From the Creative Wilds: Stay Inspired, Y'all
It’s Woo Wednesday, Y'all!
My dear friend and rockstar colleague Dr Shannon Holmes (Dr. Holmes, I presume?) outed her Woo-osity in a delightful post last week. In it, she sheepishly confesses her fondness for self-help books (Woo Books, as we shall call them from here on). I’m pretty big on certain kinds of Woo Books too, and yes they can be cheesy and whacky (part of the fun) or tedious and dry (not so fun)—but what I’m really big on are the ideas, habits, activities, and environments that NURTURE CREATIVITY.
My love for the ideas behind the creative process started with Brit rock guitarist Robert Fripp’s aphorisms like ‘Any creative endeavor has to accept that the uncertainty is not only inevitable, but utterly necessary’; and the Brian En0-Peter Schmidt Oblique Strategies card deck I made a version of, with cards like ‘Fill every beat with something’ and ‘Your mistake was a hidden intention’. These ideas are small but powerful Inspiration Engines. And is not that it?:
To #StayInspired and Go Make Your Stuff.
Is there really another choice? No, no, there really is not. We live in a world that rewards addictive doomscrolling, destructive snark, vapid meme sharing, and cynicism with Facebook likes, re-shares, and re-Tweets—and we simply can’t afford it, folks. As Fripp writes, for the artist, ‘Cynicism is too high a price to pay’.
“In strange and uncertain times, sometimes a reasonable person might despair.
But Hope is unreasonable.
And Love is greater even than this.”
Spider Lily, quite literally going ballistic.
Here are some of my past & present Woo Book faves:
I love the recently released book, Chatter by Ethan Kross. It’s about our inner narratives and how to alter and harness the stories we tell ourselves. Not really Woo, per se—it’s more legit pop psych.
I’ve been grooving on 18 Minutes by Peter Bergman—it has a kind of planning / productivity vibe with a decidedly corporate bend but in a cool and casual way, and speaks volumes (see what I did there?) about how we manage projects individually and collaboratively—and also how we treat ourselves and each other as we do all the things we do.
I loved Grit by Angela Duckworth, suggested to me by one of my brothers-by-another-mother during a personal Dark Time. It’s a kind of #TakeNoPrisoners #NoExcuses #NoWhiners thing that very much appeals to me (your milage may vary).
Steven Pressfield’s War of Art is now a classic goodie: Resistance is a Liar and an Enemy of all Beauty-Making!
The Creative Habit by choreographer and dance icon Twyla Tharp is a gem of insight into the daily routines that fuel creative work.
Seth Godin is hit or miss for me, but I grooved on The Practice: Shipping Creative Work about how we make and share work with the world.
Luvvie Ajayi Jones’ Professional Troublemaker: The Fear-Fighter Manual is hilarious and audacious.
Oh! And Jen Sincero’s irreverent and decidedly super woo-whacky, funny, and sometimes eyeroll-worthy Badass series of books.
Another oldie but goodie is Hugh MacLeod’s Ignore Everybody, which I adore, with gems like ‘Part of being a master is learning how to sing in nobody else’s voice but your own’ and ‘The best way to get approval is not to need it.’ Read that again. Werd up, y’all.
And lastly, some knee-deep Woo-osity for you: I have a love for The Desire Map by Danielle LaPorte but she’s gotten way-way-way too Woo-y for me these days. The Desire Map concept is all about what I call Power Words (which I love):
