Day 92 - Ch 3 & 4 - The Creativity Habit

Tharp shares with her reader her belief that everyone has creativity built within them.  This chapter focuses on discovering how one’s "creative DNA” works for each individual.  She begins with an exercise on developing one’s creative autobiography, with a process of prompting questions about how creativity shows up within one’s life.  Other exercises include observing others, making lists of these observed details.  Through the use of these details, one could use imagination to develop the characters.  She suggests repeating this exercise to further develop awareness of the patterns of life that shows up.  Often one filters out the details of life.  Here she’s encouraging one to pay attention to these details, building a self awareness of how one becomes selective in what is noticed.  Another exercise is picking a new name for one’s self.  With this exercise, the author shows the reader how one begins an identity with a name.  Each life contains a story.  She shares about how Mozart, as the time of his marriage, changed his birth name Joannes Chrystostomus Wolfgangus Theophillus Mozart, to Wolfgang Adam Mozart in an attempt to simplify his name.  Other examples such as Muhammad Ali changing his name from Cassius Clay, changed the projection he was born with to the freedom he sought to become the champion of the world.  Some changes of names can become a “self-fulfilling prophecy,” as with other famous writers did, as these allow them to shuck off old expectations and open the world with new directions. 



I encourage you to buy a copy of The Creativity Habit for a better understanding of your own creative process.  Whether you're a master artist or beginning artist, this is an excellent book.

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