I'm reading The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp during a week of hard work and meetings and it has been helping me keep an open mind and the creative juices flowing.
The most memorable part in the book I reached was where she says that as we develop an idea, we need to push it further. Tharp's thought is that we should spend time to develop the approach to the topic in a way that can make it fresh and interesting.
Tharp defines creativity as an act of defiance. "You're challenging the status quo," she writes, "You're questioning accepted truths and principles." Might that be a reason why blogging is viewed by the professionals who engage in it as such a valuable tool?
You will have good days, and you will have less favorable days; days in which everything may seem like a gigantic effort. Many bloggers have shared their thoughts on what happens to them on those less than stellar days: they view the blog as a sanctuary, a place where, as my friend Peter Tunjic expressed so well, they "sing themselves into existence".
This is a space, a conversation you are creating to convey your thinking, your message, and what it feels like to be you. Your day may have ended or began with a floor full of scattered ideas you were offering to develop and ended up instead littering your space and doing no one any good. Until you pick them up, one by one, and figure out a way to combine them differently and piece them back together.
You may decide to push one or two around in your mind, try them out in your blog, and before you know it, something is beginning to take shape. What if? You are now a creator. By virtue of publishing your idea and sharing it, your creation is alive with possibility -- you haven't given up on yourself. And you're open for business: you are letting other people be inspired by it and in turn inspire you back.
[Jeremy Irons and Justin Theroux were voted the people's favorites at the premiere of Inland Empire at the 63rd International Film Festival of Venice where the movie was not in the running]