#1 Love, Listen, Risk, Create
Welcome to this blog: The Insightful Creative.
I aim to share insights from favorite resources (books, articles, posts) as well as interviews / conversations about being creative and living creatively. We’re all wonderfully creative because we’re human, and we have a need and a desire to be creative in some way.
What is your way you like to be creative?
What insights do you have to share?
Two favorite books right now that I am enjoying about being creative are:
21 Insights for 21st Century Creatives by Mark McGuinness & Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert. Both are probably available at your public library.
I will be thinking about these four “categories” as we go forward, and will ask / pose questions to various creatives I talk to with these in mind:
LOVE, LISTEN, RISK, CREATE
These categories can help us cover and organize a lot of ground. Not meant in order, more like a recipe with good ingredients that produces something yummy, but sometimes there’s sour milk or you run out of something in the fridge. That can happen too.
LOVE
Focus on loving what you do.
The first insight in McGuinness’s book is “Everything is powered by love.”
He says “if you don’t love your work, you can forget it as a creative.”
We do what we do because it keeps our heart leaping, our lives feeling satisifed. We make space in our lives for whatever it is that we love because we can’t live without it.
Though we really have to love this work a lot, because it won’t be all roses.
#15 insight is “Don’t let the crappy part put you off,” and he talks about in whatever creative field you choose, there is a crappy part.
Gilbert talks about “The Shit Sandwich.”
She talks about how wonderful, exciting, and glamorous any pursuit may initially seem. But each pursuit comes with its own brand of shit sandwich. Everything sucks, some of the time.
She says “the question is not so much what are you passionate about, but what are you passionate enough about that you can endure the most disagreeable aspects of the work?”
LISTEN
Listen around you.
There are ideas ready to greet us. There are serendiptious moments, people we meet, music we hear, art we see that draw us in and speak to us at different times of our lives. They call our attention. We can engage or not. But we have to be present, ready, curious, aware, and invite the inspiration in. We have to listen.
We also have to listen to ourselves - our bodies, minds - our over-all well-being. Balancing the different aspects of our day to day life so we are open to ideas but also open to doing the creative work we’re called to do.
RISK
Take risks.
”If it’s not risky, it’s risky…” - Willam Dafoe’s interview here is worth watching.
”The bigger the dream, the bigger the fear… fear is actually a sign that you’re on the right path.” - Mark McGuinness (insight #21, courage may be the missing ingredient)
Dream big. Though it may not always turn out as you’d like - good/bad.
CREATE
Create space to create the things that are calling to us.
Creating assets is important for us to document our artistic/creative journeys. Some will generate attention, some maybe a little money, but generally they will document what you are doing as you are doing it and you will have something tangible to share with others. The point is, create something.
Thanks for being along for the ride!
