It was only by accident that I realized that the anniversary had snuck by yesterday. This morning I had an idea for a post, but had a vague notion that I had posted about that idea before. It turns out I had! It was in the midst of looking for it that I realized we’d had an anniversary. Last year at this time, I commented on the fog of moving into the future…it seems that the past has become foggy as well.

A few weeks ago, I mentioned a new project I have in the works. I hope to launch it soon and I think it will be of interest to many Creativityist readers. The new year has also given me a fresh burst of ideas for some upcoming posts which I’m looking forward to hammering out for you soon.

In the meantime, here’s a look back at some of the highlights on Creativityist this past year:

• Contexts – an ongoing series describing different contexts I use in OmniFocus
• Creative Practices – a series of interviews with others that I intend to resume this year
• a series of reflections on The Creative Habit and The War of Art
• OmniFocus vs. Things – any given day, this is the most popular post on the site with a consistent stream of search engine visitors asking that very question
• Inbox Off – this is probably the most important change I made to my workflow this year, though I still struggle to follow it at times
• Creativityist 3.0 – I launched the current design last February…and I still like it!

Thanks again for your attention and your comments. I’m often encouraged by how much value others find in some of these thoughts, and I’m thankful for the opportunity to learn from you as well.

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Today, our seven month, irregularly recurring series on The Creative Habit comes to an end. But, in the interest of being trite, last certainly does not mean least. I think I’ve saved the best for last. And since this one is really about getting started, perhaps the last should have been first.

Okay…I’m done, I promise.

The box, as Twyla Tharp describes it, is the starting point for a creative project. In her case, it is a literal box. As she begins a new project, she begins to toss fragments of inspiration in the box. Notes, images, videos — anything that will fit. As her collection grows, the interplay between these items begin to form the inspiration. As she describes it:

The drawer, in effect, contains the editor’s pre-ideas — those intriguing little tickles at the corners of your brain that tell you when something is interesting to you without your quite knowing why.

I’ve long seen the value of collecting ideas. But all these ideas I’ve collected over the years are not the same as a box. They are more of a pre-box, a repository of interesting notions and thoughts waiting to be rooted through — (almost) always with me and readily available.

But the box serves as inspiration for a project that already has some direction. When a project begins to form, then the box specific to that project comes in to play. In my case, I can sort through the quotes, images and ideas I’ve stored with a simple search through Yojimbo. The ones that stand out get dumped into Scrivener or tagged in Yojimbo for a non-writing project. This is the box.

The beauty of the box is that what you need is right there waiting for you as you create:

A writer with a good storage and retrieval system can write faster. He isn’t spending a lot of time looking things up, scouring his papers, and patrolling other rooms at home wondering where he left that perfect quote. It’s in the box.

This is what I appreciate about Scrivener with the Research and Clippings folders. What I need is right there. If I steal away to Safari or Email to look something up, the chances of being distracted are about 98.74% (give or take 1.26%). But if I don’t even have to leave the app I’m in, my work can continue.

Of course, the box is an easy way to get started, with the keyword being easy! And it gives you one small step toward the work of actual creating. But that next step is still a doozy. And Tharp reminds us that while the box is a start, it is only a start:

The box is not a substitute for creating.

Sadly, some people never get beyond the box stage in their creative life.

I hate how important those two sentences are for me to hear. I love to collect. And I love to have created. But it’s that step from pulling ideas and inspiration together to doing the creative work where I always find resistance. And that brings me to the drawn-out, irregularly recurring series I’ll be starting next: The War of Art by Steven Pressfield.

Look for that sometime soon…ish. I’m collecting ideas for it now.

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From time to time, I look back at some notes I collected from The Creative Habit to find inspiration for more reflections to share here. The quote below is one I see every time, but have failed to write anything about. But it’s an idea that sits well with me each time I read it. It occurred to me this morning that I don’t really need to write anything about it. It’s a great thought that stands on its own, so I decided to share it with you on its own:

Creativity is an act of defiance. You’re challenging the status quo. You’re questioning accepted truths and principles. You’re asking three universal questions that mock conventional wisdom:
    Why do I have to obey the rules?
    Why can’t I be different?
    Why can’t I do it my way?
These are impulses that guide all creative people whether they admit it or not. Every act of creation is also and act of destruction or abandonment. Something has to be cast aside to make way for the new.

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As with previous interviews, you can also find my conversation with David available through the Creativityist video or audio podcast. (Both links open in iTunes.) The audio version is available now, the video should be up tomorrow.

Creativityist.com Interview with David Sparks of MacSparky.com from John Chandler on Vimeo.

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How do you get your ideas?

That was the question I posed a few weeks ago on my Facebook and Twitter pages. The answers that came in were vastly different yet surprisingly similar.

Here are a few of my favorites:

• Walking on the beach, reading a book, flirting.
• Long hot showers (this was the most popular answer actually).
• Observing what’s around me trying to make odd connections between things as disparate as management theory, and how a grasshopper’s wings work.
• Cliff-hanging.
• Solitude.
• Stealing.
• Doing the dishes.
• Reading magazines written for people different than me.
• Random photographs, half-lit rooms, conversations with strangers.

Twyla Tharp puts most of these actions in a category she calls “scratching.” According to her, scratching is an act best done as a routine designed to gather and collect small ideas to be used at a later date. Personally it is one of my favorite things to do. Whether it is in my iTunes library or a museum, I love wandering, looking, hunting, and gathering. Here’s how it looks for me:

Because many of my ideas come from listening to music, I tend to start there. I’ll put about 5 or 6 new or old songs on repeat, crank the volume, and with pencil in hand, wait to see what comes. When I do this I’m not necessarily looking for big ideas (something Twyla really stresses) I’m just cataloging the things I see or how I feel. As thoughts come I write them down in my little Field Notes notebook. As songs inspire I put them in “mood playlists” or “scratching piles” in my iTunes library. I do this at least once or twice a week.

As you can see, it works many different ways for many different people. For me it might be listening to music, for you it might be simply stopping, sitting, and giving your head some space to be free for a spell. There is no right or wrong way to do it. And yet if you want ideas and you want to make things, it simply must be done.

Scratching can look like borrowing or appropriating, but it’s an essential part of creativity. It’s primal, and very private. It’s a way of saying to the gods, “Oh, don’t mind me, I’ll just wander around in these back hallways…” and then grabbing that piece of fire and running like hell.

While this wandering may seem like little more than daydreaming, I agree with Twyla that scratching is absolutely necessary if you are hoping to create. In fact, I am of the opinion that these small, routine moments of seemingly meaningless gathering when no one is looking has the potential to save you when everyone has their eyes on you.

For example, I recently opened my mouth in a creative meeting and shared a big idea. It required flexing muscles that I hadn’t used in a number of years and a lot of work I wasn’t sure I could bring myself to do. A few weeks later I was told the team had decided to go with my idea over a handful of others. Gulp. What had I done? I was given a due date and with that I was out the door.

Weeks later. Nothing came. And I mean nothing. I simply could not bring myself to sit down and attempt another draft of my idea, which now had to be made into something real. Every time I tried to write, the idea overwhelmed me. I didn’t know where to begin. I had a big idea but nothing to support it. Or so I thought…

The morning of the day I had to present my new draft (which I hadn’t written) I sat down and forced myself to write. I forgot about the bigness of the idea and instead looked for something manageable. I decided to start with a scratching pile in my iTunes that I had made a few months ago. Slowly I played one song after another, remembering the feelings and visions I had when I first heard them. As I let these small scratches wash over me the big idea began to take shape. The disconnected ideas began to connect all the little dots that made up the huge dots of my current project. Before I knew it I knew where I was headed.

Whew!

I had never been more thankful for my scratching pile than I was in that moment. It saved me. I could have never known that when I tagged those songs 7 months ago they would be used for this project. In fact, I shudder to think where I would be right now had I not been diligent enough to catalog those tiny little thoughts.

So, scratch when you don’t itch. Make it part of your weekly routine and stick to it. Then capture and catalog whatever comes.

I promise that consistent scratching will connect you to places you cannot yet see. And who doesn’t want that?

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(Apologies for the technical glitches…we had an audio lag and the video is choppier than last time. Hopefully I can sort that out for upcoming interviews.)

Creativityist.com Interview with Cesar Torres from John Chandler on Vimeo.

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In this interview, Zach talks about how the recording process has changed over the last 15 years, how their songs come together, and how the band has been engaging with it’s fanbase online. Enjoy!

Creativityist.com Interview With Zach Lind of Jimmy Eat World from John Chandler on Vimeo.

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Speaking of irony, in the two weeks since I last posted something, the number of subscribers to this blog has jumped to record levels. Not quite sure how to take that.

The paragraphs above began as a brief intro, but clearly became a digression. But I digress. On with my point…

I’m excited to tell you about a new series that is in the works. I am scheduling webcam interviews with creatives in a variety of fields to explore the simple question: “What are your creative practices?” I hope this will be a learning exercise for me, and you, as we hear about what creative work looks like in many different disciplines.

Later this morning, I will record the first interview in the series with my friend Zach Lind of Jimmy Eat World. Assuming all goes well, I will post that video next week. In the meantime, I’d love to hear from you. If you have suggestions or connections for potential interviews, please drop me a line or leave a comment below.

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The Creative Habit begins with a chapter called “I Walk Into a White Room”. Tharp uses this image to describe the stark nothing from which every new project begins. This feels to me like a place of both anxiety and possibility, and I’m glad to see I’m not alone. Tharp describes it this way:

this empty room symbolizes something profound, mysterious, and terrifying: the task of starting with nothing and working your way toward creating something whole and beautiful and satisfying. … Some people find this moment — the moment before creativity begins — so painful that they simply cannot deal with it. (pg. 5)

What causes this terror and fear varies with every project for me, but the one constant is it’s presence. Yet the very thing that is terrifying about starting is also what makes it beautiful. You can’t make something that is already there…you have to start with nothing.It is the courage to move into this unknown expression that makes the creative process worth the effort.

Later in the book, in the exercises for chapter 5, Tharp describes a scholar friend who always had difficulty writing. He never knew what the beginning should be, but “he figured out that the paper’s beginning was not the same as beginning to write. So he just started writing about an important point in the paper and trusted that he’d find the beginning eventually.”

The first thing that I have to let go of to get started is the need to know what the final result will look like. I have to be willing to make something terrible as a means to make something worth sharing. The current design for this website looks nothing like the first concept, but I never would have gotten to this point if I hadn’t made a handful of layouts worth of the trash heap. I was halfway through grad school before I figured out that if I began a paper by just rambling out some thoughts with no concern for formatting, the content would begin to emerge within the muck.

So go ahead and walk into that empty room and see what happens. Starting with something terrible is better than not making anything at all.

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