You will sit before your typewriter or paper and look out of the window and begin to brush your hair absent-mindedly for an hour or two. Never mind. That is all right. That is as it should be, though you must sit before your typewriter just the same and know, in this dreamy time, that you are going to write, to tell something on paper, sooner or later.
Creativity can be described as letting go of certainties.
—GAIL SHEEHY, WRITER
“And you must also know that you are going to sit here tomorrow for a while, and the next day and so on, forever and ever.”
Research is one sure way to explore your attractions in depth over time. Miriam Nelson was happiest as a child playing outside and doing a variety of sports. She got a pony when she was six years old, skied, swam, and played soccer. Her whole family was very active, but somehow she knew she wanted to be a scientist. As an adult, she merged her two loves of fitness and science by becoming a women's fitness expert. At Tufts University, her research on the benefits of strength training for women and how it slows the aging process as well as promotes health and nutrition is extraordinary. Miriam explains, “I loved science. I was fascinated with discovery and looking through microscopes. Every study that you do, you find out something different than you expected. We always go into a study with clear hypotheses, but we usually find some additional factors that are fascinating as well. I also love working with students—they're so enthusiastic and excited and their energy fires me up. Another benefit is getting to know personally the older people that participate in our studies. A lot of them have become really dear friends.” This affection for her subjects reflects her strong commitment to her investigations and to the promise of longer and healthier lives for women.
Besides noticing your inspirations, you must find a way to capture them. Many creative women keep journals of their insights and ideas. Chronicling your awareness, meandering thoughts and feelings honors their value and signals to you that your creative process deserves attention. Sigrid Olsen keeps a sketchbook of her ideas, including swatches of fabric and color she collects.
Just don't give up trying to do what you really want to do. Where there is love and inspiration, I don't think you can go wrong.
—ELLA FITZGERALD, SINGER
“I might see something in a retail store, in a museum or a magazine, or on a person that sparks an idea and I think, that's an interesting color combination that I haven't put together before. We go to Europe four times a year to see the print and fabric shows and that's a very inspirational trip. And I might say, ‘I love the idea of a black and white group followed by watery cool colors.’ Then we'll do something hot and floral and then switch to something mysterious in spice tones. I'm always looking at the flow of color for all four seasons.”
Renowned chef Lydia Shire, whose career was nurtured by Julia Child and who now owns two famous restaurants in Boston—Biba's and Pignoli's—still creates her own menus with partner Susan Regis. Lydia also deliberately collects her brainstorms: “What I do is read a lot of books and magazines. I do my homework, and something will jog my interest. I keep a kind of a balance in my head all the time. For instance, I'll think, we haven't had a skirt steak on Biba's menu for a long time and I'll say to myself—perhaps for the spring or summer—I don't want to do any more sirloin. Then maybe I'll feel like I want to be in Mexico, so we'll make white corn tamales to accompany the skirt steak or some kind of tomato dish. Or Susan will say, ‘Let's do a capon.’ And I'll say, ‘And let's do it with this kind of marinade,’ and she'll say she was thinking about the same thing. But we have fun—we go to her house or my house—and she brings her homework and I bring mine and we recreate the menu for each season, which is 120 new dishes every year just for Biba's. So I always say that I think what I get paid for is writing these menus.”
Alice Aspen March is an authority on the effects of television viewing on the family as well as the coproducer of the Emmy-nominated documentary Latchkey Kids. As Alice has learned for herself, in order to develop our creativity, we have to give it our full attention: “Time is absolutely vital to the creative process. We have to figure out how to take it and give it to ourselves. Only when we realize the kind of attention we need to be creative, do we realize the value of our time. I don't think any of us learned about this when we were growing up. I know I didn't. No one ever said to me, ‘Alice, this is your time. What would you like to do with it?’ I never saw this role-modeled either. So I have had to learn the process of asking for the time I need to dip into my creative well. And learning that has taken a very long time.”
Creating a Sanctuary
Alone time sets the stage for creative reflection. A sanctuary offers a place to indulge our creative spirit to fuel our creative process. Following in the footsteps of Virginia Woolf, interior designer Chris Madden, a regular on Oprah! and The Today Show, wrote about the importance of personal spaces for women in a gorgeous book called A Room of Her Own: Women's Personal Spaces. Chris believes strongly that women need this place: “I tell women when I lecture around the country that not everybody's going to have the luxury of an entire room. Carve out a corner, if you have to, in your living room or bedroom, with a chair and a basket filled with things you love—books, pictures, tapes. If you don't create the space, you might not take the time.”
In her own personal space at home, Chris has surrounded herself with meaningful treasures. She describes her creative space: “My desk is a vintage farm table that has a lot of soul and that's important to me. I also have a chaise to relax in, and there's an old statue from our garden that got split in half by a tree. I have a rotary phone, as I like the slow dial. On a tray I display black and white pictures of the men in my life: my husband, my father, and my sons—I love black and white photographs! Then there's my first sewing machine—an old Singer—which is sitting on what I call my generational quilt. The quilt is made of pieces of my mother's summer dresses that my grandmother sewed for my mother and was pieced together by my great grandmother. I love that it's about three generations. I also have a small wooden altar of photographs and the work of people who have passed on in my life, along with favorite boxes and rocks I've collected. On the wall I've hung big black and white poster-sized, almost abstract pictures, of rides in an amusement park in my hometown that I took during a blizzard—they bring me such joy!” Chris also has a Walkman for listening to her favorite tapes and sometimes lights small candles to enhance the relaxed, meditative mood of her personal space.
Challenge: BUILD YOUR SANCTUARY
Set up a creative sanctuary, even if it's only a special box for starters. Collect objects that you are attracted to, like photos, materials, fabric swatches, quotations, and books that comfort you or encourage you. As your collection grows, expand your space. As your creativity begins to take up more space in your life, the metaphor of more physical space for your things will support you. Spend time in your creative space regularly. If you don't have a space of your own, be imaginative. Barter services for space, borrow someone else's office for part of a day, or create a sanctuary in your car.
Inventing Creative Rituals
Rituals can spark our creative process. For some of us, a ritual can be a simple routine that readies us for inspiration. “I can't sit down and write or start a new project unless my closets and my life are organized,” says Chris Madden. “Because I travel so much, there's always going to be a certain chaos in my life. So in order to let myself go and create, I need to have organization around me. When I come back from being away, as I did this morning, the first thing I had to do was clean out the refrigerator and bake something wonderful. I think it's about reclaiming my space.”
Ritual is the way we carry the presence of the sacred. Ritual is the spark that must not go out.
—CHRISTINA
