What is your creative style? What wisdom inspires you to foster your creativity? How do topics outside your expertise strengthen your creative skills?
100 Essays I Don’t Have Time to Write: On Umbrellas and Sword Fights, Parades and Dogs, Fire Alarms, Children, and Theater by Sarah Ruhl.
I enjoy reading subjects that are either unfamiliar or beyond my expertise, and exploring the learnings that emerge. This book is one of those categories outside my realm of familiarity and comfort.
Sarah Ruhl is a playwright, and in her book, she examines the possibilities of an artist’s life through theater. Ruhl’s insights inspire the creative life no matter the experience (e.g., theater, acting, playwright, musician, painter, writer, etc.).
Writing Life
- Life is an adventure
- Investigate the pauses (what do you learn?)
- Sometimes the point is in the margins (p. 14)
- Life intruding on writing is in fact, life (p. 4)
At the end of the day, writing has very little to do with writing and much to do about life. And life by definition is not an intrusion. – Sarah Ruhl
Thought
- Thinking is an over-rated medium for achieving thought (p. 23)
- We must constantly go back to go forward (p.38)
- There are no pillars to hide behind (p. 77)
- The act of naming is sacred and mysterious (p. 19)
- Speaking invites the imagination
- Think the thing you are saying (p. 66)
- By speaking it, we make it so (p. 78)
Writing Style
- The style is a very simple matter; it is all rhythm (p. 92)
- Practice non-adverbial writing (p. 73)
- Focus on the nouns
- Adverbs in absentia
Waiting
- Stuff happens in the waiting
- Writing and waiting are connected
- Poems teach us how to wait (p. 144)
Wakefulness and Growth
- Failure loosens the mind; perfection stills the heart (p. 121)
- Try always to be there even when you are not (p. 160)
- Give your full attention (p. 161)
…the theater is one of the few places left in the bright and noisy world where we sit in the quiet dark together, to be awake. – Sarah Ruhl
What inspiration nudges you forward in cultivating your creative strengths?
I welcome your comments.
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