How Tolkien Turned Boredom into a Bestseller

Be alert for creativity to strike in the midst of the mundane. Even an unexpected blank page can hold the beginning of your next masterpiece.

You don’t have to be working in a cabin in the woods to have creative insights. You don’t have to be a hermit, or to wake up before sunrise and meditate.

You don’t even have to be doing something creative.

In fact, creative insights sometimes strike in the midst.

In the midst of cleaning your kitchen. In the midst of driving to work. In the midst of formatting TPS reports.

JRR Tolkien tells a cool story about how he started writing The Hobbit. Tolkien wrote some of the most beloved fantasy novels of the twentieth century. But, like me, in his day job he was a university professor.

In a BBC interview in 1968, he recalls how the first line of his book The Hobbit came to him.

Want to Improve Your Creative Skill Today? Here's How

When you are trying to develop a creative skill, small improvements every day beat sporadic epic bursts. Every time.

Imagine two creatives, Oliver and Amelia. Both are music producers at the beginning of their careers. Both have visions of really making it—working with interesting artists, producing music they can be proud of, and supporting themselves through their creative work.

In order to have the careers they want, they both know that they need to continuously improve their skills. They need to learn new production techniques, become better songwriters, improve their mixing skills.

The list of improvements seems endless. They feel a deep skill deficit. Like a chasm that stands between them and the career that they want.

Oliver sets out to improve his skills. He works in bursts, but sporadically. Marathon sessions on weekends and late at night. After a session, he feels burnt out, and then it takes days or even a week before he can muster up the energy for another session.

Creative ProcessMark SamplesOctober 28, 2024James clear, atomic habits, creative skill, creative habit

Should Creators Focus on Quality or Quantity?

In creative pursuits, quality will come as a result of quantity. Get intelligent reps in your field and share your work before you think you’re ready.

Writer Ryan Holiday said in an interview that he doesn’t put much stock in the "quality over quantity" excuse when creating.

You know the one. You say you want to line everything up first. To get everything ready so that it’s just right before releasing it to the world.

You say you want to painstakingly get everything right before you release your masterpiece.

🕺How to Meet More Interesting People

Whenever you meet someone interesting, think to yourself—who do I know that this person should be connected to?

Write an email introducing your two friends. Say something about why you think they should be connected. Something like:

“Hey Rob, meet Jessica. Jessica fronts a rad Seattle band called Deep Sea Diver. They just released a new music video. Jessica, this is Rob. Rob has played the violin on probably some of your favorite records, from Sufjan Stevens to Bon Iver and even Taylor Swift. He just played with Sara Bareilles at the Kennedy center in a series of concerts celebrating her career and songbook. Y’all are both awesome, and I thought you should know each other!”

Creative ProcessMark SamplesSeptember 30, 2024

Don't Sit on a Great Idea

When you have a creative idea that is a ten out of ten, get it out into the world as fast as humanly possible—because you can bet that someone else in the world just had the same idea as you.

As creatives, we get dozens of ideas. Most are fleeting, average, just okay. We work our creative process knowing that most of our ideas aren’t worth pursuing.

But we pursue these okay ideas anyway because we know that they are the path to the really special ideas.

The ten out of tens.

The ideas that give you a special feeling, like the heavens have either opened up before you or come crashing upon you—or both.

6 Non-Obvious Creative Principles

Creativity is by definition non-obvious. It thrives on counterintuitive ideas and unexpected connections. Here are six counterintuitive creative principles to remind yourself of this week as you carve out time to be creative.

Routine breeds creativity. Instead of stifling creativity, developing a creative habit can establish a stable environment for you to do your best work. Establish a daily routine where you can reliably do creative deep work.

Enforcing limits is freeing. If you have every tool at your disposal, every option available to you, there is no need to be creative. Instead of keeping all of your options open, impose artificial limits on your work. Produce a song using only three musical lines. Write a complete story in 500 words. Create a design using only three colors. Having every tool at your disposal absolves you of the need to be creative.

Creative ProcessMark SamplesAugust 5, 2024

Give Credit, Don't Take It

Always seek to give credit, but never to take it.

Charlie Puth is has written mega pop hits, with multiple billion-streamers. He's worked with superstars of the music industry, and is known as a musician’s musician. He’s a self-proclaimed music nerd. He can sing, he can play, he has perfect pitch. He can write. He can perform.

He’s got every reason to toot his own horn, tout his own skills.

In fact, it was these skills that led Studio.com to create a popular online class on pop production featuring Puth.

But in the course, where Puth is supposed to be the main attraction, the Master, he instead repeatedly gives credit away to others. He names all of the great musicians and producers who taught him.

Creative ProcessMark SamplesJuly 16, 2024Charlie Puth, creativity, credit, mentorship, mentors

The Best Advice Tom Hanks Ever Got

As a young actor, Tom Hanks received the best acting advice he’s ever gotten.

It came in the form of a director who blew up at his cast.

While rehearsing for a stage production of The Taming of the Shrew, the actors were not having a good day. They were lethargic. Phoning it in. Asking for lines. Waiting for direction.

It was just about the worst kind of rehearsal a director can have: mediocre.

And it set the director off.

The Creative Wind Tunnel

In the world of creativity, there's something called the Creative Wind Tunnel. Ryan Tedder, the songwriter behind hits for artists like Beyoncé, Adele, and his band OneRepublic, uses this term to describe the phenomenon when creators get tunnel vision and start thinking their work is perfect, losing touch with reality.

When you're in the Creative Wind Tunnel, you can’t see your work’s flaws because you’re too caught up in it. This can stop you from making something truly great.

The Learning Trap—Create Now

There has never been a better time in history to learn. YouTube videos, Skillshare courses (I've even made a couple of these myself), Masterclass.com, Studio.com, podcasts—you have access to knowledge and lessons from the world’s greatest creative minds.

Learning new skills and techniques from external sources is undoubtedly valuable. It expands our horizons, keeps us curious, and helps us grow.

But there’s a hidden trap in this constant quest for new knowledge: the belief that we need to keep learning from others before we start creating. This can become a comfortable crutch, an excuse to postpone doing the actual work.

Rick Rubin on Creative Habits

If you want more creative inspiration, develop your creative habits.

Here are three insights from music producer Rick Rubin for setting up habits and routines that consistently support your creative work. These are all from his book, The Creative Act.

Organize your life to allow for creative space.

Space in your schedule to create doesn’t just happen. To guard consistent, extended time for creating takes disciplined effort. “Discipline and freedom seem like opposites. Discipline is not a lack of freedom, it is a harmonious relationship with time. Managing your schedule and daily habits well is a necessary component to free up the practical and creative capacity to make great art.” (135)

Rubin even says that organizing your life is more important than being efficient in your work. Your focused efficiency in life can open the space to be creatively messy.

Creative ProcessMark SamplesJune 10, 2024creative habits, Rick Rubin

Instants become Days become Years

Michelangelo Buonarroti started painting the ceiling of Rome’s Sistine Chapel in 1509. He painted over 300 individual figures in dozens of panels, such as the Creation of Eve, the Last Judgment, and the iconic Creation of Adam, in which God reaches out to touch Adam’s fingertip. The work took four years to complete, and has stood for over 500 years as one of the great monuments of sustained creativity in the Western world.

But none of that was how Michelangelo experienced it.

Creative ProcessMark SamplesJune 3, 2024

How to Not Sell Out, Expressed in One Diagram

Creative ProcessMark SamplesMay 27, 2024selling out, authors, creative business

On Time

“Time,” Winston Churchill said, “is one thing that can never be retrieved. One may lose and regain friends. One may lose and regain money. Opportunity, once spurned, may come again. But the hours that are lost in idleness can never be brought back to be used in gainful pursuits.”

To be a creator—a musician, artist, writer—is to fight endlessly to protect your creative time.

Here, at the beginning of a new week, I want to share with you some quotes on time. Not to scare or shame you into hustling more. Not to stress you into productivity, but to offer you a moment of reflection.

To set your perspective.

"It is not enough to be busy,” Thoreau wrote; “so are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?”

A Creative Breakthrough Lies Just Beyond This

Trust the process. Even in the in-between time. Even when you can’t see the finish line.

After the success of their 1997 album, “OK Computer,” British rock band Radiohead faced immense pressure to produce another landmark effort.

Lead singer and songwriter Thom Yorke was burnt out from the intense tour and promotional schedule they had been keeping.

But critics and fans wanted more. More melodic rock. More angsty lyrics. More of the same. They wanted OK Computer, Vol. 2. Imitators of the Radiohead sound were starting to sprout up. Other bands, such as Coldplay, would go on to build huge careers making their own versions of OK Computer, Vol. 2.

But instead of doing the expected, Radiohead released Kid A, a surprising, confusing and divisive album that took the band in a starkly different direction.

Run More Creative Experiments

I once heard Slim Moon say that musicians should act more like comedians. Moon is the musician who founded Kill Rock Stars, the legendary Seattle indie label that released records by Sleater-Kinney, Elliott Smith, and The Decembrists.

But when Moon said musicians should be more like comedians, he didn’t mean that musicians should try to be funnier.

Instead, Moon pointed out that musicians should learn from the process that comedians use to craft the perfect stand-up routine. Comedians workshop every joke, dozens of times in various ways, to see what lands the best in front of a live audience.

There's Nothing in Success

After trying to convince radio host Howard Stern that he wasn’t born a good singer, Ed Sheeran offered up some cold hard sonic evidence. He had them pull up a YouTube video of him singing when he was fourteen years old. They played it right there in the interview. It starts out not half bad, but pretty soon it gets hard to listen to.

“You weren’t kidding,” Stern says.

“No I wasn’t.” Sheeran goes on, “This is what I play to kids, and I’m like, look, this is me at fourteen. I wrote The A Teamat eighteen. So four years later, I made The A Team and recorded it. And in four years, I learned harmony, I learned how to sing in tune, I learned how to perform, I learned how to do it in time, and you can do it.”

Make Sandals (On Mental Resiliency)

“A man wants to walk across the land, but the earth is covered with thorns. He has two options—one is to pave his road, to tame all of nature into compliance. The other is to make sandals.”

—Indian proverb

Josh Waitzkin, the chess prodigy turned world-champion-martial artist, has faced and beaten the world’s best.

And at the highest levels of competition, there are always dirty players. Waitzkin encountered them in his chess career as a fifteen-year-old.

Michael Lewis's Tips for a Creative Space

The space where you create matters. The office or coffee shops where you write. The studio where you produce music or paintings. Your editing suite.

Create an environment that summons your best work.

Michael Lewis, bestselling author of Moneyball, The Blind Side, and over a dozen others, recently shared the two main factors that he covets in his writing space.

First, he says to fill your space with love. For him, this comes from the pictures of family he has hung up around his writing room.

Have a Sense of Urgency Today

A sense of urgency flows throughout the entries of Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations. He is constantly reminding himself to act. To stop delaying. To focus. To live.

“Concentrate every minute like a Roman…on doing what’s in front of you with precise and genuine seriousness, tenderly, willingly, with justice.” (2.5)

“Human life. Duration: momentary. Nature: changeable. Perception: dim. Condition of Body: decaying. Soul: spinning around. Fortune: unpredictable. Lasting Fame: uncertain.” (2.17)

“Don’t make room for anything…[that] might lead you astray, tempt you off the road, and leave you unable to devote yourself completely to achieving the goodness that is uniquely yours.” (3.6)

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