It's an incredibly simple and no-nonsense book that is helping me so much to understand this whole bit about creativity and why so many of us have so many problems launching the ideas that come and go through our heads all day long. He calls this "resistance" and the whole book is based upon the identification of this "enemy" and the "battle plan" for overcoming it.
This morning I listened to a TED lecture (if you haven't tried this website, you're really missing something) given by Julie Burnstein, author of "Spark: How Creativity Works". It was another simple but inspirational guide, this time dealing with the four aspects that artists embrace in order to be creative. I hung on her every word.
Creativity grows out of our everyday experiences. Perhaps the hardest, but he most important is the ability to embrace loss, recognizing that some things are more beautiful when repaired than in their original state.
I'm learning this on a very simplistic level - embracing broken seashells as I walk along the beach. For me, this is so new. I used to only bend down to collect shells that were in their "perfect" and unbroken state, rejecting even the tiniest imperfection. I hadn't realized what I missed until I started being less selective with regard to perfection. I now have boxes and bags of shells, many of them, former rejects.
My creativity was unleashed after my retirement. It seemed that during my career, while I used this "gift" in the workplace, it always was with restraint or permission. Resistance is fueled by fear and the fear of making an error in the eyes of the "boss" was high test. My time in Assisi, post retirement and post-loss, was a real catalyst to my creativity and I found it interesting that Julie's TED lecture was given in November of last year, at the time I was there, refueling. Thank you ted.com.
So, I'm making a codfish out of a cow and I'm fearless. Stay tuned for photos.
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