“Well, obviously you need a writing instrument and you need an idea. I’m just not sure which should come first.”

Forensic anthropologist Dr. Temperance ‘Bones’ Brennan (Emily Deschanel), from TV Series “Bones” (imdb.com)

Creative expression is not just about using outside materials and tools, but actually being an instrument oneself.

It is a valuable and challenging idea that has been a theme of a number of acting coaches, but also applies to any form of creative work.

One example was the acclaimed teacher Sanford Meisner who said, “Every actor’s instrument is different because every actors instrument is their humanity, their sensitivity. Their soul. And there is no ‘right way’ or ‘one way’ to get to that instrument. That soul.”

[Book: Sanford Meisner on Acting.]

The following inspiring and insightful perspectives by dancer, choreographer and teacher Martha Graham have been around many years, and widely quoted – but it may be valuable to think about them every now and then.

This series of posts on “How To Be More Creative” offers articles, books and other resources on developing creative thinking and innovation, and enhancing our creative expression.

My other Creative Mind posts, hopefully, do that as well – but these new posts specifically provide brief excerpts of selected material by other authors that have a more “how to” flavor. Feel free to make any comments or suggestions.

Creative Thinking: How to Be More Creative (with Science!)

by Gregory Ciotti

“Have you ever wished you were more creative? If you do creative work, have you ever suffered from a creative block and been stuck wondering what exactly is wrong, and how you can get yourself out of it?”

~~~~~~~~

[See Part 2]

“Sometimes you’ve got to let everything go – purge yourself. If you are unhappy with anything…whatever is bringing you down, get rid of it. Because you’ll find that when you’re free, your true creativity, your true self comes out.”

Tina Turner

Helping ourselves get as free as possible to create can take many forms, of course. Including, for Tina Turner and many other people, getting out of a destructive relationship.

Psychologist Cheryl Arutt believes “the best way to protect the art is to protect the artist.

“Learning how to regulate internal states, how and when to use self-soothing techniques, and how to know when we are actually safe — these are key to emotional well-being for anyone, but for artists, they are especially useful.”

She adds, “The ability to self-regulate provides an all-access pass for traveling the internal world, allowing the artist to mine for the gems that can be found there… without losing touch with the light of day.”

“Writing is so difficult, that if it doesn’t heal you in the doing of it it isn’t worth the trouble.”

That is a quote by massage therapist, author, artist and teacher Cynthia Waring.

In her book and one-woman play, both titled “Bodies Unbound”, she relates the story of her life and growth as a therapist and artist, her journey of self-discovery and healing from childhood trauma and abuse.

In the process, she invites the audience and reader to see how ordinary life is the perfect process for transformation and actualization.

“I really have that worry that I’ll wake up in the morning and think, ‘Oh God. I’m such a fraud, and they’ll find me out.’ I doubt myself a lot.”

Those are comments by one of my favorite actors, Emily Blunt, who interestingly continued, “And maybe that’s a good thing, because I think it would be limiting to have discovered my whole bag of tricks by now. Hopefully I will always be afraid of being a fraud, because then you never stop trying.”

That is from a magazine interview about her movie “The Devil Wears Prada,” which also quotes one of her co-stars Stanley Tucci: “Yeah, if you consider yourself a fraud, then no one else will. I believe that. It’s people who don’t consider themselves frauds who are the biggest frauds… I’m actually looking at a book on my dresser, and the title is ‘Doubt.’

“I think doubt is an incredibly healthy thing. You just have to know its limitations and not let it stop you from doing something fully or executing something with authority.”

Mike White has been a writer and producer, sometimes actor, on many film and TV projects including Dawson’s Creek, Freaks and Geeks, Chuck & Buck, The Good Girl, Orange County, and School of Rock.

His new HBO series Enlightened, created with Laura Dern, is slotted as a comedy, but brings up many issues about personal growth and emotional health.

Dern plays Amy, an ambitious executive who suffers a nervous breakdown at work, and recovers at a rehab center in Hawaii, which includes meditation. She regains better emotional health, along with new interests in self-help books, and an awakening about spiritual and environmental issues.

One of the aspects of the show, and Laura Dern’s outstanding acting, that I really like is that this journey is not presented as something easy or sudden – the title “Enlightened” is clearly ironic. Personal change is pretty much an evolutionary process, and Amy does not return from rehab as a role model of emotional intelligence.

Upon returning to her large corporation to reclaim her job, Amy is relegated to a basement data processing center instead of her previous position – and she views it as a basement full of “circus freaks” and “losers” as she calls them, including a character played by White (photo).

In his new course Your Best Life in the Arts, creativity coach Eric Maisel, PhD promises to provide “real answers to the challenges that confront you” – whether you are “just beginning to write, paint or play an instrument” or have “logged in thousands of hours at your craft.”

These are excerpts from summaries of the first seven topics of the course, which is a live tele-conference (with downloads available), running for 14 Mondays starting October 3… with my added commentaries and resources, such as articles.

Week 7.   The Passion Key
Passion—and synonyms like love, curiosity, enthusiasm, excitement and energy—is vital to the creative process. It is possible to create without passion but your art will suffer and the likelihood of you continuing over the long haul is greatly reduced…

This is another central issue for enjoying a creative and meaningful life.

One of the themes of recent books and research on talent development is that creative achievement, even genius, is less a matter of innate talent than focused practice over time – maybe a long time.

As David Brooks declared in his The New York Times op-ed essay Genius: The Modern View, “The key factor separating geniuses from the merely accomplished is not a divine spark…it’s deliberate practice.

“Top performers spend more hours (many more hours) rigorously practicing their craft.”

He notes recent research supporting this has been summarized in the books: “The Talent Code” by Daniel Coyle, and “Talent Is Overrated” by Geoff Colvin.

In an earlier post, I quote Jan Phillips about the inner voices that can keep us from creative work: “They’re voices we inherit along the way, from our parents, our teachers, the culture, the church – voices that say ‘I’m not smart enough, I’m not good enough, I don’t have a story worth telling, I’m not creative, I shouldn’t stand out’ – they’re all (k)nots that keep us bound up and silent.”

From Artists are Crazy; Mothers Can’t Be Artists, and Other Myths.

In an interview for the Sounds True site, she talks about other aspects of our thinking, attitudes and inner life that can prevent or allow greater access to our creativity. Here is an excerpt:

{ Continued from Part 1 }

Releasing psychic tension

In their book The Psychology of Creative Writing, Scott Barry Kaufman, PhD and James C. Kaufman, PhD write, “Artists may not be aware of what is troubling them.

“Csikszentmihalyi put it this way: ‘The impressions artists work with come from many sources. One that is very prevalent among contemporary painters contains memories of childhood.

“Whether the viewer realizes it or not, and often also unbeknown to the artist, the images that form the core of a great number of modern works represent the rage or the ecstasy of childhood which the artist tries to recapture in order to integrate it into current experience…