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SOURCE OF CREATIVITY
As someone who struggles with feeling creative constantly, I found this to be an inspiring and thought-provoking lecture. It's worth the 20-minutes of your time. [thanks to viv who led me to the link] Also, I loved Eat, Pray, Love and look forward to her next book.  10,000 HOURS
Jake and I were listening to Gladwell's new book Outliers on the way to Los Angeles a few weeks ago and amongst many other interesting points, one of the things he talked about was the ability to master anything by putting 10,000 hours of work into it.
This is a well-talked-about number: 10,000. It comes down to about three hours a day, everday, for ten years. It may seem like a long time to you but it somehow didn't to me. Instead, it got me thinking. If I were to spend three hours of my time for ten years on something, what would I want it to be? What's the one thing I'd want to accomplish? The thing is, there are many things I wish I were better at: photography, painting, mixed media, physics, math, psychology, swimming, tennis, running, drawing, languages...Just to name a few. But if I were to accomplish one thing, I always come back to the same one: writing a novel and getting it published. I want to write. I want to get published. Not self-publish. I cannot explain the reasons. It's just a craving I have. I don't need it to be a bestseller and I don't need to write five more. Just one book published by a reputable company would make me feel fulfilled. Ten years ago, I was spending a lot of time writing. Now: none. So it got me thinking...if this is really my biggest wish, maybe I should start spending some time on it. Shouldn't I? If you were to spend 10,000 hours mastering something, what would it be? ESCAPING INTO THE OPEN 
I have been a big Elizabeth Berg fan for quite some time. During my
pregnancy, I went through a period during which I read all of her adult
novels. I've also spent a good four years writing novels of my own, so
it should come as no surprise that I picked up and devoured Escaping
into the Open, the Art of True Writing.
Back in the days when I wrote all the time, I read every book known to man on writing. Anne Lamott, Lawrence Block, Natalie Goldberg. You name it, I read it. And while this book may be a bit more about her than writing compared to some other books, a bit less inspiring than Anne or Natalie, a bit less instructional than Lawrence, it's actually a balanced combination of all. It's inspiring. It's full of good, practical ideas, and it covers all aspects of writing. It talks about fiction and non-fiction. It talks about how to come up with ideas. It gives plenty of prompts. It talks about getting published. It even talks about reactions from friends and loved ones. (while many at amazon thought this was vain, I actually really thought it was pithy to mention it.) Most importantly, it made me want to write again. And isn't that the point, after all? |
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