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    Creative Morning Magic: The Life-Changing Daily Practice for Writers, Artists, and Makers
    Creative Morning Magic: The Life-Changing Daily Practice for Writers, Artists, and Makers
    Creative Morning Magic: The Life-Changing Daily Practice for Writers, Artists, and Makers
    Ebook182 pages2 hours

    Creative Morning Magic: The Life-Changing Daily Practice for Writers, Artists, and Makers

    By Tarah Thornburg

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    About this ebook

    Human beings are innately creative, yet most of us think of creativity as an all-or-nothing pursuit. If we can't quit our day jobs to become writers or artists, time to create gets lost in the shuffle of work and family life. We need a way to integrate creativity into our daily routine — a method that embraces our lives as they are.

    Warm, honest, and down-to-earth, Creative Morning Magic is a step-by-step guide to incorporating creative passions into our busy lives. Drawing on neuroscience, Eastern thought, and her own experiences as an author, Tarah Thornburg offers practical advice for carving out the time to write or make art, using meditation to quiet the inner critic, and cultivating a lifelong relationship with creativity.

    Fans of The Artist's Way, Big Magic, and Writing Down the Bones will love Creative Morning Magic. Thornburg confronts the cultural narrative that we must sacrifice our passions to get ahead and that a person's true vocation is the one that pays the bills. Creative Morning Magic is the permission slip we've all been waiting for to take time for our art each day.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTarah Thornburg
    Release dateSep 24, 2019
    ISBN9781393893240
    Creative Morning Magic: The Life-Changing Daily Practice for Writers, Artists, and Makers

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      Book preview

      Creative Morning Magic - Tarah Thornburg

      Introduction

      In any given lifetime, we are presented with infinite choices: the people we spend time with, the jobs we take, the places we live, the people we marry, and whether or not we have children. Every choice presents us with more choices, so that each of our lives resembles a tree with more possible outcomes branching out at every turn.

      As we reach the top of the tree — our final decades — those branches begin to narrow. While more offshoots appear all the time, they carry out in the same general direction.

      This is why we place so much importance on those thick branches near the middle. It is these choices, we believe, that will make the greatest impact on our life trajectory and our overall happiness.

      Recently, a good friend called me from China. I knew it had to be important for him to call me out of the blue, and as soon as I picked up, I could tell he was flustered. He was studying abroad during his final year of law school, and he was dating a man who was already working in the legal profession.

      The boyfriend hated his job. He thought law school had been a mistake and had decided to quit his high-paying legal job and take a year off to write.

      My friend, who is a highly logical, goal-oriented person, was confused and agitated. He saw his boyfriend’s sudden desire to write as impulsive and foolish, so he’d called the only writer he knew in the hope that I could explain this behavior. He told me that he thought his boyfriend was conflating the desire to quit his job with the desire to write.

      I agreed, but I also understood.

      There is a very specific fantasy people have about taking a year off to write — usually involving a sun-soaked house in the French countryside. I half-jokingly told him that it sounded as though his boyfriend didn’t want to write at all — that what he really wanted was the freedom to take an Eat Pray Love year.

      Yes, he said grimly. This was exactly what his boyfriend wanted.

      It occurred to me that an Eat Pray Love year would appeal to an overstressed, overworked first-year attorney because we tend to view the world in black and white: You can either be a lawyer or a writer. You can either spend your life toiling on the high-achiever track or on an artistic journey of the soul. You can be miserable and well-to-do or happily broke.

      In the same way, we tend to think of creativity as an all-or-nothing pursuit. But this simply isn’t true. The world is not black and white. I know many un-famous writers who make six figures from their work, and I know sensible careerists who are just one financial misstep away from broke. I know artists who are miserable, and I know people who are super happy in their nine-to-fives.

      I like to steer aspiring novelists away from the belief that a writing career is a romantic journey of the soul. Writing, like any job, is work. It’s wonderful when it’s going well, but it can feel crushing when it’s not. Writers need instruction on the care and keeping of creativity just as much as overworked attorneys, but overworked attorneys may have a slightly looser grip on reality than a working writer in the trenches.

      For a working writer, the fantasy of courting the muse has been replaced by the routine of a writing schedule, marketing and promotion, keeping the books, and worrying about health insurance.

      I don’t mean to make the creative life sound like a slog. Being a working writer is a wonderful gift, but it’s not all about sitting in cozy cafés while rain gently splatters the windows. (Though there is plenty of that.) Writing, like any career, can be grueling at times. And if a writer isn’t actively nourishing her creativity, she can quickly succumb to burnout.

      The most important thing I’d like aspiring creatives to understand is that you do not need to quit your day job to write or make art. Creative expression is not an all-or-nothing pursuit. It’s an innate need humans all share, like eating, and eating is something we’ve managed to integrate into our existing lives.

      Take it from the author of Eat Pray Love herself — the one and only Elizabeth Gilbert: There’s no dishonor in having a job. What is dishonorable is scaring away your creativity by demanding that it pay for your entire existence.²

      All humans are born with the desire to create, but this isn’t always nurtured in us as children, and it’s seldom encouraged in adulthood. When we grow up, very few of us have opportunities to fully express our creativity on a day-to-day basis, and so this part of us lies dormant — waiting to be called upon.

      In order to create and be creative, we must make space for it in our lives as they are right now. We must open a window and invite creativity. Once we do, creativity answers, and our innate artistic impulses begin to stir. As this part of us awakens, our entire demeanor can change.

      Once we start creating regularly, it feels as though we have suddenly thrown all the windows open to let a fresh breeze blow through. It shakes out our mental cobwebs, clears the air, and brings new life and light into our lives.

      We feel more like ourselves. We feel energized and excited. This process creates a constant inflow and outflow of ideas — a creative exchange with the universe.

      The choice to integrate creativity into your existing life is just as courageous as attempting to create a different life. And it can be equally fulfilling.

      If you do manage to piece together a living from your creative pursuits, you will still need to rediscover the ritual and magic of daily creativity. If you don’t, you will not find lasting happiness as a writer or an artist.

      It’s not the big life choices like law school or Eat Pray Love that create a life well lived. While these major choices do have an outsized impact on your life trajectory, you can make a larger impact on your quality of life by tending to those tiny branches at the top of the tree — the choice to make your art in the morning, to stop on the street to smell a lilac bush, or to roll the car window down to feel the fresh air wash over you.

      These small, seemingly insignificant choices that you make every day determine the joy you will feel moment by moment. And these moments of joy, strung together, are what create a happy and fulfilling life.

      Part I

      Your One Wild and Precious Life

      1

      Just a Reminder: You Will Die

      Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?

      Tell me, what is it you plan to do

      with your one wild and precious life?

      — Mary Oliver

      Why should we carve out time for creativity each day? We are very busy, after all, and things as they are may be working just fine. If we are not very sick, very unhappy, or in very serious financial trouble, it can be difficult to make big life changes — even if we think they might be beneficial. We rarely invite upheaval into our lives, because the status quo is hard enough.

      Today most Americans work more than forty hours a week. Commutes are getting longer, employers continue to demand more from their employees, and most people feel that they have less free time than ever before. Meanwhile, society tells us that we are supposed to do all the things. We’re supposed to eat right and exercise. We’re supposed to lean in at work and at home. We’re supposed to keep our houses ready for an HGTV special at all times. We’re supposed to make a dish to bring to the potluck and spend quality time with our spouse.

      Perhaps no group is more put upon than working parents. When I was a kid, my mom was always the last to bed and the first to rise. I remember her waking up every weekday at 5:45 to squeeze in some exercise before getting herself ready to get to work by 7:30. Her day often did not end until after 11:00, once papers were graded, I had been fed, the bills were paid, the house was clean, and my lunch was ready for school the next

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