The creative habit : learn it and use it for life : a practical guide

264 Pages·2003·10.7 MB·English

by  Tharp, Twyla

TWYLA THARP
THE CREATIVE HABIT
E IT FOR LIFE
U.S. $25.00
Can. $37.50
CREATIVITY
is not a gift from the gods, says Twyla
Tharp, bestowed by some divine and mystical spark. It is
the product of preparation and effort, and it’s within reach
of everyone who wants to achieve it. All it takes is the will¬
ingness to make creativity a habit, an integral part of your
life: In order to be creative, you have to know how to prepare
to be creative. In The Creative Habit, Tharp takes the les¬
sons she has learned in her remarkable thirty-five-year
career and shares them with you, whatever creative
impulses you follow—whether you are a painter, composer,
writer, director, choreographer, or, for that matter, a busi¬
nessperson working on a deal, a chef developing a new dish,
a mother wanting her child to see the world anew.
When Tharp is at a creative dead end, she relies on a
lifetime of exercises to help her get out of the rut, and The
Creative Habit, contains more than thirty of them to ease the
fears of anyone facing a blank beginning and to open the
mind to new possibilities.
Tharp’s exercises are practical and immediately
doable—for the novice or expert. In “Where’s Your Pen¬
cil?” she reminds us to observe the world—and get it down
on paper. In “Coins and Chaos,” she provides the sim¬
plest of mental games to restore order and peace. In “Do a
Verb,” she turns your mind and body into coworkers. In
“Build a Bridge to the Next Day,” she shows how to clean
your cluttered mind overnight.
To Tharp, sustained creativity begins with rituals, sell-
knowledge, harnessing your memories, and organizing
your materials (so no insight is ever lost). Along the way she
leads you by the hand through the painful first steps of
scratching for ideas, finding the spine of your work, and
(continued on back flap)

Digitized by the Internet Archive
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Also by Twyla Tharp
Push Conies to Shove: An Autobiography
TWYLA THARP
THE CREATIVE HABIT
LEARN IT AND USE IT FOR LIFE
A PRACTICAL GUIDE
WITH MARK REITER
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Tharp, Twyla.
The creative habit: learn it and use it for life : a practical
guide / Twyla Tharp, with Mark Reiter,
p. cm.
1. Creative ability. 2. Creative thinking. 3. Creation (Literary, artistic, etc.).
I. Reiter, Mark. II. Title.
BF408.T415 2003
153.3'5—dc22 2003057389
ISBN 0-7432-3526-6
The authors and publisher gratefully acknowledge permission to reprint the following materials:
p. 18: “Two Sketches of Beethoven by J. D. Bohrn, between 1820 and 1825” (courtesy of Beethoven-
haus, Bonn), from Oscar G. Sonneck, ed., Beethoven: Impressions by His Contemporaries (Dover Pub¬
lications, 1926).
p.153: Buster Keaton, Steamboat Bill, Jr. (United Artists, 1928), 3 stills; courtesy of the Academy of
Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
p. 172: Two sketches of waves, from The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, compiled and edited from
the original manuscripts by Jean Paul Richter (Dover Publications [1970]).
p. 241: (Left) Rembrandt, Artist in His Studio, c. 1627-28; photograph © 2003 Museum of Fine
Arts, Boston. (Right) Rembrandt, Self Portrait with Two Circles, c. 1665; courtesy of the English
Heritage Photographic Library/Kenwood House.
To my mother, Lecille Confer Tharp,
for making sure I had all the tools I would need.
To my father, William Albert Tharp,
for giving me the DNA to build things from scratch.
To my son, Jesse Alexander Huot,
for helping me create each new day.
And those who had seen it told how he who had
been possessed with demons was healed.