Twyla Tharp: The Creative Habit

Quotations:

• "You need a tangible idea to get you going."
• "I call it scratching...I'm digging through everything to find something."
• 'Where do you get your ideas?' "Where do you find the air you breathe?"
• "Don't scratch for big ideas."
• "That is why you scratch for little ideas. Without the little ideas, there are no big ideas."
• "Stoping my conscious mind."
• "Reading, conversation, environment, culture, heroes, mentors, natures - all are lottery tickets for creativity."
• "Art is not about minimizing risk and delivering work that is guaranteed to please. Artists have bigger goals.
• "In creative endeavors luck is a skill."
• "Relying too much on others, even in an inevitably collaborative process, makes you lazy."
• "Another trap is the belief that everything has to be perfect before you can take the next step."
• "Time, for example, is our most limited resource, but it is not the enemy of creativity that we think it is."
• "Whom the gods wish to destroy, they give unlimited resources."

Notes:

• Scratching: looking for ideas
• How artists scratch
• Where do ideas truly come from
• Everywhere
• Forms of ideas
• Don't think about the big picture/idea
• Taking it one little step at a time: the small stuff counts
• Improvising
• Moving
• Results
• Retain
• Breaking/finding a loop-hole around bad ideas/morals, and consciences
• Getting crazy and free
• Generare, retain, inspect, and transform
• Different ways of getting ideas
• Every day conversation
• Peoples' handiwork
• Reading
• Mentors
• Heroes
• Nature
• Culture
• Combination of ideas
• Going out of the norm
• Trying not to please but to create
• Be in shape
• Scratch in the best places
• Screwing up can be good
• Never scratch in the same place twice
• Maintain the white hot pitch
• Not thinking about the product
• Natural evolution of ideas/work
• Capturing moments and emotions
• Luck is a skill
• Taking risks
• Locking yourself into a predetermined course
• Money
• Distraction but also can be a cheep sense of creativity
• Other people
• Don't strive for perfection at the start
• Time is not the enemy of creativity
• Obligation
• Flimsy base for creativity
• Total self-reliance and exquisite planning