Book Review: The Creative Habit
Twyla Tharp’s book ‘The Creative Habit. Learn and use it for life’ is one of the books on creativity I return to again and again.
For a long time, I was unsure whether it’s for me. Mainly because Twyla Tharp is a renowned choreographer. And I’m not a dancer. Dancing has always felt like a very strange, unlearnable language to me.
I held that book many times, and I’m so glad I eventually spotted this quote which finally clinched it for me:
“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.”
Creativity is for – and in! – everyone
Twyla Tharp’s broad definition of creativity aligns with my own creative practice and how want to welcome creativity into my coaching sessions. We weave arts-based processes gently into the work, even, or especially when clients don’t consider themselves creative.
Her book is full of practical guidance on how we can rekindle and nurture our creativity. I have met no-one who said that they don’t want to be creative, but plenty of people who don’t believe to be creative or don’t know where and how to start. This book provides many examples of Twyla Tharp’s practice as well as that of other artists, writers, athletes, businesspeople, and many more who have all found their own ways into creativity.
Creativity as a habit
She is honest about the fact that creativity requires work and commitment. It requires steadiness, dedication and vulnerability. She shares her tricks of keeping habits in her life that nudge her to being creative.
We are creatures of habit, but we also lean toward the path of least resistance.
Doing creative work isn’t always easy, especially when distractions lurk everywhere, often in the palm of our hands... Tharp emphasises the importance of
automatic but decisive patterns of behaviour – at the beginning of the creative process, when you are most at peril of turning back, chickening out, giving up, or going the wrong way.
Creativity as a skill
When visiting museums or galleries, I often find myself most drawn to artists’ sketchbooks, less to the final masterpiece. The final piece can easily look like the work of a genius.
But the sketchbooks reveal it is a work of practice, planning and preparation.
In an interview for the Harvard Business Review Tharp acknowledges:
“I create about six times more material for my dances than I end up using in the final piece.”
In The Creative Habit, she also warns us of getting too stuck in our ways and quotes the sixteenth-century Japanese swordfighter Miyamoto Musashi:
“Never have a favourite weapon.”
I observe in my arts-based coaching how this creates an interesting tension. It’s often easier to get started with familiar or enjoyable materials.
Yet sometimes, the most surprising, significant and useful insights are reached when we create in a way that’s new to us, something we haven’t mastered.
Creativity as discovery
Even though creativity is something we are all born with, as we go through life, it’s easy to forget what our natural creative process feels like. We are unsure at which points we tend to get stuck and which phases of the creative process come easily to us. At the end of each chapter, Tharp shares exercises that help us explore your creativity.
We’re invited to mine for memory in a photo, explore our creative DNA, and suggests removing one of our skills from the equation and see what we can still create or how we create differently.
Tend and befriend your inner critic
Sharing any creative act with the world feels risky. Perfectionism is a way of managing the fear associated with that risk.
Perfectionism kills creativity and joy.
In an attempt to manage this risk and keep us safe, the inner critic uses the message of not being not good enough as a deterrent. The only way forward is to tend and befriend your inner critic.
We must understand the underlying intention, related fears and other emotions and get awareness around times or circumstances when this strategy was appropriate and effective. (That’s where the trauma-informed aspects of my coaching practice come in…)
Twyla Tharp embraces failure as part of the creative process. In fact, she lists a range of failures in her book – but that’s a whole other article… She recommends gathering a ‘validation squad’. This isn’t necessarily a group of people who will love everything you do, but they are people who care about you, who don’t compete with you and provide constructive feedback, with honesty as well as respect. As a coach, I’m always in your validation squad.
Get creative
My own journey back to creativity began tentatively after a twenty-year hiatus. And I can say: it’s never too late and of course, I haven’t looked back!
Maybe you want to read The Creative Habit now?