- ISBN13: 9780743235273
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
All it takes to make creativity a part of your life is the willingness to make it a habit. It is the product of preparation and effort, and is within reach of everyone. Whether you are a painter, musician, businessperson, or simply an individual yearning to put your creativity to use, The Creative Habit provides you with thirty-two practical exercises based on the lessons Twyla Tharp has learned in her remarkable thirty-five-year career.In “Where’s Your Pencil?” Tha… More >>
The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life
Tags: businessperson, Creative, creativity, exercises, habit, Learn, Life, musician, Pencil, tharp, willingness
#1 by Joseph Masculosa on February 7, 2010 - 1:14 am
This is definitely a how to book about unleashing creativity. A interesting premise is that we all have the ability to be creative if we just follow a few of her examples and begin to think in the creative zone. What interested me more was A Brush with Darkness which is not directed towards a self help book or towards a how to for unleashing creativity. This book IS the creative mind is process, how it is developed, how the mind unleashes itself when adversity comes in play. I personally found that A Brush with Darkness fascinated me greater than this book by a famous choreographer. Why? Well, how exactly does someone learn to paint when they are blind and the answer is through the purest form of self examination, this fast read opened my mind to more creative posssiblities than a self help book could provide. Just imagine the intensity of creativity that is required to paint realisically like an old master when the artist is self taught and cannot see.
Rating: 3 / 5
#2 by Barry Holiday on February 7, 2010 - 1:56 am
Like I said in my title, my habit has become an addiction! What habit, you ask? The creative habit, silly! Every morning I wake up and do the “creative stretches” outlined in the book, then I take a “power shower” and brush my teeth. (creatively, of course!) For breakfast I munch on Creative Crunchies with soy milk, then I go to my job. But I don’t get there just any old way! No car or bus for this guy! I take what’s called “The Creative Underground.” It was founded in 1987 by creatives just like me, who needed alternate routes of travel for mind-expanding purposes. Then I get to work and I hate my job. But when I get home I put all my creativeness to use and I make dioramas of different political debates. My newest is the Lincoln/Douglass Diorama, and it’s sure to bring emancipation to any proclamation! Read this book!
Rating: 5 / 5
#3 by Gerard F. Bianco on February 7, 2010 - 2:48 am
Ms. Tharp has had a long and successful career as a choreographer but that has not come without pain and sacrifice, and she lets you know it. Her book is more a lesson in discipline and self-sacrifice than a ‘practical guide’ as advertised on the cover. It is her opinion to be highly creative in a domain you must live in what she calls her bubble, elimination every distraction, “sacrificing almost everything that gave me pleasure, place myself in a single-minded isolation chamber and structured my life so that everything was not only feeding the work but subordinated to it.” Did she say, “Practical guide?”
Gerard Bianco, author of The Creativity Formula (www.creativityformula.com)
Rating: 3 / 5
#4 by M. A. Oneal on February 7, 2010 - 2:50 am
Some good, no-nonsense advice, incorporating broad range of sources. Several of these sources, however, should have been checked before publication. For example, she gets the quotation by E. M. Forster on the difference between plot and story backwards. Also, she doesn’t bother to verify the old urban legend about the tycoon (variously identified as Henry Ford, JC Penney, or Thomas Edison) who wouldn’t hire a prospective employee because he salted the food before he tasted it (see Snopes.com for background on story). These may seem like minor points, but perfectionists such as Tharp shouldn’t be sloppy with the details.
Rating: 3 / 5
#5 by Alia Sanchez on February 7, 2010 - 3:19 am
One of the better books I’ve had to read on strategies for success in a creative field. Tharp is easy to read and the book is structured in an intelligent way.
Rating: 3 / 5