One of my TV heroes, Special Agent Gibbs, runs a tight ship in “NCIS,” a show featuring the civilian Navy agency that serves and protects Navy and Marine personnel and their families. One of Gibbs’ leadership tools is a list of rules he learned from his mentor and added to over the years.
Gibbs Rule #6: Never say you’re sorry. It’s a sign of weakness.
Even so, I must apologize for not publishing a newsletter every Friday (as I promise on my About page) after I returned from my vacation.
Vacation always shakes up my thinking.
For me, vacation is reading. One book right after another. During almost all of my waking hours. Often as many as 24 books in two weeks.
I start with palate cleansers—romances, mysteries—because they’re fast, easy reads that clear my head of daily concerns. The rest of vacation I fill with weightier books (in topic, not necessarily in size). They’re usually nonfiction and intrigue me, give me a broader view of the world, or just look like fun.
This year, on the last day of vacation, I took an online class given by one of my favorite authors, Oliver Burkeman, entitled “Designing Your System for Creativity.” It was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up.
It was fantastic, well-timed, and was as “weighty” as I could hope for.
Ever since, though, the class content has driven me to rethink (again) how to approach this newsletter.
As with his newsletter and books, his class displayed his remarkable ability to simplify concepts without losing what’s special or important about them. He also translates those concepts into practical and doable pieces.
That’s exactly what I hope to accomplish here. As I say elsewhere on this site, I want to help my readers pierce the veil of mystery that shrouds being creative, to focus on process (what you can control) and not worry about the magic behind it (the uncontrollable part).
I was really surprised when he talked about this in class, in almost exactly my words. And he even had a solution for it.
It was like working on a jigsaw puzzle, having all four corners in place and starting to fill in the rest (me). Then you discover the person next to you (Burkeman) has already finished the same puzzle.
What has worried me since:
How do I write about the same thing without appearing to copy his work?
Same message, different voices.
The universe always finds a way to get exactly the book I need in my hands at exactly the time I need it. I bought Rick Rubin’s book, The Creative Act: A Way of Being (Bk), just before I went on vacation and started reading it last week. It finally busted me out of the circles I’ve been running in since the class.
Rubin has this to say about gathering material for your work:
“If you have an idea you’re excited about and you don’t bring it to life, it’s not uncommon for the idea to find its voice through another maker. This isn’t because the other artist stole your idea [ED: or you stole theirs], but because the idea’s time has come…We are all translators for messages the universe is broadcasting.”
As part of that, we all build on what’s gone before. Burkeman even referred to numerous other writers, quoting their thoughts and sharing snippets of their processes. I do this all the time myself in my own writing and social media posts.
Burkeman’s approach to creativity is very similar to what I’ve had in mind but have yet to explain here. When I finally do, it won’t be because I stole from him. And it will have my own flavor, because I’m not him.
I’ll be back on schedule next week.
Thanks for reading and for sticking with me during the gap.
—Mary Anne Shew (IG @shewphotos)