I’ve not been doing much. Did clean the shop a little, finished the storage unit and made a few notes on my writing projects. I did spend a few hours catching up on my financial bookkeeping. Mostly, not much happened. Heather and I went to a movie, a walk by the ocean and did a day trip up to the de Young Museum in San Francisco.
and there was the jigsaw puzzle we did. Exciting times I tell you.
It was exactly what my creative spirit needed – rest. Sometimes the best thing you can do to nurture your creativity is, nothing. We can’t be giving all the time, we have to take in as well. Any of you who have read The Artist’s Way will recognize this as the concept of “breathing in.” As much as we want to produce things, sometimes we need to take the time to let our creative selves rest and recover.
Heather found a fun book at the museum book store that is a fun way to look at the same thing. It’s titled, Steal Like and Artist by Austin Kleon.
It’s a fun book with lots of good ideas. He points out that most creative work is really derivative (that’s the fancy way to say it). He makes this point clear in a fun and amusing way. It’s a book I’d recommend to all of you who are looking to improve your creativity. It’s a quick read but insightful.
… and he calls resting, “be boring.”
Today I am feeling like the “be boring” thing has been working. I’ve got a number of ideas to work on, have started working on a couple of new poems for my book and decided to abandon one poem I was working. It became clear around three o’clock today that the poem was just an ending with out a beginning that made sense.
My fault really – I got the ending from a Bible story but forgot to steal a beginning…
Till next week,
Andrew
