The habits of highly creative people
Since 1965, choreographer Twyla Tharp, 62, has created more than 130 works of modern dance and ballet. Her collaboration on Broadway with Billy Joel, Movin' Out, won a 2003 Tony Award for choreography. So of course, for her next act, she decided to write a . . . self-help book. In The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life, Tharp shares what she has learned about creativity and how those lessons apply to anyone with creative impulses, including business people and parents. "My book takes a pretty extreme position," she says: "Art is work. It is not inspiration."
Why place such value on work?
Work gives you a kind of control. You're not so dependent on the gods. They can send a hurricane anytime they want, but at least you feel, "All right, so a hurricane passed through, but I know what I did before and I can start it over, and this time I'll do it a little differently." You cannot be destroyed with good work habits. And if the hurricane doesn't come, then you keep building, and you're not waiting for something to come and bail you out.
The parallel in the dance world is George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins. Balanchine was a worker after my heart. He went in every day, he worked in the afternoons, he went to the theater every night, and he was in a productive routine for 35 years. Jerry envied him that routine, but Jerry didn't work that way. Jerry worked by "inspiration." He had to get an idea; he had to carry through; it had to be over. He had to get another idea. And many times Jerry was a desperate man in this mode. Balanchine knew that some things didn't work as well as he'd like them to. Fine. Next season, it will be better.
Can anyone be creative?
Anyone can be more creative. I'm not talking here about creative with a capital C, as in Rembrandt, Mozart, Beethoven, Matisse--the pantheon of gods. You do the best you can do, but the best you can do is a little better every day. It's a little more focused; it's a little more accomplished; it's a little freer. It's got a little more chutzpah. It's got a little more authority to it. In the end you don't ultimately make the decision as to whether you were or were not creative. You just practice the creative life. Let others make that decision. You'll be long gone, anyway.
Are there particular conditions that are universal to creativity?
Yes, and one of them is privacy. Let's talk about a CEO, of which I know very few. Obviously, they're working in a public sphere, but the information that is had by a Barry Diller, for example, has got a lot of privacy in it, and that's where he functions best, I'm sure.
What are the obstacles to creativity?
Routine, habit. That we become enmeshed in patterns of behavior and we don't question them. We can become complacent, we can start taking things for granted, and we don't ask questions. Creativity is about questioning.
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