Having a brilliant idea for a novel is a great starting point, but sometimes you need a nudge to overcome the obstacles hindering your progress.
New writers think that creativity – the moment when they are visited by their muse – is a rare, magical moment. But creatives who have been active for many years know that there’s not that much magic to it; that you can invite that muse in whenever you want. It just takes a bit of work and an understanding of the creative process.
In many cases, what hinders creativity is resistance, a belief that the writer isn’t good enough, that expectations that cannot be met, and other hurdles that writers create for themselves. These four books – actually three books and a deck of cards – can help you nurture that muse, and be more creative to keep your writing project going to the end.
The War of Art, Steven Pressfield
For Steven Pressfield, the what prevents creativity from showing up is resistance. “It’s not the writing part that’s hard,” he says. “What’s hard is sitting down to write. What keeps us from sitting down is Resistance.”
Resistance doesn’t just keep people from writing, Pressfield says in The War of Art. It keeps people from sticking to a diet, going to the gym regularly, or committing to any sort of change. Resistance, he says, “is fueled by fear.” Yet, “The more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.”
Pressfield discusses how to combat resistance, and contrasts amateurs and pros and how they work with resistance, though “pro” doesn’t mean you necessarily make money from your writing, yet. It’s more a state of mind. And he points out that the fear writers experience is often, “Fear That We Will Succeed.”
Resistance and fear, two of the most powerful forces that make up the war of art. It is with awareness of resistance and fear that we can overcome them and create.
The Creative Act: A Way of Being, Rick Rubin
Rick Rubin is a record producer, who was instrumental in the development of hip-hop music, but also in bringing country singer Johnny Cash back from a long fallow period. His recent book The Creative Act: A Way of Being examines what fuels creativity, how to bring inspiration to the process, and how to refine the work that is created.
At one point in the book he says:
We are dealing in a magic realm.
Nobody knows why or how it works.
But throughout the book, he looks at what fuels creativity, and gives tips on catching the muse of inspiration.
The book is made up of short chapters, with titles like Look Inward, Listening, Patience, Momentum, Openness, and Spontaneity. For Rubin, all of life contributes to creativity, and all we need to be creative is already there if we can just learn to harness it.
It can be useful to listen to the audiobook version, where Rubin’s voice lends strength to his ideas.
Creativity: The Psychology of Discovery and Invention, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Csikszentmihalyi published Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (later published under the title Flow: The Psychology of Happiness) in 1990. He was he first person who examined flow – the experience that we have when doing something we enjoy, doing it totally, completely, thinking of nothing else. In this book, he outlined what he called “the process of total involvement with life,” he presented “general principles, along with concrete examples of how some people have used these principles, to transform boring and meaningless lives into ones full of enjoyment.”
Anyone who has done any activity intensely knows what flow is. It is that experience of fully experiencing tasks like walking, running, knitting, painting, playing with a child, cooking, or just sitting and appreciating nature. The experience that shuts everything else out, silences the inner voice and opens the door to a feeling of satisfaction.
Flow experiences are, perhaps, when the muse is present for creatives. They can occur when writing, when someone is in the zone, and the words come not as if squeezed from a stone, but like a dictation from the subconscious.
In Creativity: The Psychology of Discovery and Invention, Csikszentmihalyi discusses what he discovered interviewing nearly one hundred creative people: artists, writers, scientists, photographers, composers, and others. He dismisses the idea of the “tortured genius,” which dates back to the Romantic period, and focuses on how immersion and flow can enhance creativity. This book may not help you become more creative, but it can show you how others have overcome resistance to develop creative lives.
Csikszentmihalyi says that, “It is easier to enhance creativity by changing conditions in the environment than by trying to make people think more creatively.” Perhaps there’s a lesson here for all writers who struggle with getting words on the page.
Watch a TED Talk by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.
Oblique Strategies, Brian Eno & Peter Schmidt
Oblique Strategies is not a book, but a deck of cards. Created in 1975 by musician Brian Eno and Artist Peter Schmidt, these cards were designed to introduce random ideas into creative projects by encouraging lateral thinking. Eno is well known for his generative music, which is partly based on randomness, and these cards have been used by musicians and others for decades because of the unexpected flashes of inspiration they can offer to any creative work.
The cards contain pithy questions or suggestions such as:
What are you really thinking about just now?
Use an old idea
Lowest common denominator
What is the reality of the situation?
Picking a card when you’re stuck creatively can inspire thoughts that you wouldn’t come up with if you thought logically. Like zen koans, you can think about them, and let your subconscious mull over what they suggest. Discard what doesn’t help, but take advantage of any off-the-beaten-path ideas that arise.
You can buy a deck of Oblique Strategies cards from Brian Eno’s Shop, you can access them on a website, and you can find apps for iOS and Android that generate Oblique Strategies cards.
Kirk McElhearn is a writer, podcaster, and photographer. He is the author of Take Control of Scrivener, and host of the podcast Write Now with Scrivener.