How Does Your Creativity Work (and Grow)?

How does writing work?

Like this:

1. Carve out an uninterrupted time, daily if possible.
2. Gather your tools. (Laptop, paper/pen or whatever you prefer).
3. Start writing something. There are books filled with writing prompts you can use to get your fingers and brain moving. Or you can revise what you wrote the day before to warm up.
4. Morph into the writing you wanted to do you or into the writing that emerges from your fingers or pen.
5. Repeat the following day.

Did you notice anything?

I described the conditions where writing happens, not “how writing works.“

I don’t know how writing works.

I don't know how creativity works.

I only know that if I regularly set the stage for it to work, that "it" almost always does.

Here’s the paradox.

For art to work, it needs structure and routine.

My writing would like me better if I sat down at the same time every day and wrote. (I am working on it).

It seems like my creativity would love 100% freedom, but it doesn't. Even if we don't know exactly how creativity works, it seems to need the feeling of safety and normalcy that comes with routines. It loves strong boundaries.

Inside limits, we create miracles.

Weird.

Are you putting your miracles into the world? Email me if you're stuck. We can figure out how to move the obstacles. Don’t stay stuck. Your work matters.

With love and paradox.

Oh, and to listen to a podcast where creative people stumble over their words trying to explain how their art “works,“ tune into this episode of Freakonomics. It’s funny.