5 Books About Creativity

Go Ahead and Suck.

Once, I painted a field of tulips. If I showed it to you, you would need to take a deep breath before commenting on it. What the actual hell is this explosion of weird color she is showing me? Did Julie trip and spill all this paint? Is that round spiky thing in the corner supposed to be the spinning wheel from Sleeping Beauty? A water mill in Vermont? The Eye of Sauron? The silence would eventually grow awkward, you would panic, and finally, you’d blurt out, “That’s a lovely painting of the Moulin Rouge!”

And don’t worry: I wouldn’t even be mad. Tulips are very fricken hard to paint if you are as clumsy and undisciplined as I am. But the red, yellow, and fuchsia paint of the petals all blobbed into each other while I tried to make neat rows of flowers. Watching the color move around the paper, uncontrolled and unbothered, was very cool. I love that weird tulip painting, even though it’s a hot mess.

I once painted a hedgehog, and it looks like a dinner roll. Another time I painted a fishing boat drifting on a lake, and my daughter thought it was a crucifixion scene.

There are so many more. Hundreds more. I really am that bad at it.

But here’s the important part: I truly like that I suck at painting. I know I could get better if I practiced the same thing repeatedly or took classes. But I don’t want to. Practicing hedgehogs or taking classes on tulips would be a lot of work.

Maybe that makes me shallow, or lazy, or unmotivated, but the truth is I just want to blob paint around and watch it mush into other colors. I can’t explain it, but I’m different after I’ve done creative things that I suck at. I feel better. Calmer. Happier.

Why?

As it turns out, creativity with absolutely no expectation is similar to meditation in terms of benefit to our brains. And, if you can drop the capitalistic urge for perfection, it’s just fun to let go of the ego and just do something because we like the doing, not the result.

So, today (and every day), I encourage you to go be awful at something creative. Pick up that French horn you haven’t played since high school. Or the woodburning tools. Or the soap-making kit. Dust off that unicycle (please, wear a helmet.) Sing really, really loudly. Or quietly. Paint something purple. Squish your hands in clay. Break something and then glue the pieces on a canvas. Or on a hat. Make croissants from scratch, then order a pizza if they don’t work out. Do water ballet.

Do it all for no reason except that it’s fun.

And if want to read a little bit more about the science of why creativity is good for you, or you need a few more creative prompts, check out five of my favorite books on this very subject.