As usual before a workshop, I pick up a coffee to take with me. And so it was that on a recent Sunday morning I drove the roundabout way to The Ink Spot to stop at Starbucks for my regular Americano. As I waited at the light, a young man crossed the street in front of me. Slender, wearing jeans and a long-sleeved blue pullover, he carried what could have been a journal, could have been a book.
We’ve all heard it before, from writing teachers and well-published authors and in books about writing: Read your work aloud to really discover what you’ve written and whether or not it’s “working.” There are lots of other reasons for giving voice to your words.
Our last post featured part one of a two-part Q&A session with JIll Badonsky, whose most recent book, The Muse Is In: An Owner’s Manual to Your Creativity, has just been released. Following is the second part of the interview in which we get into some of the nuts and bolts of Jill’s book and her views on creativity and having fun. Hope you have fun reading it.
I love the Creativity Quiz in your book. You ask: “Are you breathing?” I don’t have a question here, I just wanted to say how much I like this question because the answer for all of us is so obvious. You’re saying if we’re alive and breathing, we’re creative.
Thanks for acknowledging the quiz. I truly believe people are less alive both when they are not breathing and when they don’t allow themselves to engage in a creativity because they have a preconceived notion of what it’s supposed to be, how good it is supposed to be, how they are supposed to do it, and what they are supposed to do with. Creative is so much more. It’s a way of living and seeing. It just isn’t always easy so we have to be willing to get past the difficulties to its sublimity.