creative process

The Evolution of a Snowflake Is Like…Our Own

This wondrous video made us look up “How Are Snowflakes Formed?”, a question that, in all our long years, we’ve never known the answer to. And we found that the answers curiously echo the creative process and individual growth.

growing is no easy not matter how long we’ve lived

Growing is no piece of cake no matter how tall we are or how long we’ve lived. We progress, we fall back, we start all over again, ferblungeoning forward into our future even while kicking and screaming. The universe commands expanding, and we obey, improvising every step of the way. The side of the bookshelf at the door of…

‘do the one thing you think you cannot do’

Maria Robledo sent us this very wise quote from Oprah whose ‘Fail at it. Try again.’ echoes Samuel Beckett’s great ‘Try again. Fail again. Fail better‘. We especially like Oprah’s spin on it:

bruce mau’s incomplete manifesto for growth

Anne Johnson alerted us to the extraordinary ‘Incomplete Manifesto for Growth that legendary designer and visionary Bruce Mau wrote in 1998: 43 powerful principles and practices. We’ve bolded our favorites: Allow events to change you. You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You…

seth godin on creatives: ‘there’s only what works for you’

In the course of a year, quite a few people ask me for advice about how to DO what they dream of doing. Many, not all, are writers. The question is not about how to achieve success, but simply how to start and keep going. It is a central question of the creative process. Seth…

yayoi kusama’s art-medicine

In The Art of the Flame-Out, Carl Swanson writes about visionary Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama’s return to the New York Art scene after 40 years in a mental-hospital exile. But whatever you make of her retreat into a psych ward, her mantra was always “self-obliteration”—to lose herself in the work, or to the work, to save herself.…

mastery of anything is about practice + overcoming ‘can’t’

David Saltman over at The Houdini File spotted this image on The Art of Kung Fu’ facebook with the comment: Whenever you say “I can’t do it”, think of this photo. All martial arts, including tai chi, are about practice…a lifetime of practice to gain mastery… …And mastery of ANYTHING is about practice, perservering in the…

the power of failure, doubt and stumbling

We recently ran a New Yorker cartoon showing Noah’s Ark filled with only giraffes. The suggested caption was “Mistakes were made.” Now The New Yorker has compounded its mistakes with Malcolm Gladwell’s latest piece The Gift of Doubt. It totally convinces us that in order to find the right path, you often have to take the…

we’re taking a mini sabbatical

(Video link here.) One of the things Designer Stefan Sagmeister is known for is the seemingly radical act of taking a year long sabbatical every seven years to refresh his creative self and explore projects freely. He has much to say about sabbaticals. Our favorite bit: How important do you think a sabbatical is for…

how christoph niemann’s app failure was a big success

When the wise, inventive, not-terribly-technological Christoph Niemann tried to create an app, it became pretty “interesting. He documented the process in the New Yorker recently and in doing so, a wonderful distillation of the creative process and struggle: I explored countless (but crucial) dead ends, and it all came down to the most important struggle…

the brain of a creative in diagrams

…good ideas…bad ideas…doubt…more doubt…no, no, no….fear…talent…self-loathing…concepts…scribbles… imagination… What a mash-up! Anyone we know? ….Meanwhile, what about that left brain/right brain thing?

the power of introverts + their collaboration w extroverts

(Video link here.) There’s been a lot of buzz lately about Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking. Author Susan Cain shines a spotlight on introverts and reveals how over time our society has come to look to extroverts as leaders. Not suggesting that one is better than the other,…

improvisation in the natural world

I’ve been thinking a lot about birds lately, about the mystery of their migrations; their unerring return each spring. Our Cooper’s hawk is back from the dry barrancas of Zapotecas, its familiar kek-kek-kek vying with argumentative crows and cooing mourning doves at dawn. Improvisatory arboreal architects are at work big time. Humingbird hangs its timid sac of…

3 improvs: pilgrimage, kickstarter win, poetry practice

We are constantly knocked out by the wonderful endeavors our readers are involved in, committed to, CREATED out of nothing, improvised. Here are a few from the past week: David Downie and Alison Harris set out from their home in Paris to walk across France to the Pyrenees, the French portion of El Camino de…

the virtues of doubt (paul zelevansky)

(Video link here.) In the annals of self-helpism, doubt is considered something to overcome, to find ways around, to MASTER. We’ve discovered time and again that that is easier said than done. Doubt seems to come with territory of being creative, and most of the people we know just find ways to soldier through…or be…

Sister Corita Kent’s Enduring Rules for Making + Her Art

When we were first planning ‘the improvised life’, we were inspired by this now-famous set of rules by Sister Corita Kent, artist and renown educator. They speak directly to the process of creating…ANYTHING. Here are our favorite essential rules: Find a place you trust and then try trusting it for a while. Consider everything as…

‘my dinner with andre’ on the meaning of life + coffee

(Video link here.) One of our favorite films has long been My Dinner with Andre, which is, on the surface, a conversation between two friends during dinner in a French restaurant in New York City. Andre Gregory vividly describes his revelatory, new-ageish, risk-taking experiences in experimental theatre while his modest less-adventurous friend Wally Shawn listens and…

louis c.k. on ‘putting the time in’

Once again, our unlikely wiseman Louis C.K. nails it in a recent interview in the New York Times about his thriving success and upcoming HBO special: Q-Does it matter that what you’ve achieved, with your online special and your tour can’t be replicated by other performers who don’t have the visibility or fan base that…

the tenacity of spring (and us)

March, 2013. A sugar snap pea vine uncurls to grasp a rusted garden fence. So tentative and fragile, it’s hard to imagine that by the end of April the fence will be all but obliterated in a tenacity of leaves, blossoms and pods. Kay Ryan, the sixteenth Poet Laureate of the United States, sums up what it…

pixar’s 22 rules of storytelling annotated: 13 rules for creatives

Over the past several months, Pixar’s former story artist Emma Coates‘ 22 Rules of Good Storytelling has been flying around the web. Although we find it to be excellent advice for writers, we found annotating it made it even better: a list of fine life principles for any creative soul. Our favorite: No work is ever wasted. If it’s not…

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