Henry Miller’s Creative Commandments

 

In his writer’s notebook, 1932-1933, Henry Miller, an author with a deep sense of process, laid down his ‘commandments’ of writing. Here they are adapted to whatever it is you want to create:

• Work on one thing at a time until finished.

• Don’t be nervous. Work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is in hand. Work according to The Program (the timetable you’ve laid out for yourself) and not according to mood. Stop at the appointed time!

• When you can’t create you can work. Cement a little every day, rather than add new fertilizers.

• Keep human! See people, go places, drink if you feel like it.

• Don’t be a draught-horse! Work with pleasure only.

• Discard The Program when you feel like it — but go back to it next day. Concentrate. Narrow down. Exclude.

• Forget the next thing you want to create. Think only of what you are creating now.

• Do it first, always. Painting, music, friends, cinema — all these come after.

 

No Answers, Only Questions

Ten Thoughts on creating from Pamela Travers, author of Mary Poppins.

1. The Unknown — our beautiful Anglo-Saxon word, intimate, reverberant, profound, not so much to be understood as stood under while it rains upon us — that is something I could live with and, indeed, have revered, cherished, and tried to serve for many a year and day.
2. Call it the Unknown and one can conceive of the creative process as being a next door neighbor to it.
3. C.S Lewis, in a letter to a friend, says, “There is only one Creator and we merely mix the elements he gives us” — a statement less simple than it seems. For that “mere mixing” while making it impossible for us to say “I myself am the maker”, also shows us our essential place in the process.
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Creative Intelligence Quotes by Orna Ross

1. “Finally I’ve learned from my mistakes. From now on, I’m only making new ones.” – Orna Ross. (creative response)
2. The creative…”can only find his way by moonlight..his punishment is he sees dawn before the rest of the world”. – Oscar Wilde (solitude)
3. “Creative success comes when your desire to achieve exceeds your fear of foolishness or failure.” – Orna Ross (fear)
4. “The road to success is always under construction.” -Lily Tomlin (change)
5. “Creative intention makes you strong, wishful thinking makes you weak.” – Orna Ross (intention)
6. “The truth will set you free. But first it will piss you off.” – Gloria Steinem (resistance)
7. “Dance to the music that’s playing not to the noise in your head.” – Orna Ross (awareness)
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Cat Stevens Creative Intelligence

“I get the tune and then I just keep on singing the tune until the words come out from the tune.

It’s kind of a hypnotic state that you reach after a while when you keep on playing it where words just evolve from it. So you take those words and just let them go whichever way they want…

‘Moonshadow’? That was in Spain, I went there alone, completely alone, to get away from a few things. And I was dancin’ on the rocks there… right on the rocks where the waves were, like, blowin’ and splashin’. Really, it was so fantastic.

And the moon was bright, ya know, and I started dancin’ and singin’ and I sang that song and it stayed. It’s just the kind of moment that you want to find when you’re writin’ songs.

Everything I wrote while I was away was in a transitional period and reflects that. Like Patti. A year ago we split; I had been with her for two years. What I write about Patti and my family… when I sing the songs now, I learn strange things.

I learn the meanings of my songs late…”