The Creative Habit. Learn It and Use It for Life

Customer Reviews

A dance genious shares her discipline for creativity

2008-05-24
This is a great book for anyone who wants to cultivate the habits of good discipline that consistenly lead to creative ideas.

Great!

2008-05-19
It's the kind of book I would want everyone to read. I want to buy a lot of copies and share them with a lot of people. I just loved it.

Twyla shares pearls from her life's creative adventure

2008-05-12
A refreshing and inspiring glimpse into the creative habits employed by a successful artist, generously shared in a well thought out, intelligent, down-to-earth practical way. Twyla shares her personal experiences and keen observational skills in a way generalizable to nearly any creative field. A pleasure to read and re-read. Practical, not just fluff. She shares behind-the-scenes step-by-step insights into the preparation for some of her more successful projects (Movin Out, etc). Puts to bed the idea that artists are supernatural beings who simply sit still and wait for bolts of lightning to strike them with inspiration. Reading this book is highly conducive to inspiration. I bought a second copy as a gift.

Art Making and Hard Work

2008-04-28
Twyla Tharp's "The Creative Habit" is at once inspirational and practical.
This well-known dancer guides the reader through some brass tacks of the
studio work ethic while allowing and encouraging the mind to soar.
This is an honest, no-nonsense book for all artistic disciplines.

Creative or not, this book is for you.

2008-03-25
This is THE book to have when you curl up with a glass of wine. The last third was especially relevant to me. It not only encouraged me to be okay with my obstacles and failures, but also it caused me to actually appreciate and celebrate them. You don't have to define yourself as "creative" to get a great deal out of this book. There's something in it for everyone.

Full of Creative Ideas

2008-02-27
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...

Very Useful 2008-01-11
I was glancing through library to pick something to read. I have no idea why choose this one but when I started reading it, I thought, I may not be able to go too far since I got a sense it is all about Ballet. After finishing first chapter and I dont even remember How I ended up reading complete book. I developed lot of respect for author and Kudos to her for elegantly putting across the concept of habbit and creativity associated with it. I was inspired by this book and was extremely helpful for me to think about habbit differently. After finishing the book, I purchased a copy of it from Amazon and it will always be an inspiring reading material for me

Vadiraj Muthya

Debunking the 'magic' of leading a creative life 2007-11-25
Any artist, entrepreneur or creative person who fancies herself or himself living all - or most - of their lives according to their own rules will do well to read Ms. Tharp's book. I liked it for two reasons:

(1) Ms. Tharp writes with authority. She's led an artist's life for more than thirty years. She's managed to make it to the top of her profession, and earns top fees for her creative work. Reading her first-person account - a person who's actually DONE IT - always beats a book full of interesting ideas from someone who hasn't.

(2) She tells the truth. Ms. Tharp writes,"After so many years, I've learned that being creative is a full time job with its own daily patterns....The routine is as much a part of the creative process as the lightning bold of inspiration, maybe more." (p.7). This is a theme she returns to again and again: leading a creative life takes focus and discipline. There are no shortcuts, magic recipes, or 5-step programs in this book.

Lucky for us, Ms. Tharp shares liberally from her own bag of unorthodox tricks to help us move through both the daily drudgery and practice...and the moments of inspiration. Her prose felt like a wise mentor reaching out, looking me square in the face and saying, "Look kid, it's not as easy as it looks. Here's the drill..."

The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It For Life 2007-11-24
What a great book for creative types. This dance master teaches and shares her personal process for supporting and growing her craft. I recommend this book to my creative, right-brained clients and they love it.

Refreshing 2007-09-25
It's a shame this book is marketed as self-help---even if that's, more or less, what it is. But what it isn't---cliche, self-absorbed, trite---is what makes this work refreshing and wholly different from most books in this narcissistic genre.

Tharp's book, although spare and precise, is a meditation on what creativity is---the ultimate reason for getting out of bed each day---and how we can work toward cultivating it, regardless of the genre from which we aspire to create.

This is the perfect self-help book for those who abhor the very concept of self-help; Tharp does not condescend or state the obvious. This is a look inside the mind of a master of creativity---and how very fortunate for the rest of us that she took the time to share.