The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life (Learn In and Use It for Life) 1st Edition, Kindle Edition

Twyla Tharp's book is a great resource for the "left brained" creative. Although written by a choreographer, Tharp uses her experience as a backdrop to paint solid mental models, and does not beat the reader over the head with her trade. Interspersed with useful exercises and insightful anecdotes, this is the book I recommend first and foremost to those who ask me for resources on creativity... especially my analytical colleagues in finance, accounting, and IT. Very solid depth yet very digestible for the casual reader.

This is likely the best book on creativity you'll read this year. I'm not a dancer (I'm a fiction author), but The Creative Habit addresses all artists and business minds too. This is more than just practical suggestions to stimulate your creative juices and not the same ol' you've read before. Generous with deep perspectives, philosophy, and real life insights. What do you do if you are in a rut with your project or story or music? How can you unleash the energy you need to move ahead? "Muscle memory" was eye opening for me. Do you need to face your fears? Twyla has got something to say about that. How do you become lucky? This book is full of answers.

"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 willingness 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 lessons 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 businessperson 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 Pencil?" she reminds us to observe the world--and get it down on paper. Amen! In "Coins and Chaos," she provides the simplest 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, self-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 getting out of ruts into productive grooves. In her creative realm, optimism rules. An empty room, a bare desk, a blank canvas can be energizing, not demoralizing. And in this inventive, encouraging book, Twyla Tharp shows us how to take a deep breath and begin! Twyla Tharp's rich and remarkable The Creative Habit is a book I will keep close at hand for re-reading and re-inspiring ...f-f-f-frequently. It is one of the most highlighted, underlined, marginal thoughts notes books I have in a library chock full of creativity books. This one is one of the top five on my list.

While I am not a dancer, I am a creative soul. Ms. Tharp uses her dance and choreography as examples, but speaks directly to artists in any genre as she describes the creative process. This book as thrilled my creative spirit and inspired me to allow myself to go beyond the self-imposed limits that I had unknowingly placed on myself.

It's helpful. In a nutshell, it tells the reader to make a habit out of the work it takes to be creative. It has exercises to help keep one's focus. But some of the exercises are more based on trying to answer existential questions about yourself. The author uses herself as a test subject for these exercises and she naturally comes back to her beginnings and the innate reasons for being as a resource to gather creative ideas. But I couldn't finish the book because the author kept talking about herself the entire time outside of said exercieses and then uses famous figures in history to support her choices in life. Despite her intentions, her need to validate her career choices show up whenever she talks about her unique name, her upbringing, her earlist memory, etc. I appreciate that her book's main message is that ingenuity, creativity, and talent all result from unglamourous, habitual, consistent, hard work. But that message is overrun by the author's introspection of herself.

Much of what the author writes I agree with...but there are some points, for writers at least, that I disagree with on every level. For example, getting angry at the self does not unleash creativity in writers. There were times in my study of martial arts when this tactic worked to help me enhance my skill, precision, and power. But in writing, there is already so much doubt and rage an author can feel for themselves that can fuel imposter syndrome. As a writer and book coach, I would never advise a writer to use this tactic. The fact is that while there are many similarities between physical pursuits like dance or martial arts and writing, not every approach is multi-disciplinary. Still, there was some good advice in this book, and it was nice to see how the author wrote about exercises I myself have tried many times—as well as those I haven’t. Some good takeaways, but writers should take some of the advice with care not to let it lead them to crippling self-doubt.

An eye-opening look into the habits and rituals of excellence of a long-term career artist. This is a lyrically well-written and informative guide on how artists and creative types can ritualize the creative habit to maximize their potential. Ms. Tharp's career longevity is a testament to the value of sustained artistic and creative discipline.

Twyla Tharp, as well as having a fabulous name, is one of America’s greatest choreographers. In this book, she converts 35 years of experience into 32 practical exercises on how to make creativity a natural part of your life, whether professionally or personally, artist or business person. My copy of this book is dog eared, covered in highlighter pen and pencil, and always on my desk for inspiration. I read it about 10 years ago and refer to it (and recommend it to others) on at least a monthly basis.

I started life as a fine artist, making work, exhibiting, etc. For a long time I had a very consistent and active creative habit. But over the years, family life and work life have taken over more of my time and attention, and my artistic practice has taken a back seat. In an effort to rekindle the creative habit in my life, I turned to this book to see if it had anything to offer. I've found it very helpful. The suggestions are effectively a strategy for any creative work. It is a practical guide underpinned by real-world experience. Although she comes from the dance world, many of the things Twyla Tharp outlines in this book resonate with me as a visual artist, but seeing them laid out clearly has helped me reconnect to habits and ideas I once knew, but didn't know I knew because they were so intrinsic to my work.

Twyla Tharp is awesome in discipline, but way too tough for me. She's militant, but this is perhaps necessary for a dancer. I prefer a softer flowing approach to creativity. See Laurence Shorter's 'Lazy Guru' or check out his blog - beautiful and inspiring.

Bought this book but didn’t have high hopes for it. I was wrong she writes well, the book is amusing and thoughtful, Twyla spent years as a choreographer but her creative planning and thought processes apply to many fields, I am reading slowly and have been enjoying very much.

If I could boil this book down to its essence, I would say the main theme is: if you want to be creative, just make a start. But Tharp gives all sorts of tips on how to get started, how to be inspired, how to approach tasks. It really is a fascinating insight into how she maintained her creative life, and I found it a very inspiring book. My main problem regarding being creative had been a big block in just starting and getting on with it. I found the answer and the advice I really needed in this book.