Exploring Your Creative Genius: Episode 70
We were fortunate to get James and Dana to do a second show — you’ll want to go back to last week’s show if you missed it, gosh they are great guests.
Yes, they are promoting their cool new book, ‘Creative Lessons from Musical Theater Characters’ and what a great concept that it. But they also spent lots of time talking about their creative lives and how they developed.
One topic they highlighted for you is what to do when you are trying to get a creative refresh.
James shared his riff on how he will shake things up, intentionally looking for new things do, different things to do, to allow him to take fresh perspectiveS, and I cap the S intentionally to make the point that more perspectiveS are better than one. He also stressed that many of these refresh activities are physical—we have intelligences all throughout our bodies and moving engages them.
Dana shared his daily practice as a first thing in the morning refresh. When he awakens the first activity of the day is writing his ‘Morning Pages’. He writes longhand, which engages the brain better than keyboarding does. His goal is three pages each morning about whatever he is thinking that day, exploring the ideas from many angles.
Dana shared another example of creative decision making. In his cult hit musical ‘Zombie Prom’ there was a point in the middle of the second act that the show lost its audience. It was a particular song, one that everyone thought was spot on, but they couldn’t deny that when it was performed some audience members got up for a break. So they cut that great song and the storytelling improved.
That’s hard to do, to cut something you’ve invested yourself in. But tough minded editing is a very important creative active.
They have created a great website resource for the book, much more than just a promotional site, there’s lots of great creative resources there.
And their personal sites:
“Exploring Your Creative Genius” takes an expansive view on what it means to be creative and entrepreneurial in an ongoing conversation led by Carl Nordgren — entrepreneur, novelist, and lifelong student with decades of experience growing his own creative capacity and assisting others to do the same in exciting new ways!
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