experience with real people. Creation also requires alone-time.  But there is no universal formula for time well spent. French philosopher, Gaston Bachelard, said,

There are children who will leave a game to go and be bored in a corner of the garret. How often have I wished for the attic of my boredom when the complications of life made me lose the very germ of freedom!”

My nephew and niece needed energy from the world and expressed that need as oppressive boredom. But on busier days, boring moments might feel more like freedom.

If bored, apathetic or blocked, you need outside inspiration.  If spilling over kinetically, or stunned into submission from being in the world and thoughts scatter like Autumn leaves, you need to come into your own internal world.  Mental energy for Creation is state-specific and personal. Learning to meet its demands will only improve Creativity.

Filed under: Childhood, Time Alone | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Letting Feelings Pass Through

Posted on September 22, 2010 by galarzamonsalve

This morning, my 6 yr. old walked past my work table with head turned back towards her brother. She said,

I’m not in the mood for laughing right now!

She turned into our Music room, turned on the CD player, plopped on to the couch and closed her eyes to listen to Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.

My 6 yr. old gets the dramas Jo March, the heroine of Little Women.  At the moment, Jo is turning down her best friend Laurie’s proposal to marry him.

Laurie says,

If you marry me, I’d be a perfect saint!  You could make me into anything you want.

Jo says,

But I can’t change the feeling.  And it would be a lie if I said I do, when I don’t.

My daughter knows more about this in first grade than I did at 18 when I spent a year in South America.

Latin Americans are stereotypically passionate. They don’t handle feelings, but let them pass through as life energies. I learned this after my good friend Fernanda was snubbed publicly by an ex-boyfriend’s new fling.

I walked her home, chatting about nothing important.  At her front gate, she thanked me for keeping her company and said good-bye.  Then she yelled toward the kitchen,

Mariana?

Tell everybody I’m in a bad mood. They mustn’t bother me!

That evening I asked Fernanda how her family handled her request for space.

What do you mean?

I may as well have asked how her family felt about her laughter or need for time with friends.  Her routine to recover from life’s slights and mood breakers fazed no one at her home.

This was a revelation to me, because I thought her dramatic license a bit self-important.

Years later, I heard Barney, the purple dinosaur sing a Spanish version of the children’s classic  “If You’re Happy and You Know It“. This alternative version included two verses, “If You’re Sad and You Know It” and “If You’re Angry, And You Know It,” both of which are absent from the English version. Latin children are coaxed to frown if they are sad, and stomp if they are angry.

Bad moods come and happy moods go, every day you breathe.

When upset, Jo March turned to her notebooks to write or “scribble”, as she called her writing.

My 6 yr. old finds listening to Jo’s story lifts her mood. I’m happy to see her take action.  Hopefully, like Jo, she’ll also  someday find Creative work to channel all of life’s moods into.

Filed under: Childhood, Feelings | Tagged: , | 1 Comment »

Vigorous and Athletic

Posted on September 18, 2010 by galarzamonsalve

Highly Creative people keep favored routines.  For ten days I’m posting about the routines of individual Creators, historical and current. My previous post: Can’t Wait to Get to Work.

Colette

French Novelist

Colette’s late fifties were probably the happiest and certainly the most fecund years of her life. … She continued both to live and to work like an Olympian, and as must all champions, she kept in training. She walked and swam vigorously. She smoked and drank very little. She kept her muscles toned with massage. She maintained an athletic sex life.

During the summers, she adopted a frugal diet and began losing weight. Back in Paris, she consulted a fashionable quack who gave her blood transfusions–the donor was an attractive young woman–and these, she claimed, improved her vision and increased her vitality. But perhaps her most essential beauty secret was to surround herself with a circle of younger friends, male and female, whose hunger for life helped to recharge her own.

“The pleasure I take in contemplating lives on the ascendant reassures me about myself,” she said. “I see so many people who, as they age, find joy only in … their diminution!”

(From Judith Thurman’s book Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette)

Filed under: Creativity by Habits, Passion | Tagged: , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Can’t Wait to Get to Work

Posted on September 17, 2010 by galarzamonsalve

Highly Creative people keep favored routines.  For ten days I’m posting about the routines of individual Creators, historical and current. My previous post: Scheduled Time for Her Dream.

Thomas Friedman

Writer, New York Times Op-Ed Columnist

“Honestly, I still can’t wait to get my pants on in the morning,” Friedman said. He wakes early, then exercises on a stationary bike, and if he has a column in the paper that day he’ll read it through online two or three times, asking himself, “Did I get it right?” On weekdays, he’ll head into D.C.  for a seven-thirty breakfast meeting, which is sometimes followed by an eight-thirty breakfast meeting. The [New York] Times has a floor and a half of a building a few blocks north of the White House, and three of the four Op-Ed columnists who are based in Washington–Friedman, David Brooks, and Maureen Dowd.

Friedman’s large corner office has windows that are oddly small and high, leaving wide areas of wall space. He has hung a poster of a three-masted sailing ship tipping off the edge of a flat world, which he bought long before he wrote “The World Is Flat“–attracted, in part, by the title, which is “I Told You So.”

(From The New Yorker, Thanks to Mason Currey)


Filed under: Creativity by Habits, Passion | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Next Page »
%d bloggers like this: