A few weeks ago, I wrote about my participation in a poetry writing half marathon. As preamble to this week’s post, below is the prompt given for the 23rd hour, and the “list” poem I cobbled together from the book on my desk at dawn that Sunday morning, after 10 hours of writing 10 previous poems.
Hour 23 — Write a poem about harvesting something, it could be anything from clams to apples.
A List for Harvesting Creativity
- Know that you and everyone is creative.
- Tune into your ideas, impulses, dreams and hunches.
- Make it up. Experimentation leads to innovation.
- Expect surprises.
- Mistakes are part of the process.
- Rules can serve. Rules can hinder. Learn the difference.
- Self doubt is part of the process.
- So is rejection.
- Keep your habits fresh.
- What you don’t know is as, if not more, important than what you know.
- Saying “no” is foundational to saying “yes”.
- Play.
With thanks to Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act: A Way of Being (2023)
Now that I’m back to walking, often solo, in preparation for another long distance trek (destination and details to come), I’ve returned to listening to podcasts and audio books to help pass the time. I found Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act on Spotify and as I’m reading it for a monthly book study, hearing the author read his pithy chapters, the transition from one into the next marked by the ringing of a bell, has been as delightfully edifying as the book study conversations.
The list above captures a mere fraction of his self acknowledged “noticings” about what and how to open possibilities for a creative way of being. This past week, I was struck by his chapters on listening, and patience.
“Listening is suspending belief.”
Rick Rubin, The Creative Act
Given that we listen not only with our ears, but with our whole bodies, our filters of acculturation, beliefs, perceptions, and biases affect what we hear. Learning to listen with an awareness of these influences opens possibilities and grants us freedom from unconscious and accepted limitations. While I know this, to hear another say it, meaningfully hit home.
“There are no shortcuts.”
Rick Rubin, The Creative Act
So opens the chapter on patience. But it could be the mantra for entire book. I stopped walking and replayed Rubin saying:
“When it comes to the creative process, patience is accepting that the majority of the work we do is out of our control. We can’t force greatness to happen. All we can do is invite in it and await it actively. Not anxiously, as this might scare it off. Simply in a state of continual welcoming.”
To do otherwise, by letting our cultural predisposition towards efficiency govern instead of responding to life in sync with its revealed rhythms and not our imposed agendas, is an argument with reality. Another deep resonance.
On my writing desk, beside Rubin’s book is Suleika Jaouad’s The Book of Alchemy. A gift from my sister, with a focus on journaling, its subtitle, A Creative Practice for an Inspired Life, suggests its hugging up against Rubin is not a coincidence.
Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.
A Wabi Sabi Life 