Make A Creative Leap

Jump, and you will find out how to unfold your wings as you fall.

—Ray Bradbury

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

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Make A Creative Leap

Jump, and you will find out how to unfold your wings as you fall.

—Ray Bradbury

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

Where Will You Find Creative Inspiration Today?

The world is but a canvas to the imagination.

~Henry David Thoreau

Write Straight to the Heart

The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart.

~Maya Angelou

Always Spend Your Creativity

You can’t use up creativity.

The more you use, the more you have.

~Maya Angelou

Let Your Imagination Roam the World

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.” ~Albert Einstein

“Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young.” ~W. Somerset Maugham

“For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.” ~Vincent van Gogh

“The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, are of imagination all compact.”

~William Shakespeare, Mid-Summer Night’s Dream

“They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.” ~Francis Bacon

“Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try!” ~Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Thinks You Can Think!

“The Possible’s slow fuse is lit
By the Imagination.”
~Emily Dickinson

“I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them.” ~Pablo Picasso

DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE CREATIVE BURSTS WORKBOOK!
And receive free creativity prompts delivered to your inbox twice a week.
CLICK HERE!   (To learn more, click here)

Quotes About Creativity from Jazz Musicians

Reposting an old favorite today. These quotes always energize me!

“I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.”
–Duke Ellington

“There is no such thing as a wrong note.”
–Art Tatum

“Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.”
–Charles Mingus

“I never sing a song the same way twice.”
–Billie Holiday


“Don’t play what’s there, play what’s not there.”
–Miles Davis

“Life is not about finding our limitations, it’s about finding our infinity.”
–Herbie Hancock

DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE CREATIVE BURSTS WORKBOOK!
And receive free creativity prompts delivered to your inbox twice a week.
CLICK HERE!   (To learn more, click here)

Be Present and Embrace Your Creativity

“You must live in the present,

launch yourself on every wave,

find your eternity in each moment.”

~Henry David Thoreau

 

Embrace Creative Joy

Instead of focusing on how much you can accomplish,

focus on 

how much you can absolutely love what you’re doing.

~Leo Babauto

DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE CREATIVE BURSTS WORKBOOK!
And receive free creativity prompts delivered to your inbox twice a week.
CLICK HERE!   (To learn more, click here)

Perfectionism: A Great Muse-Strangler, Part 4

Every year, I rerun my popular 4-part series on perfectionism and how to overcome its potentially crippling effects on creativity. Here’s the final installment:
(To read the previous installments, click here for Part 1, here for Part 2, and here for Part 3.)

Have you ever written a story (an essay, a screenplay, a poem…), then decided it wasn’t worth the price of the paper and ink you wasted on it? Have you imagined people laughing when they read it (and not in a good way)? Have you believed your work had no sparkle, was boring, was not noteworthy?

If you’re a writer, the answer is probably yes.

In my last post about perfectionism, I discussed the importance of creating even when your life isn’t in perfect order. But what if you’ve managed to write something you don’t believe deserves to see the light of day?

Here’s a little secret my Inner Perfectionist tried to hide from me for a long time: a lot of what you write will be bad. Or uninspired. Boring. Or half-finished because the idea fizzled out. And that’s okay. It’s not only okay, it’s part of the creative process.

Let me repeat that, because it’s important: Producing bad writing is part of the creative process.

It’s easy to imagine our favorite authors sitting at their desks, inspired every day while they effortlessly write out the masterpieces we love, barely changing a comma once they’ve finished. But it’s important to remember they struggled just as much as we do.

Here’s a little proof:

Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression. The chasm is never completely bridged. We all have the conviction, perhaps illusory, that we have much more to say than appears on the paper. —Isaac Bashevis Singer

Easy reading is damn hard writing. —Nathaniel Hawthorne

Every writer I know has trouble writing. —Joseph Heller

Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. —George Orwell

The work never matches the dream of perfection the artist has to start with. —William Faulkner

I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within. —Gustave Flaubert

I could go on, but you get the point.

Here’s the only way I know to combat this problem: Allow yourself to make mistakes. Write with abandon. Fail spectacularly.

An editor once told me my submission to his literary journal was the silliest story he’d ever read. Ouch! My own Inner Perfectionist couldn’t have dismissed my efforts with more derision. But I didn’t let his comments stop me. Okay, I may have cried a little. Or cursed the editor for his abysmal judgment. It’s possible I stuck a few pins into my literary journal editor-shaped voodoo doll.

But then I picked myself up, applied some ego salve to my bruised psyche, and raised my pen again. Because here’s what I’ve learned: Creative gems live in the middle of piles of dreck. Diamonds aren’t mined from pits lined with sheets of diamond, and gold isn’t panned from rivers of gold. These things are more valuable because they are rarer than the rock and the water they inhabit. You have to get your hands dirty, covered in grit and slime, to pull out a gem. It’s the same with a work of art.

The only way to write a good story (essay, screenplay, poem…) is to write lots of bad stories (essays, screenplays, poems…). Embrace your mediocre writing and your pieces that fizzle out. Because the more rock you chisel through, the closer you get to a diamond. And once you start finding diamonds, a funny thing happens. Your percentage of dirty rock to diamond shifts, and you gradually begin to find more precious things within your huge pile of work.

It’s never going to be all diamonds and no rock. Not even close. But as you continue to work at your craft, you learn to spot the diamonds more easily and to mine them faster. You learn to polish dull gems and make them shine. And, perhaps most important, you finally learn to stop hating the rock. Because you realize it’s just a layer you must get through in order to reach the jewel within.

DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE CREATIVE BURSTS WORKBOOK!
And receive free creativity prompts delivered to your inbox twice a week.
CLICK HERE!   (To learn more, click here)

Perfectionism: A Great Muse-Strangler

Every year, I rerun my popular 4-part series on perfectionism and how to overcome its potentially crippling effects on creativity. Here’s the first installment:

I currently have a half-written blog post about perfectionism and its destructive effect on creativity. For some reason, every time I get back to it, I’m interrupted…hmmm…there’s that stressful life making things difficult again…

Until I can finish up what I have to say about the evils of perfectionism, I’m going to share a few words of wisdom on the topic from other creative people:

A lot of disappointed people have been left standing on the street corner waiting for the bus marked Perfection.
~Donald Kennedy

Perfectionism is not a quest for the best. It is a pursuit of the worst in ourselves, the part that tells us that nothing we do will ever be good enough – that we should try again.
~Julia Cameron

The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.
~Anna Quindlen

The maxim ‘Nothing but perfection’ may be spelled ‘Paralysis’.
~Winston Churchill

Have no fear of perfection – you’ll never reach it.
~Salvador Dali

An artist who aims at perfection in everything achieves it in nothing.
~Eugene Delacroix

Perfectionism is the enemy of creation…
~John Updike

DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE CREATIVE BURSTS WORKBOOK!
And receive free creativity prompts delivered to your inbox twice a week.
CLICK HERE!   (To learn more, click here)

Create the Life You Want to Live

Don’t let anyone rob you of your imagination, your creativity, or your curiosity.

It’s your place in the world; it’s your life.

Go on and do all you can with it, and make it the life you want to live.

~Mae Jemison,
engineer, physician, astronaut, and first African-American woman to travel in space

DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE CREATIVE BURSTS WORKBOOK!
And receive free creativity prompts delivered to your inbox twice a week.
CLICK HERE!   (To learn more, click here)

Embrace Your Dreams

If you hear a voice within you say,

“You cannot paint,”

then by all means paint,

and that voice will be silenced.

~Vincent van Gogh

DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE CREATIVE BURSTS WORKBOOK!
And receive free creativity prompts delivered to your inbox twice a week.
CLICK HERE!   (To learn more, click here)

Embrace Your Dreams

Miracles start to happen

when you give as much energy to your dreams

as you do to your fears.

~Richard Wilkins

DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE CREATIVE BURSTS WORKBOOK!
And receive free creativity prompts delivered to your inbox twice a week.
CLICK HERE!   (To learn more, click here)

Inspiration from Julia Cameron

One of the most effective ways we sabotage ourselves from a life in the arts is by waiting for that imaginary day when “it” will be “easier.” We think of going to the page or to the easel, and then we think, “It’s too hard. If I wait a little, it won’t be so hard.” Waiting for art to be easy, we make it hard…

…The truth is that getting at it is what makes getting at it easier. Each day that we write creates a habit of writing in us. Each day we go to the barre and do our plies creates an inner as well as outer flexibility that makes dancing easier….Each inch we inch forward is a tiny little notch in our self-esteem: Yes, I did do it.

~Julia Cameron, The Sound of Paper

DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE CREATIVE BURSTS WORKBOOK!
And receive free creativity prompts delivered to your inbox twice a week.
CLICK HERE!   (To learn more, click here)

Perfectionism: A Great Muse-Strangler, Part 4

Every Fall, I rerun my popular 4-part series on perfectionism and how to overcome its potentially crippling effects on creativity. Here’s the final installment:
(To read the previous installments, click here for Part 1, here for Part 2, and here for Part 3.)

Have you ever written a story (an essay, a screenplay, a poem…), then decided it wasn’t worth the price of the paper and ink you wasted on it? Have you imagined people laughing when they read it (and not in a good way)? Have you believed your work had no sparkle, was boring, was not noteworthy?

If you’re a writer, the answer is probably yes.

In my last post about perfectionism, I discussed the importance of creating even when your life isn’t in perfect order. But what if you’ve managed to write something you don’t believe deserves to see the light of day?

Here’s a little secret my Inner Perfectionist tried to hide from me for a long time: a lot of what you write will be bad. Or uninspired. Boring. Or half-finished because the idea fizzled out. And that’s okay. It’s not only okay, it’s part of the creative process.

Let me repeat that, because it’s important: Producing bad writing is part of the creative process.

It’s easy to imagine our favorite authors sitting at their desks, inspired every day while they effortlessly write out the masterpieces we love, barely changing a comma once they’ve finished. But it’s important to remember they struggled just as much as we do.

Here’s a little proof:

Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression. The chasm is never completely bridged. We all have the conviction, perhaps illusory, that we have much more to say than appears on the paper. —Isaac Bashevis Singer

Easy reading is damn hard writing. —Nathaniel Hawthorne

Every writer I know has trouble writing. —Joseph Heller

Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. —George Orwell

The work never matches the dream of perfection the artist has to start with. —William Faulkner

I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within. —Gustave Flaubert

I could go on, but you get the point.

Here’s the only way I know to combat this problem: Allow yourself to make mistakes. Write with abandon. Fail spectacularly.

An editor once told me my submission to his literary journal was the silliest story he’d ever read. Ouch! My own Inner Perfectionist couldn’t have dismissed my efforts with more derision. But I didn’t let his comments stop me. Okay, I may have cried a little. Or cursed the editor for his abysmal judgment. It’s possible I stuck a few pins into my literary journal editor-shaped voodoo doll.

But then I picked myself up, applied some ego salve to my bruised psyche, and raised my pen again. Because here’s what I’ve learned: Creative gems live in the middle of piles of dreck. Diamonds aren’t mined from pits lined with sheets of diamond, and gold isn’t panned from rivers of gold. These things are more valuable because they are rarer than the rock and the water they inhabit. You have to get your hands dirty, covered in grit and slime, to pull out a gem. It’s the same with a work of art.

The only way to write a good story (essay, screenplay, poem…) is to write lots of bad stories (essays, screenplays, poems…). Embrace your mediocre writing and your pieces that fizzle out. Because the more rock you chisel through, the closer you get to a diamond. And once you start finding diamonds, a funny thing happens. Your percentage of dirty rock to diamond shifts, and you gradually begin to find more precious things within your huge pile of work.

It’s never going to be all diamonds and no rock. Not even close. But as you continue to work at your craft, you learn to spot the diamonds more easily and to mine them faster. You learn to polish dull gems and make them shine. And, perhaps most important, you finally learn to stop hating the rock. Because you realize it’s just a layer you must get through in order to reach the jewel within.

DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE CREATIVE BURSTS WORKBOOK!
And receive free creativity prompts delivered to your inbox twice a week.
To learn more, click here!

Perfectionism: A Great Muse-Strangler

Every Fall, I rerun my popular 4-part series on perfectionism and how to overcome its potentially crippling effects on creativity. Here’s the first installment:

I currently have a half-written blog post about perfectionism and its destructive effect on creativity. For some reason, every time I get back to it, I’m interrupted…hmmm…there’s that stressful life making things difficult again…

Until I can finish up what I have to say about the evils of perfectionism, I’m going to share a few words of wisdom on the topic from other creative people:

A lot of disappointed people have been left standing on the street corner waiting for the bus marked Perfection.
~Donald Kennedy

Perfectionism is not a quest for the best. It is a pursuit of the worst in ourselves, the part that tells us that nothing we do will ever be good enough – that we should try again.
~Julia Cameron

The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.
~Anna Quindlen

The maxim ‘Nothing but perfection’ may be spelled ‘Paralysis’.
~Winston Churchill

Have no fear of perfection – you’ll never reach it.
~Salvador Dali

An artist who aims at perfection in everything achieves it in nothing.
~Eugene Delacroix

Perfectionism is the enemy of creation…
~John Updike

DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE CREATIVE BURSTS WORKBOOK!
And receive free creativity prompts delivered to your inbox twice a week.
To learn more, click here!

Never Give Up Your Dreams!

Hold fast to dreams

For if dreams die

Life is a broken-winged bird

That cannot fly.

~ Langston Hughes

DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE CREATIVE BURSTS WORKBOOK!
And receive free creativity prompts delivered to your inbox twice a week.
To learn more, click here!

Quotes About Creativity from Jazz Musicians

Reposting an old favorite today. These quotes always energize me!

“I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.”
–Duke Ellington

“There is no such thing as a wrong note.”
–Art Tatum

“Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.”
–Charles Mingus

“I never sing a song the same way twice.”
–Billie Holiday


“Don’t play what’s there, play what’s not there.”
–Miles Davis

“Life is not about finding our limitations, it’s about finding our infinity.”
–Herbie Hancock

DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE CREATIVE BURSTS WORKBOOK!
And receive free creativity prompts delivered to your inbox twice a week.
To learn more, click here!

Where Will You Find Creative Inspiration Today?

The world is but a canvas to the imagination.

~Henry David Thoreau

Create the Life You Want to Live

Don’t let anyone rob you of your imagination, your creativity, or your curiosity.

It’s your place in the world; it’s your life.

Go on and do all you can with it, and make it the life you want to live.

~Mae Jemison,
engineer, physician, astronaut, and first African-American woman to travel in space

Create Today!

‎Every day is a fresh page.

What will you write, paint, dance or doodle on your page today?

~Sandy Ackers

Copyright © Sandy Ackers, Strangling My Muse: Struggling to Live a Creative Life in a Stressful World, http://www.stranglingmymuse.com

Honor Your Intuition

The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant.

We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.

~Albert Einstein

Always Spend Your Creativity

You can’t use up creativity.

The more you use, the more you have.

~Maya Angelou

Embrace Your Dreams

Miracles start to happen

when you give as much energy to your dreams

as you do to your fears.

~Richard Wilkins