Nurturing creativity, embracing mistakes

It's spring and beautiful with azaleas blooming everywhere and a full moon this week!



Thought for the day; "It's all about the mistakes."



Tom Waits, my hero, espouses this sentiment in an interview in "Innocent when you dream", a book I'm currently reading. I think it was Miles Davis who said "play it twice, and it's not a mistake anymore. For me it's about no being so precious about everything I create, and letting the creative process be messy. Some of my best bits come from "accidents", which I can notice as cool when I'm not white-knuckling my practice, trying to be perfect.



My dad used to say "practice makes perfect, but only if you practice perfection." That hung me up for awhile, because I'm pretty impatient when I can't do things perfectly. What I realize more and more is that it's good to go for perfection in alI do, as long as I realize that I'll never achieve it. Adopting this approach usually yields some pretty good results.



Yet another edge in life, a place where's there's no black and white, only shades of gray.

Irreverence coupled with deep caring. "AFGO", as my mom says.



"Just write. It's not about sitting around waiting for the muse. The people who are really good labour over what they write." - Amy Ray (Indigo Girls)



On the subject of the muse, nurturing creativity, and the pressure to be perfect, this Ted talk from Elizabeth Gilbert (best-selling author of Eat,Pray,Love) is wonderful.

It made me feel let off the hook, and made me cry at the end.

Derek Sivers (another of my heroes), was there, and said that he asked her afterward if she had just improv-ed that talk, it seemed so natural? She replied that she'd put about 80 hours into preparation.

Case in point.