Tuesday's Tip

Some quotes from Ray Bradbury’s Zen in the Art of Writing. Yeah, I know it’s about writing, but it’s loaded with good stuff on creativity in general. The formula Bradbury proposes in this essay is simple: work, relax, don’t think, in no particular order. Work and work often. Don’t worry about the outcome or what anyone else thinks. Don’t worry if it doesn’t come out right, even if it’s just plain bad. Focus on the work for the work’s sake, the process for the process’s sake because that’s what it is, that’s what life is, a process. But Bradbury sais it way better than I can.

“And work itself, after awhile, takes on a rhythm. The mechanical begins to fall away. The body begins to take over. The guard goes down. What happens then?
Relaxation.
And then the men are happily following my last advice:
Don’t think.
Which results in more relaxation and more unthinkingness and greater creativity.”

“Michelangelo’s, da Vinci’s, Tintoretto’s billion sketches, the quantitative, prepared them for the qualitative, single sketches further down the line, single portraits, single landscapes of incredible control and beauty.”

“All arts, big or small, are the elimination of waste motion in favor of the concise declaration.
The artist learns what to leave out.”

“The artist must work so hard, so long, that a brain develops and lives, all of itself, in his fingers.”

“To fail is to give up. But you are in the midst of a moving process. nothing fails then. All goes on. Work is done. If good, you learn from it. If bad, you learn even more. Work done and behind you is a lesson to be studied. There is no failure unless one stops. Not to work is to cease, tighten up, become nervous, and therefore destructive of the creative process.”

“What are we trying to uncover in this flow? The one person irreplaceable to the world, of which there is no duplicate. You.”

“ A sense of inferiority, then, in a person, quite often means true inferiority in a craft through simple lack of experience.”*

I’m a long ways from perfecting this process, but I can say when I’ve impressed myself the most, progressed the most, is when I work often and don’t worry about the outcome. The drawing may be horrendous, but there’s almost always something I like about it.
Anyway, I hope you find some inspiration here.

*Bradbury, Ray. Zen in the Art of Writing. New York: Bantam Books, 1992. Print.