Tip 2 For Creative Growth: Live a Creative Life
Focus less on just 'making stuff' and more on the most beautiful creative act of all: how you live your life. "The real work of the artist is a way of being in the world."
Welcome to week 2 of my series on Creative Growth. Last week I talked about how cherishing - and nurturing - your inimitability was the best foundation for growing creatively. This week’s tip is an extension of that: it’s about building a life, from the inside out, that’s creative, a life that will sustain everything that you go on to make and do.
As someone who has, for a long time, been a slave to wordcounts, to productivity, to wanting to put out a book or more a year, to believing that I’m defined by my output, Rick Rubin’s book, The Creative Act: A Way of Being, has been a helpful perspective shifter.
Rick Rubin is a wildly successful musician and a music producer. As a bonus piece of advice, I’d recommend reading about and learning from creative people who work in genres other than your own. So, if you’re a writer, read memoirs and learn from dancers, painters, musicians, actors – even people who work creatively in the sciences. It’s refreshing and enlightening to learn from those who are being creative but in different fields.
The premise of Rick Rubin’s book is that the most important work we can do, as artists, is not just to make stuff, but to live creative lives. He writes:
“Living life as an artist is a practice.
You are either engaging in the practice
or you’re not.
It makes no sense to say you’re not good at it.
It’s like saying, “I’m not good at being a monk.”
You are either living as a monk or you’re not.
We tend to think of the artist’s work as the output.
The real work of the artist
is a way of being in the world.”
So, being a writer means reading.
It means thinking.
It means asking questions.
It means paying attention.
It means believing, heart and soul, that stories are as important to life on this planet as food and water and shelter.
It’s about prioritising our work and celebrating the work of others.
It’s about getting to know who we are and what we care about and nurturing our characters as much as it’s about learning our craft.
And it’s about approaching the world wholeheartedly and openheartedly.
The most vivid example I have of someone whose life is a beautiful, creative act, is my 88 year old writing friend Marjorie. She writes a poem every day. She greets everyone who crosses her path with open arms and a smile and great warmth. Her clothes and scarves and jewellery are an artwork in themselves - splashes of color and fabric, all bought locally. She takes herself alone to concerts in Boston and to summer concerts in beautiful gardens where she pulls off her shoes and socks to feel the vibrations of the drums coming through the earth. She travels around the world alone, cruising up European rivers to exploring the wilds of Alaska. She goes with friends on special local adventures to discover places of natural or spiritual beauty and then sits and writes about her experience. She visits nursing homes and hospitals to talk to carers and families about her experience of walking with her husband through Alzheimer’s (she’s written three memoirs about that journey too). She goes to book fairs to promote her writing. She attends board meetings and petitions for higher teacher pay. She leads church services. She shows up for her friends, always. She loves to watch and interact with little children - she once crawled on the coffee shop floor to encourage a little girl who was learning to walk. She takes classes in needle felting - and anything else that takes her creative fancy. She puts all of herself - of her beautiful inimitability - into every day that she lives in the world. She lives a creative life and it comes out in everything she does and makes. Did I mention that she was 88!
We are not all Marjories. I’m usually in my PJs by 8pm, not on a bus to Boston! But I try, in my way, to lead a full, wholehearted, creative life. I believe that if we do that, if we find a way of living creatively, through our every word, breath and action, our work will take on truth and integrity and it will resonate more deeply with our readers.
We can learn to write stunning sentences.
We can learn to plot our novels brilliantly.
We can learn to craft unforgettable characters.
We can churn out the words.
But we all know that the writers who endure, those who touch our lives, who change things, who make a difference, have a deeper quality.
The writers whose writing stays with us are those who have worked on themselves as much as on their craft – they’re those whose whole beings shine through everything they put out into the world.
Writing Prompt
As today is Earth Day, I thought we could use a poem by the glorious Mary Oliver, who always reminds us how connected we are to nature.
Sleeping in the Forest by Mary Oliver
I thought the earth
remembered me, she
took me back so tenderly, arranging
her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds. I slept
as never before, a stone
on the riverbed, nothing
between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated
light as moths among the branches
of the perfect trees. All night
I heard the small kingdoms breathing
around me, the insects, and the birds
who do their work in the darkness. All night
I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling
with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.
Start with the line: “I thought the earth remembered me…” and keep writing for 10 minutes (or more), without stopping, looking back, editing or over-thinking. She where it takes you. If you need more inspiration, weave in the following words:
Tenderly. Lichens. Seeds. Stone. Riverbed. Stars. Moths. Branches. Luminous. Insects. Birds. Water.
Adapt The Writing Prompt
Write the same prompt from the point of view of a character you’re working on, exploring their relationship to the earth. Or write a scene in which they connect with the natural world in some way which inspires, changes or challenges them.
Recommendations
An inspiring podcast about creativity:
A lovely conversation between Rick Rubin and Krista Tippett on her podcast:
OnBeing: Magic, Everyday Mystery and Getting Creative.
Rick Rubin’s book:
I’d also highly recommend his book, mentioned above:
The Creative Act: A Way of Being
A Quotation to Chew Over
The wonderful Elizabeth Gilbert, singing from the hymn-sheet of Tip 2: Live a Creative Life!
“A creative life is an amplified life. It’s a bigger life, a happier life, an expanded life, and a hell of a lot more interesting life. Living in this manner—continually and stubbornly bringing forth the jewels that are hidden within you—is a fine art, in and of itself.”
Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear
Coming up Next Week
Tune in next week for my 3rd Tip on Creative Growth.
With love, dear friends and keep writing,
Virginia🤍
Virginia Macgregor is the author of five novels for adults and two for young adults. She has an MFA in Creative Writing with a specialisation in the teaching of writing. She lives with her husband, her three children, her four cats and a home full of books and coffee mugs, in New Hampshire.
Loving this series, Virginia!