Mary O'Gara

Posts Tagged ‘Twyla Tharp’

If you’re a writer, writing every day is as important to your creative health as brushing your teeth is to your physical health.   I don’t remember whether it was Heifetz or Menuhin or Casals who said that if he didn’t practice scales for a day, he could tell; if he didn’t do scales for a few days, the audience could tell.  Twyla Tharp writes about the importance of exercise and daily practice for dancers.

Daily work is probably the best-kept secret of the top artists in every creative field.   It’s certainly the secret the wanna-bes overlook.  You can work in a journal and keep your notes or work on napkins and toss them.   Personally, of course, I favor journals, but the essential part is working however you can on a particular day.

And here’s the bottom line.   If you don’t love writing so much that you’re willing to do five minutes a day of work on the craft of writing, you don’t love it enough to sustain the ups and downs of a career.

Why are writers the only creative group that actually seems to take pride in not working?

Why do I teach The Artist’s Way workshop (based on Julia Cameron’s book)?  Because it’s easier to coach writers who do their daily work.   Cameron makes it simple:  three pages of flow writing every morning to let the subconscious mind spill its contents, whether those contents are brilliant plots or threadbare whines, plus an hour a week devoted to filling up the creative well and entertaining your muse.   In later books she recommends a weekly exploratory walk.

Natalie Goldberg recommends timed writing, with a topic or starter sentence.  You still just let the words flow and let the subconscious mind pour out its thoughts.

Recently, I’ve been intrigued by the possibilities of sentences, and I’ve been spending my daily time playing with sentence structure.   But soon I’ll return to morning pages.  Maybe I’ll do morning pages and sentence structure, which feels like a musician’s scales.

For you it might be making lists or vocabulary study or some other skill.

However you do it, that daily five minutes keeps the mind focused on stories and looking for material.

How about taking a tumble with the whole world watching your Olympic ski run?

Or tipping your own team mate and costing your country two medals in front of the world?

I’ve been glued to the Olympics, awed by the courage of the contenders.  And learning even more about the amazing combination of talent and habit I admire in writers like Nora Roberts and artists like Twyla Tharp.

In one of the interviews, a skater talked about performing on off-days.   The skater says it’s in the muscle memory; you just do the moves day after day and the muscles remember.

In The Creative Habit, Tharp talks about the car that waits for her every morning, the habit of going to the studio.   Nora Roberts interviews talk about her commitment to writing day after day.   You hear the same thing from writers like Suz Brockmann and Anne Stuart and Rebecca York.  Whether they’re talking at RWA conferences or sharing their insights online, all four writers emphasize the importance of getting words on paper, day after day, week after week, year after year.

Watching the Olympics made me so grateful I’m a writer.  I don’t have to wait four years for another chance after a rejction, and I don’t have to run zamboni’s all night to afford a ticket to the next competition city.   I can send a story out again the next day.  The cost of postage and paper and ink is insignificant compared to the cost of flying around the world and paying for hotels on practice days.  Some editors even take email submissions.

And if everything I write tomorrow is garbage, no one will know until it’s been fixed.   Those of us who do our work alone and revise before the public sees it incredibly lucky.

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