The Creative Habit

One of the world’s leading creative artists, choreographers, and creator of the smash-hit Broadway show, Movin’ Out, shares her secrets for developing and honing your creative talents—at once prescriptive and inspirational, a book to stand alongside The Artist’s Way and Bird by Bird. All it takes to make creativity a part of your life is the willingness to make it a habit. It is the product of preparation and effort, and is within reach of everyone. Whether you are a painter, musician, businessperson, or simply an individual yearning to put your creativity to use, The Creative Habit provides you with thirty-two practical exercises based on the lessons Twyla Tharp has learned in her remarkable thirty-five-year career. In "Where's Your Pencil?" Tharp reminds you to observe the world -- and get it down on paper. In "Coins and Chaos," she gives you an easy way to restore order and peace. In "Do a Verb," she turns your mind and body into coworkers. In "Build a Bridge to the Next Day," she shows you how to clean the clutter from your mind overnight. Tharp leads you through the painful first steps of scratching for ideas, finding the spine of your work, and getting out of ruts and into productive grooves. The wide-open realm of possibilities can be energizing, and Twyla Tharp explains how to take a deep breath and begin...

A guide to unlocking creative potential provides exercises, anecdotes, and advice for evaluating one's creative history, finding creative stimulation through activity, and making time for creative change.

A guide to unlocking creative potential provides exercises, anecdotes, and advice for evaluating one's creative history, finding creative stimulation through activity, and making time for creative change.

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER One of the world’s legendary artists and bestselling author of The Creative Habit shares her secrets—from insight to action—for harnessing vitality, finding purpose as you age, and expanding one’s possibilities over the course of a lifetime in her newest New York Times bestseller Keep It Moving. At seventy-eight, Twyla Tharp is revered not only for the dances she makes—but for her astounding regime of exercise and nonstop engagement. She is famed for religiously hitting the gym each morning at daybreak, and utilizing that energy to propel her breakneck schedule as a teacher, writer, creator, and lecturer. This book grew out of the question she was asked most frequently: “How do you keep working?” Keep It Moving is a series of no-nonsense mediations on how to live with purpose as time passes. From the details of how she stays motivated to the stages of her evolving fitness routine, Tharp models how fulfillment depends not on fortune—but on attitude, possible for anyone willing to try and keep trying. Culling anecdotes from Twyla’s life and the lives of other luminaries, each chapter is accompanied by a small exercise that will help anyone develop a more hopeful and energetic approach to the everyday. Twyla will tell you what the beauty-fitness-wellness industry won’t: chasing youth is a losing proposition. Instead, Keep It Moving focuses you on what’s here and where you’re going—the book for anyone who wishes to maintain their prime for life.

In a career that has spanned four decades, choreographer Twyla Tharp has collaborated with great musicians, designers, thousands of dancers, and almost a hundred companies. She's experienced the thrill of shared achievement and has seen what happens when group efforts fizzle. Her professional life has been -- and continues to be -- one collaboration after another. In this practical sequel to her national bestseller The Creative Habit, Tharp explains why collaboration is important to her -- and can be for you. She shows how to recognize good candidates for partnership and how to build one successfully, and analyzes dysfunctional collaborations. And although this isn't a book that promises to help you deepen your romantic life, she suggests that the lessons you learn by working together professionally can help you in your personal relationships. These lessons about planning, listening, organizing, troubleshooting, and using your talents and those of your coworkers to the fullest are not limited to the arts; they are the building blocks of working with others, like if you're stuck in a 9-to-5 job and have an unhelpful boss. Tharp sees collaboration as a daily practice, and her book is rich in examples from her career. Starting as a twelve-year-old teaching dance to her brothers in a small town in California and moving through her work as a fledgling choreographer in New York, she learns lessons that have enriched her collaborations with Billy Joel, Jerome Robbins, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Bob Dylan, Elvis Costello, David Byrne, Richard Avedon, Milos Forman, Norma Kamali, and Frank Sinatra. Among the surprising and inspiring points Tharp makes in The Collaborative Habit: -Nothing forces change more dramatically than a new partnership. -In a good collaboration, differences between partners mean that one plus one will always equal more than two. A good collaborator is easier to find than a good friend. If you've got a true friendship, you want to protect that. To work together is to risk it. -Everyone who uses e-mail is a virtual collaborator. -Getting involved with your collaborator's problems may distract you from your own, but it usually leads to disaster. -When you have history, you have ghosts. If you're returning to an old collaboration, begin at the beginning. No evocation of old problems and old solutions. -Tharp's conclusion: What we can learn about working creatively and in harmony can trans- form our lives, and our world.

From Beethoven and Kafka to George Sand, Picasso and Agatha Christie, this compilation of letters, diaries and interviews reveals the profound fusion of discipline and dissipation through which the artistic temperament is allowed to evolve, recharge and emerge. 20,000 first printing.

Packed with the signature can-do attitude that makes beloved artist Danny Gregory a creativity guru to thousands across the globe, this unique guide serves up a hearty helping of inspiration. For aspiring artists who want to draw and paint but just can't seem to find time in the day, Gregory offers 5– to 10–minute exercises for every skill level that fit into any schedule—whether on a plane, in a meeting, or at the breakfast table—along with practical instruction on techniques and materials, plus strategies for making work that's exciting, unintimidating, and fulfilling. Filled with Gregory's encouraging words and motivating illustrations, Art Before Breakfast teaches readers how to develop a creative habit and lead a richer life through making art.

Functional Awareness: Anatomy in Action for Dancers is where anatomy meets artistry. Each chapter provides explorations in embodied anatomy in an engaging manner with the use of images, storytelling, and experiential exercises. It is an accessible introduction to the relationship between daily movement habits, dance training and anatomy. The information is founded on over 30,000 hours of experience teaching and training dancers to generate efficient exertion and appropriate recuperation. Functional Awareness: Anatomy in Action for Dancers employs somatic practices along with explorations in experiential anatomy to awaken the body-mind connection and improve movement function. The book applies the Functional Awareness(r) approach to improve dance technique and provide skills to enable the dancer to move with balance and grace in the classroom, on stage, and in daily life.

"Without The Artist's Way, there would have been no Eat, Pray, Love.” —Elizabeth Gilbert The Artist’s Way is the seminal book on the subject of creativity. An international bestseller, millions of readers have found it to be an invaluable guide to living the artist’s life. Still as vital today—or perhaps even more so—than it was when it was first published twenty five years ago, it is a powerfully provocative and inspiring work. Julia Cameron reflects upon the impact of The Artist’s Way and shares additional insights into the creative process that she has gained. Updated and expanded, this anniversary edition reframes The Artist’s Way for today's creatives.

"Bell's prose is elegant and wonderfully readable in this artful guide."—Publishers Weekly The Artful Edit explores the many-faceted and often misunderstood—or simply overlooked—art of editing. The book brims with examples, quotes, and case studies, including an illuminating discussion of Max Perkins's editorial collaboration with F. Scott Fitzgerald on The Great Gatsby. Susan Bell, a veteran book editor, also offers strategic tips and exercises for self-editing and a series of remarkable interviews, taking us into the studios of successful authors such as Michael Ondaatje and Ann Patchett to learn from their various approaches to revision. Much more than a manual, The Artful Edit inspires readers to think about both the discipline and the creativity of editing and how it can enhance their work. In the computer age of lightning-quick composition, this book reminds readers that editing is not simply a spell-check. A vigorous investigation into the history and meaning of the edit, this book, like The Elements of Style, is a must-have companion for every writer.

Announcing the new revised edition of the classic industry reference! Landscape Graphics is the architect’s ultimate guide to all the basic graphics techniques used in landscape design and landscape architecture. Progressing from the basics into more sophisticated techniques, this guide offers clear instruction on graphic language and the design process, the basics of drafting, lettering, freehand drawing and conceptual diagramming, perspective drawing, section elevations, and more. It also features carefully sequenced exercises, a complete file of graphic symbols for sections and perspectives, and a handy appendix of conversions and equivalents.

Creativity: A Handbook for Teachers covers topics related to creativity research, development, theories and practices. It serves as a reference for academics, teacher educators, teachers, and scientists to stimulate further “dialogue” on ways to enhance creativity.

A national bestseller, Let the Elephants Run is the essential guidebook for anyone looking to reignite their creativity. Creativity is in everyone’s DNA, not a select few. Award-winning musician and founder of CloudID Creativity Lab David Usher believes we just need the right tools to help us reconnect with our imaginations in our day-to-day lives, whether in the head office, the home office, or the artist’s studio. Using a mix of personal anecdotes and professional examples from the worlds of industry, technology, science, music, and art, he shows us that creativity is not magic; it is a learnable skill that any person or business can master. The dynamic full-colour design includes photographs, artwork, and illustrations, as well as action pages to help readers start cultivating the habit of documenting their ideas for future execution. Based on his wildly popular speaking engagements, Let the Elephants Run is the essential guidebook to reigniting and nurturing our creativity in accessible and productive ways.

Learn to make creativity work for your career. Anyone, regardless of who you are or what you do, can cultivate the habits, actions, and attitudes that inspire creativity and innovation. How Creativity Rules the World shows that creativity is an inexhaustible resource available to everyone. It can be taught to all and is the key to thriving in the business world and beyond. This timeless guide promises to make the creative process of successful seven-figure artists and billion-dollar entrepreneurs—as well as Maria’s own—accessible and actionable for you to take the power of their ideas to the next level. Contemporary art curator and writer of the popular newsletter, The Groove, Maria Brito discovered the power of creativity when she transitioned from being an unhappy Harvard-trained corporate lawyer to a thriving entrepreneur and innovator in the art world. After applying the principles in How Creativity Rules the World to her own business, Maria started teaching them to hundreds of people, ranging from entrepreneurs to artists to CEOs. Proven by her students’ creative successes, Maria will guide you to strike gold with your ideas as well. In How Creativity Rules the World, you will learn how to: Overcome limiting thoughts and dispel myths about creativity. Unleash creativity through concrete data, historical passages, and examples of modern entrepreneurship. Develop timeless habits, principles, and tools that worked six centuries ago and continue to work today. Employ creativity in an everyday context to produce extraordinary results. With revealing studies and stories spanning business and art, this book is a deep dive into history, culture, psychology, science, and entrepreneurship; analyzing the elements used by some of the most creative minds throughout the last 600 years. There has never been a more crucial time than now to develop your creativity and your ability to innovate. Coming up with original ideas of value is today’s most precious skill.