Review of Twyla Tharp's The Creative Habit

Twyla Tharp (yes, the choreographer – how many Twyla Tharps could there possibly be?) begins the second chapter of her book The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life with the following revelation:

“I begin each day of my life with a ritual: I wake up at 5:30 a.m., put on my workout clothes, my leg warmers, my sweatshirts, and my hat. I walk outside my Manhattan home, hail a taxi, and thell the driver to take me to the Pumping Iron gym at 91^st Street and First Avenue, where I work out for two hours.”

Dude.

I mean, seriously: 5:30 a.m.? Two hours? Every day? How am I supposed to take this woman's advice about anything, given that she's obviously made of different stuff than I am?

To make matters worse, there's this gem, from her last chapter: “When I look back on my best work, it was inevitably created in what I call The Bubble. I eliminated every distraction, sacrificed almost everything that gave me pleasure, placed myself in a single-minded isolation chamber, and structured my life so that everything was not only feeding the work but subordinated to it. It is not a particularly sociable way to operate. It's actively anti-social. On the other hand, it is pro-creative.”

A paragraph like that is confirmation of my worst fears. Well, okay, not my worst fears. Still, I find it discouraging to think I've got to make Tharp's pact with Devil Discipline if I want to have a hope of creating anything worthwhile. (What next? Burnt offerings? Every last guest at my would-be dinner party? Awww, really? Do I hafta?)

As you can see, I read the whole book through a haze of suspicion, looking for reasons to discount what Tharp had to say about developing the creative habit. So maybe it's no surprise that my favorite passages were those that seemed to contradict her more characteristic “singleness of purpose” through-line.

I particularly liked what she had to say about luck: “Habitually creative people are, in E.B. White's phrase, 'prepared to be lucky.' The key words here are 'prepared' and 'lucky.' They're inseparable. You don't get lucky without preparation, and there's no sense in being prepared if you're not open to the possibility of a glorious accident.”

Later, she suggests that being generous is the surest route to luck in the creative arena, because, “If you're generous to someone...you are in effect making him lucky. This is important. It's like inviting yourself to a community of good fortune.” The most fortunate people Tharp knows, she says, have a few characteristics in common: they are prepared, they work hard, they're alert, they involve others in their work, and “they tend to make others feel lucky to be around them.”

Hmmm. I don't know about you, but these ruminations on the importance of community and collaboration don't jive (is it “jive” or “jibe”?) with her claim that spending extended periods of time in The Bubble is probably a necessary evil for those of us who want to create.

So...here's to many more dinner parties, chez moi. Cheers!