The Writer’s Coin

This one was a pleasant surprise for me. It’s a book written by a dance choreographer — the only dance I have in my life is when M and I watch (at her behest) Dancing with the Stars and So You Think You Can Dance. In other words, when I read the author about this book on creativity was coming from a dance background, I didn’t see what I was going to get out of it.

Luckily enough, I was wrong.

One of the big things I learned from this book is that creativity is creativity, no matter how you practice it or what format it’s in. She brings up musical examples, writing examples, painting, etc. And you know what? I felt like I understood them. I got it even though I can only relate to writing.

Here are some of the things she covers that stood out to me:

- She mentions the importance of habit when it comes to creativity, and setting aside the time to “get it done.” Her routing is going to the gym every morning for two hours, first thing in the morning. That’s what gets her started. I can relate: my routine is waking up at 5:30, getting a cup of coffee, and sitting down to write. We each have to find what works for us.

- Every chapter has a bunch of exercises to get you to understand what she’s saying in a practical way, and actually practicing is the only way to really understand a lot of this stuff.

- She talks about Scratching in one chapter — I call it digging. It’s all about finding the best places to “dig up” or “scratch away” to get our inspiration/material/ideas/creative juices going. To writers she says we should be reading the best writers in the world. This is why it’s so hard for me to read shitty writers people.

- One of her exercises is to challenge yourself by pretending to take away one of your best abilities to see how you would cope with it — to see how you would rise to the challenge. It reminded me of my time in grad school and how every time I wrote a story I took it as a challenge to give the class something new and original that would get them talking/thinking. It makes you realize that creativity, at its core, is really about problem solving.

- She tells us to stay innocent. What she’s talking about is to make sure you don’t get to a point where you think you know it all or have tried it all — that’ll never happen. And staying innocent about things means you’ll venture out into the unknown and wind up creating more original things, or at least you’ll try to, which is just as hard. She also calls it being “forever the child.”

- “The more you fail in private, the less you will fail in public.” This directly applies to writers. We have the distinct advantage of being able to work alone in a room and write absolute trash. Then we can work on it for years and years if we want to without having to expose our shitty work until we think it’s good. She agrees and thinks it’s smart to work hard in private so when you’re finally showing your work off it’ll minimize failure (which is a part of being creative).

She isn’t pompous at all despite what she’s accomplished (she’s pretty famous in the dance world). The bottom of the cover says “A practical guide” and that’s just what this is. This is one of those books I want to have on my bookshelf for future reference because the process she describes applies to any creative endeavor, and I like to read about process when I’m stuck in mine (which is a lot).

If you’re someone that participates in a creative activity, you need to read this book. If you’re just curious about creativity, you might still find this interesting. Hell, you might even decide to start creating some work of your own.

Tags: choreographer, Creativity, dancer, the creative habit, twyla tharp