Welcome to Creativity Cookies, your monthly invitation to take creative action!
The BIG IDEA, brought to you by Creative Sprinkle [somebody who is inspiring me with his or her creative yowza], Melissa Dinwiddie:
“I can date my most recent return to nurturing my creative spirit to February 1, 2011,” Melissa said. “I determined that I was going to [paint] 15 minutes a day for the month of February. I needed a tiny, ridiculously achievable commitment. For me it was the daily, tiny commitment that made all the difference. I did it for a month to see how it went. That’s very helpful for me – to keep it time-limited so I don’t feel like I have to do it in perpetuity. It changed my life.”
[Melissa is a painter, creative coach, calligrapher and jazz singer.]
So, inspired by Melissa, you start spending time with your creative spirit and you discover <yikes!> Your monster mind jumps in to tell you that what you’re doing is not as good as it should be. Gently pat that monster on the head [yes I know it’s tempting to reach for the baseball bat, but resistance just makes monster voices stronger] and give it a cookie. While it’s munching, you can try a
(1:54) created by David Shiyang Liu wherein Ira Glass tells us that one way through monster voices is to do a huge volume of work.
“But wait, Kate, “I hear you holler, “you just said teeny and now you’re saying huge.” Ira used a lovely phrase there, earlier, he said “body of work.” Bodies are collections of cells, and each stroke you paint, each word you write, each note you play is a cell in your body of work.
For an ongoing shield against monsters read, print and post the
Melissa’s 10 Rules for the Creative Sandbox (PDF).
When I was 12 years old, I painted the words DO IT! in 8 foot letters in the school hallway. [Yes, I had permission. It was the 60s.] When it comes to creative activity, my 12-year-old self had it right.
Creativity Cookies will be published on the 15th of each month.