My 97 Best Creativity Tips: 81-97

[In this 5-part series, I want to share with you some of my top creativity tips gleaned from working as a creativity coach for the past thirty-five years and from having written 50+ books over the past fifty years. If you’re interested in training as a creativity coach, please take a look here.]

My 97 Best Creativity Tips: Tips 1-20

My 97 Best Creativity Tips: Tips 21-40

My Best 97 Creativity Tips: 41-60

My 97 Best Creativity Tips: 61-80

Here are the remaining tips. Enjoy!

81.

Set grand goals and mean them. It is better to have a grand goal and really work toward it than to half-set a paltry goal and, because of its paltriness, find that you’re bored even before you’ve started.

82.

Often, you’re resistant to getting started. That resistance is just a thin veneer between you and your work but it feels like a concrete wall. Get up and crash right through it! Feel like a bull or a battering ram. Don’t let a film of resistance cost you decades.

83.

Creating involves you in an endless series of decisions: this project must be abandoned, this project must not be abandoned, this project is gorgeous but will earn you nothing, this project is mediocre but marketable. No one can make these decisions for you.

84.

There may be days when the work frustrates you horribly. Maybe you’ll downright hate it. Those are the days to love your work! Remember to love your work especially on the days you hate it.

85.

If you hide your work away, no one can criticize it or reject it. Isn’t that clever! But does that full-proof protective maneuver really serve you?

86.

You must appraise your work. Appraising isn’t cold-hearted criticism. It is the effort you make to turn your raw ideas into elaborated beauty. Appraising is your duty.

87.

No desire, no creativity. Fall in love with each of your creative projects! Burn to create.

88.

You will never retire from creating. Why would you? Happily rush on, restlessly and hungrily, to the very end!

89.

When a thing is not done, continuing to work on it is the strength. When it is done, the strength lies in stopping. Work, appraise, complete; work, appraise, complete: this is the creative life.

90.

You will have your critics. What will you do about them?

91.

Survival issues are bound to intrude. There is always the rent to pay. The facts of existence weigh heavily. Create anyway. It is the way we rejoice right in the middle of a hard reality!

92.

Hope comes and goes. Sometimes it leaves for years and decades. Only you can rekindle your own hope. Announce some new hope for your creative life and take action in that direction.

93.

There is really no substitute for showing up. Showing up does not solve every problem but not showing up absolutely does—as a complete negative.

94.

Invest in your current project. Do it and complete it. Then detach from it as you send it out into the world. Then invest in your next project. That is the dance: of attachment and detachment.

95.

Which parts of the process do you want to skip? The plotting? The cobbling? The revising? Learn which parts you are inclined to skip—and don’t skip them!

96.

In your mind’s eye, picture yourself never giving up. If you are a writer, picture yourself still writing at thirty, at forty, at fifty, at sixty, at seventy, at eighty, at ninety, at a hundred. Picture yourself never giving up, despite the challenges that come your way. Never give up.

97.

Regularly congratulate yourself as you create—not out of narcissism but in your role as your own good friend and advocate. Be your own best supporter!

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