The Creative Habit: Learn it and Use I for Life

What makes someone creative? How does someone face the empty page, the empty stage and making something where nothing existed before? Not just a dilemma for the artist, it is something everyone faces everyday. What will I cook that isn't boring? How can I make that memo persuasive? What sales pitch will increase the order, get me the job, lock in that bonus? These too, are creative acts, and they all share a common need: proper preparation. For Twyla Tharp, creativity is no mystery; it's the product of hard work and preparation, of knowing one's aims and one's subject, of learning from approaches taken in the past. It's a process undertaken every day. It's a habit. The Creative Habit is not merely a look inside the mind of a remarkable woman with remarkable skills, but a programmatic, inspiring, encouraging guide to help each of us achieve our fullest creative potential.

About the Author :
Twyla Tharp, one of America's greatest choreographers began her career in 1965, and has created more than 130 dances for her company as well as for the Joffrey Ballet, the New York City Ballet, the Paris Opera Ballet, London's Royal Ballet, Denmark's Royal Ballet, and American Ballet Theatre. She has won two Emmy Awards for television's Baryshnikov by Tharp, and a Tony Award for the Broadway musical Movin' Out. The recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, she was inducted into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 1993 and was made an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1997. She holds nineteen honorary degrees, most recently from Harvard University. She lives and works in New York City.

Review :
"The Creative Habit emphasizes the work habits that lead to success." -- C. Carr, O: The Oprah Magazine "[An] exuberant, philosophically ambitious self-help book for the creatively challenged." -- The New York Times Book Review "[A]s accessible, smart and eye-opening as her dance." -- Linda Winer, Newsday "An entertaining 'how to' guide, The Creative Habit isn't about getting the lightning bolt of inspiration, but rather the artistic necessity of old-fashioned virtues such as discipline, preparation and routine." -- Cathleen McGuigan, Newsweek "Though its context is a choreographer's world, its principles are universally applicable and sound....It could change your life." -- Elizabeth Zimmer, The Village Voice "Twyla Tharp's amazingly plain-spoken treatise...is a frank, honest, and tough-love testament essentially arguing that art and creativity are matters of hard, old-fashioned work." -- Sid Smith, The Chicago Tribune