Building a creativity bridge

One of my favorite habits from Twyla Tharps’s book The Creative Habit, is what she describes as building a bridge to the next day.  She advises us to take on a new posture for the end of each day and instead of creating until you have nothing left to give, quit a little early when you still have some juice left in the tank, a few ideas left unexplored.  Ask yourself what is that idea, that impulse, that expression that you are leaving in the tank? Define it and write it down on a notecard as you finish your work and then don’t think about it the rest of the day.  Sleep on it and then awaken refreshed and anew and revisit your note.

“When you start the next day with the note, you’ll be tapping into that reserve from the day before…you will approach the impulse behind the note as a new person.  At worst, the note will give you something to start with.  More likely, the new you will find a way to improve on it.  With methods like these are grooves formed.” Thanks Twyla.

Give it a try tonight and see if after a few days you return to your work with creative juice leftover to get you started and a fresh perspective to add.

Defining your creative special sauce

Every creative brings with them a unique blend of traits, perspectives, skills, and passions.  Defining them for yourself and others is a generous act that can connect you with other individuals and projects where you can add creative value.

In the studio, we spend time in explorations and exercises that help us define what I call our “creative special sauce statement”.  A compelling special sauce statement should communicate not just what you do, but how and why you do it in a way that only you can.

We start by asking a few trusted friends about our creative essence and strengths.  In one class, I had a student who saw each student as a fabric and explained why.  One person was silk, exuding old world glamour, another was corduroy, expressing something old, worn and safe that you come home to again and again.  See if you can do the same and ask a few collaborators or fans how they see you and your work.  What strengths do they see, what is the essence of your energy, in what creative environments do they see you thrive?

Ask the same questions of yourself.  Think about creative endeavors where you found yourself in a state of flow or roles that really allowed you to express yourself fully or times when you felt you were standing in your power.

Once you have that information, start to see how it informs these prompts.  Start with the phrase, “I am an artist who…”, talk about what you do.  Fill your statement with words explaining what kind of work you enjoy, “I am drawn to work that…” or “I am drawn to stories that…”.  Describe your unique gifts, “I bring to my work…”.  Add a bit about your approach, “ I approach my work with…” and “My work wouldn’t be mine without…”.  Finish your statement with your personal intention and aspirational purpose for your work. “Through my work, I am aim to…”.

I find having this kind of clarity is really empowering and generous to share with others so they know how to empower you and how to best utilize your skills.  I encourage you to put your statement at the top of your resume or college essay.  How amazing would it be for the person on the other side of that resume to be met with someone clear, empowered and purposed?  What a gift.

Keeping a Spark File

Spark files are genius and I can’t believe no one told me about them until I first heard of a similar concept in Twyla Tharp’s book, “The Creative Habit”.  Twyla starts “…every dance with a box.  I write the project name on the box, and as the piece progresses I fill it up with every item that went into the making of the dance.  This means notebooks, news clippings, CDs, videotapes of me working alone in my studio, videos of the dancers rehearsing, books and photographs and pieces of art that may have inspired me.  The box documents the active research on every project…One of the biggest fears for a creative person is that some brilliant idea will get lost because you didn’t write it down and put it in a safe place.  I don’t worry about that because I know where to find it.  It’s all in the box.”  Twyla’s use of the box is project specific; it’s the place she goes to both fill up and check out with creative inspiration and ideas.

Another version of this is called a Spark File.  A spark file can be physical or digital or both.  Personally, I keep a Word doc on my desktop and anytime I come across a concept, exercise, quote, piece of art that I find interesting or intriguing, I put it in my doc, aka my Spark File.  There have been many times when I’ve been stuck and gone to my Spark File to find just the nugget that I need to help me see a new path.  Heck, these blogs are partly an amalgamation of information that I’ve been acquiring over the years in my Spark File.

Figure out how you want to structure your Spark File and then keep it handy on your desktop or phone or night table and be sure to make an inspiration investment every time you find something worthy, I promise it will pay off in dividends anytime you need a little spark to get you going.

The importance of reflection scripts

I first heard about Reflection Scripts from acting coach Jen Waldman on her podcast with leadership coach Pete Shepherd.  On that podcast Jen and Pete state, “Essentially a reflection script is a creative way to either write or talk or just spend time thinking about and reflecting on a project, or an audition, or an interview, or a podcast, or like, a piece of work that you have done.”  They suggest starting with a simple framework of 3 questions, 1. How do I generally feel about what just happened?  2. What went well? 3. What went less well?  I naturally engaged in this practice without having a name for it for as far back as I can remember.  However, I only recently realized how key this practice is for developing discernment when it comes to feedback.

In a recent TCE gym class, we were discussing feedback, how to know what to take in and what to leave out.  As a creative, our job is to consistently share our work with people who will inevitably and understandably have an opinion about what we created.  In response, we need to be dogged in developing our personal brand of creative discernment and aesthetic, so that we can know not only who our work is for and who it is not for, but which feedback to take into account as we iterate.

Engaging in a consistent reflection script practice allows us to build self-awareness and hone our natural instincts about what feels in line with what we expect from ourselves and our work.  The key is to practice the reflection script with ourselves BEFORE we allow anyone else’s feedback or opinions into our creative psyche.  By doing this, we learn to rely first on our own impressions and evaluate our work against our personal creative standards; we develop our own creative discernment and learn to listen to our gut instincts.  Once we know how we feel about our work, ONLY THEN can we better sort feedback and determine which feedback to consider and which is out of line with our creative standards, intents and aesthetic.

Give it a try and start honing your creative instincts with a consistent reflection script practice before you give someone else power over how you should think about your work.

Try on a ‘Win Wall’

In the TCE studio, before each student leaves class, their exit ticket is placing a yellow sticky note on our collective studio WIN WALL. The instructions are to write either a success, gratitude, contribution or appreciation that can be attributed to that day’s class. Here are some real life examples, “I belted ‘Defying Gravity’ like a boss!” and “I’m grateful for believing that there is so much for me to do artistically.” Not only does this practice create community, encourage reflection, focus on growth and engender a spirit of both gratitude (receiving) and contribution (giving), but it is also an effective barometer for where our efforts are having an impact. For example, at the end of a session, we can look back on all our wins and piece together what efforts led to the wins. We ask, what was it exactly that I did that led to that success, how did that contribution lead to someone else’s success, what made us experience gratitude and what did we appreciate in others that might tell us more about how we like to work or the community we like to create in? The WIN WALL can reflect where to concentrate more of our efforts, who to surround ourselves with and what type of community we create best in. Or more simplistically, it just feels really good to look back on all the ways we’ve grown together and focus on the positive ways we show up for ourselves and our fellow creatives.

Creativity is a daily practice

What’s important is not the destination or “stage” upon which our creativity lands; what is important is that we learn to establish frameworks and systems that encourage us to practice our creativity every single day. Ultimately, that practice is what will lead us to creative fulfillment and success on a variety of stages.

In my Foundations class, we practice a framework called “Creative In, Creative Out”. Here, I ask students to commit to one week of daily creative practice where they both take in creative work and put out creative work with 20 minutes dedicated to each creative act. Creative In can include going to an art gallery, researching works by a favorite choreographer, or studying the vocal choices of a singer. Creative Out can be writing the lyrics to the chorus of a song, sketching the stream behind your house, mimicking the vocal choices of the singer that you studied, choreographing a short piece inspired by the movements and style of the choreographer you researched. Creative In forces us to continually refill our inspiration files so that we always have source material to pull from and are continually expanding our creative vocabulary. Creative Out forces us to exercise our creative muscles in ways that might not always be audience ready, to stretch and play to increase our creative bandwidth and apply our learnings without the pressure of producing something worthy of someone else’s consumption.

And so I ask you, what is your practice? How do you show up for your creative self each and every day?