The Creative Act

A friend recommended a new book to me recently, The Creative Act by Rick Rubin. I’d like to share this excerpt from it with you:

“When beginning a new project, we’re often met with anxiety. It visits all of us no matter how experienced, successful or well-prepared we might be.

We don’t know where we’re going, we don’t wait. We move forward in the dark. If nothing we attempt yields progress, we rely on belief and will. We may take several steps backward in the sequence to move ahead.

If we try 10 experiments and none of them work, we have a choice. We can take it personally, and think of ourselves as a failure and questions our ability to solve the problem. Or we can recognize we’ve ruled out ten ways that don’t work, bringing us closer to the solution. For the artist, whose job is testing possibilities, success is as much ruling out a solution as finding one that works.

In the process of experimentation, we allow ourselves to make mistakes, to go too far, to go even further, to be inept. There is no failure, as every step we take is necessary to reach our destination, including the missteps. Each experiment is valuable in its own way if we learn smomething from it. Even if we an’t comprehend its worth, we are still practicing our craft, oving ever so much closer to mastery.

With unshakable faith, we work under the assumption that the problem is already solved. The answer is out there, perhaps it’s obvious. We just haven’t come across it yet.

Overtime, as you complete more projects, this faith in experimentation grows. Youre able to hold high expectation, move forward with patiece, and trust the mysterious unfolding before you. With the understading that the process will get you where you’re going. Whever that reveals itself to be. And the magical nature of the unfloding never ceases to take your breath away.”