Blog

Jason Reitman is a film director, screenwriter and producer best known for directing the films Thank You for Smoking, Juno and Up in the Air. But before he made a name for himself in the movie business, he was first known as the son of the famous movie director, Ivan Reitman. And as kids are known to do, he initially sought out the polar opposite path his father. During…

The whole world is your rhetorical toolbox. There’s a fascinating book called The Demon and the Angel, written by award winning poet and critic, Edward Hirsch. It explores the creative process by recounting and analyzing the mysterious forces that inspired famous creators in history, from poets to authors to musicians to painters. In the final chapter of the book, the author concludes with an eloquent and inspiring vision of…

The creativeproductis subordinate to the creativemoment, the creative moment is subordinate to the creativeprocess, and the creative process is subordinate to the creativelife. And so, the question becomes, what does the creative life look like? Howard Gruber asked the same question. He was a pioneer of the psychological study of creativity, most widely known for his books on the development of Darwin’s thinking on evolution. But unlike many of…

If you read the obituaries of successful creators, you’ll notice an interesting pattern in the way friends and family members describe their legacy. One obituary I read was about a woman named Hong, who had authored more than thirty books, many of which were bestsellers. When she reflected on the arc of her career, she said that the whole body of work just felt like one long book. One…

I recently read a widely citedstudyabout how our brains engage in learning differently when we work by hand. According to their research, manually manipulating and drawing things out has a significant impact on our creative process: “When it comes to learning and remembering material, the pen is mightier than the keyboard. Writing entails using the hand and fingers to form letters. It requires more mental energy and engages more…

Being prolific isn’t just about using your right brain. It’s about using your brain right. I’m reminded of a popular interview with Stephen King, who famously said that when it comes to the creative process, to get scientific about it is a little like trying to catch moonbeams in a jar. Isn’t that the truth? That if we don’t believe in magic on some level, those moments of virtuosity…

Creativity isn’t a linear experience, it’s an associative one. If we want to become prolific, we have to make peace with piecemeal. The problem is, to satisfy our basic human need for unity, order and completeness, we demand that everything have a beginning, middle and end. Human life, after all, is punctuated by a definite beginning, middle and end. And so, it’s no surprise that we require everything we…

If we want to become more prolific, we have to create a more visceral and spontaneous contact with our work. We have to invite nature as our creative collaborator. Jackson Pollack famously laid his canvas on the floor of a converted barn instead of using the traditional easel. Back in the forties, he did an interview with an limited edition art publication called Possibilities, in which he made the…

The brain takes cues from the body.  As creators and communicators of ideas, part of our job is to activate the creative subroutine in our head, bring up our energy and snap ourselves into the appropriate state of mind to do our work. In the same way that the physical act of smiling triggers the chemistry in our brain associated with happiness, the on ramp is the cue for…

If you don’t write it down, it never happened. When I first heard this phrase, it had a profound effect on my creative process. It taught me to relieve my mind of the necessity of remembering. It taught me to stop trusting my memory and start managing my creative workflow intelligently. To train myself to become an informational virtuoso who’s fast, responsive, proactive, organized, and never lets a single…