Thinking inside of the box

One of the books that I’ve not finished reading is Twyla Tharp’s: The Creative Habit. Learn it and use it for life. I’m nearly half way through and find it interesting reading. Throughout the books she has small sections called Exercises. These are creativity exercises that you can do for yourself. Some have to do with memory, movement, observation, etc. There are a few that I would like to try for myself, one in particular tickles my fancy. Actually, two of them do, but I don’t think that I’ll write about the second one until after I do it.

Sometimes an idea will present itself. This idea may occur at any time and is often fleeting. It may be as light as gossamer, other times the proverbial, A ha!, anvil to the head moment. No matter the type, they seem to be ephemeral, having a definite shelf life. With regards to this year’s SoFoBoMo and last, I’ve had many, many ideas pass though, tossed across the paths of my mind like so much tumbleweed rolling across the Texas prairies. I need a fence to catch them, lest they blow away.

While reading her book, Twlya mentions her box, or boxes that she keeps her ideas in. When she is about to start a project, she creates a box with the name of the project written in magic marker right on the front of the box. Whenever she has an idea, or sees something inspirational with regards to that project, she puts it into the box. It could be a scrap of paper that she has written an idea upon, a music CD, video tape, photograph, child’s toy, whatever. It can be a reminder to: “Keep it simple and meaningful”. Later, when she is about to start putting her project together, she comes back to the box and starts digging through. These items serve as reminders of the ideas for the project. Mind you, this box could be a regular cardboard box, like she uses, or a collection of items stored on the computer including links to websites, photos, etc. that may have, for some reason, inspired you.

So, I’ve started my own box and it has a few things in it already.

• “Keep it simple”
• “Make it matter to you”
• “Portraits! People!
• Observations
• Haiku
• A picture of “Amy” from Joe McNally’s blog. I love the simple lighting.
• Young/Old? Dogs – inspired by this book.

Right now, these are disjointed pieces, seemingly, but they are what has popped up and been written down. It’ll be interesting to see how much stuff is in the box by about mid April when I try to gel those thoughts into something that I can produce.

Related posts:

1. A change in thinking
2. What were you thinking???
3. Thinking outside of the bag
4. What were you thinking at the time? Probably nothing.