The Creative Habit

I am reading (wrote “radding” – some typos need to be shared) The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp.  An excellent read with lots of good exercises I am playing with.  She talks about ritual as the foundation of a creative life.  I’ve been thinking about this concept a lot, it’s one I am bringing into my daily life.  I will be speaking more to this topic soon.  Right now I would like to leave you with Twyla Tharp’s words:

After so many years, I’ve learned that being creative is a full-time job with it’s own daily patterns.  That’s why writers, for example, like to establish routines for themselves.  The most productive ones get started early in the morning, when the world is quiet, the phones aren’t ringing, and their minds are rested, alert, and not yet polluted by other people’s words.  They might set a goal for themselves – write fifteen hundred words, or stay at their desk until noon-but the real secret is that they do this every day.  In other words, they are disciplined.  Over time, as the daily routines become second nature, discipline morphs into habit.