The Creative Act: a way of being

My thoughts on The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin. The book will resonate with people who think they’re creative, but it also says that everyone is creative.

One thing stuck with me the most: the ability to step back and look at yourself from the outside. Say you’re having a bad day, or you lost your job. Try to watch the situation as if you were following the main character of a movie. From this angle it’s easier to take, because it’s just a new chapter, and you might even get curious about what happens next. I’ve used this trick before, but only subconsciously, and I never put it into words. The book did it for me.

I also collected quotes about creativity from the book. They’re worth saving and rereading, because they set a healthy creative mindset. Click any note to copy it.

• The work has to be different. People don’t need what already existed.
• Allow for the possibility of breaking any “standard”. This approach loosens the constraints.
• Beware of assuming your creative method is the best just because you’ve done it that way before. You can think this subconsciously.
• Talent is the ability to let ideas show themselves through you.
• Failure is information we need to get where we’re going.
• To create something, first gather seeds, as many as you can. Don’t think about which seed has better or worse odds. What matters is collecting as many as possible. Sometimes the seed you didn’t bet on gives much bigger fruit than the one you were sure would grow.
• Sometimes an artist hits a dead end and can’t finish the work. Go around it and finish the other parts. The whole picture can show the wider context and the solution to the dead end (it may also turn out that only 5-10% of the work is left, so the finish is close). It’s hard to place a puzzle piece on an empty table, and very easy to place the last one and complete the picture.
• Your work is your self-expression and your view of the world at this moment.
• Share your ideas in any way you can. The more you share, the more new ideas come. It’s like a river: if we block it, the flow stops, and coming up with something new gets very hard.
• The more formulaic your work is, and the more it’s tuned for popularity, the less it resembles real art.
• Important point: no matter what, listen to yourself and your feelings when creating something new. Art is first of all self-expression. It’s who you are right now.
• Comparison is the thief of joy.
• Perfection is reached not when there’s nothing left to add, but when there’s nothing left to take away.
• Business goals matter, but they’re secondary to your work and how you want to create it. Bringing in business goals or other external constraints will get in the way of expressing yourself.
• Mistakes are human. [In the context of AI, this is very relevant.]
• When we start working, it’s important to remember that the result is out of our control. [Or, it seems to me, we can’t fully influence the result, however much we want to.]
• However you do the work, whether easily, as if playing, or with effort, overcoming difficulties, it doesn’t affect the quality of the finished work.
• Sometimes our ego takes help as interference.
• When editing a work, remove everything extra that the work doesn’t lose its essence without. Everything else doesn’t matter. What effect does each component have? Does it change the essence of the work? Does it distract from it? Does it help reach balance? Is it absolutely necessary? The goal of editing and cutting is to bring the work to balance and refinement.