The World According to Tharp

—Twyla Tharp reminds us that “being creative is not a once-in-a-while sort of thing.”—

The Creativity/Inspiration genre can be problematic, tending toward cheery but chicken-soup-style platitudes at one extreme, and falsely authoritative (read: unhelpful) advice at the other.

To my tastes, the most useful and invigorating compendium for artists and creatives would instruct but never pander, inspire but never coddle. I’d prefer confessional—and therefore comforting—bluntness like Annie Dillard’s in The Writing Life:

I do not so much write a book as sit up with it, as with a dying friend. During visiting hours, I enter its room with dread and sympathy for its many disorders. I hold its hand and hope it will get better.

I’d mix this with the high incitements of Thoreau’s Walden:

Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer? Read your fate, see what is before you, and walk on into futurity.

And I’d toss in some Henry James…

Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost!

…and some Rilke …

We have no reason to harbor any mistrust against our world, for it is not against us… if there are dangers, we must try to love them.

… and then we’d be talking. (Brenda Ueland’s classic If You Want to Write comes close to the mark, as I recall. And then maybe…ahem…this blog skirts the ideal territory too.)

But as it happens, I recently had cause for great delight in my (belated) discovery of The Creative Habit, renowned choreographer Twyla Tharp’s professed “practical guide” to jumpstarting and maintaining creativity. With its storied insights, prodigious good sense, razor wit, and occasional exalted utterance, The Creative Habit embodies my elusive ideal in many ways.

The essential basis of the book is the following assertion:

In order to be creative you have to know how to prepare to be creative.

The de-romanticism here is potentially helpful in itself. Other books of the genre have likewise labored to strip away the highfalutin hang-ups that encumber creative flow (e.g., It’s gotta spring perfect from the soul! Or: I’ve gotta feel the thunderbolt of inspiration!), but too often they end up sounding purely utilitarian or mercenary.

The creative type, meanwhile, tends to fancy herself more practitioner than professional—more artist than industrialist. She needs to preserve the sanctity in her dedication or it’s all for naught.

Tharp’s graceful style in The Creative Habit (co-created by Mark Reiter) serves artist and practitioner well, striking just the right balance between the necessarily stern pragmatism of a creative coach and the knowing sensitivity—even near religiousness—of a dancer.

There’s a difference between a work’s beginning and starting to work.

Now there’s a truth that’s blunt, affirmative, semi-mystical, and indispensably useful all at once.

Throughout, Tharp forgoes pandering, as when she obliterates one of the most common excuses made by would-be creatives who balk at beginning:

Someone has done it before? Honey, it’s all been done before. Nothing’s really original. Not Homer or Shakespeare and certainly not you. Get over yourself.

Neither does she coddle. She goads the reader to get down to work, not by appeasing some finicky inspiration-membrane but more simply by cutting out distractions (movies, multitasking, numbers, background music), building a tolerance for solitude, and learning to recognize the creative boon of limited resources (here she touches beautifully upon the theme of resistance, which I explored a few weeks back).

No deprivation, no inspiration… Whom the gods wish to destroy, they give unlimited resources.

But I don’t want to make this book sound like a scourge, for beyond such coldwater splashes, The Creative Habit is that thing most precious and rare to its genre: a perennial resource replete with dependable, practicable exercises. Each chapter’s impressive mélange of philosophy, historical anecdote, personal biography, analogy, and secrets shared is followed by a mini-workbook mindfully designed to help one hone a skill, harness a memory, awaken ideas, or escape from a rut.

In these exercises, and in overall scope, The Creative Habit is overwhelmingly enlivening.

Creativity is an act of defiance. You’re challenging the status quo. You’re questioning accepted truths and principles. You’re asking three universal questions that mock conventional wisdom: ‘Why do I have to obey the rules?’ ‘Why can’t I be different?’ ‘Why can’t I do it my way?’

For those who have yet to begin, Tharp will help you get started. For those already underway, she will supply counsel in spades.

Either way, The Creative Habit is a treasure for creative thinkers looking to make the long haul.

(Thanks to Soul Shelter reader Daniel for recommending this book.)

You may also enjoy:

“Two Books to Encourage & Console Creatives”

“Steve Martin Tells the Story Before the Glory”

“Here’s to Success Finding How to Succeed Books”

“Eavesdrop on These Inspiring Conversations”

“The Merit of Mistakes”

“Soul School”

“Eight Difficult, Outdated Ways to Excel”