“The Creative Act: A Way of Being” by Rick Rubin

August 30, 2024

My passion for the arts began early in childhood and surfaced throughout many fields in my adulthood. I turn to art in my spare time to unwind from the intense focus and dedication required by my academic and writing pursuits. While a typical day looks like writing scholarly essays, I showcased my creative writing on various platforms, such as magazines, books, journals, and websites. 

This book came to me when I experienced months-long creative blocks and needed inspiration. I usually involve my creativity in all facets of my life, but personal circumstances stalled my creative growth and imagination. Consequently, my art suffered, and I produced fewer paintings, drawings, poems, and stories than usual. 

In many ways, one could approach this book as a self-help book for artists. A major takeaway is that applying at least some of its lessons in everyday life could improve one's ability to make art. Some lessons may also seem obvious, but sometimes, the obvious is too close to us and obscures the bigger picture. 

Applying these rules is about keeping up with a mentality. It's also that mentality that helped me come back to my creative self and produce new work again. I read the book slowly and tried applying a few lessons daily. 

Among the many important points I learned, I established my first main rule: search for random acts of inspiration. Not everything is found in the obvious. Sometimes, doing something in a totally abstract way is the key.

Art is more about experimenting. Some ideas may grow, while others may be a seed for a future project. Many experiments will reveal themselves in new ways that we didn't anticipate, and that can be used to develop new ideas. 

All of this is to capture the state of being. The artist creates what reflects in the world outside and within them. This creative energy never disappears; it merely transmutes into other outlets, as all energy can neither be created nor destroyed. 

I continued taking notes and applied them in different creative outlets. Some advice worked while others didn't, but that's the point of trying self-help: experimenting with the trials and tribulations that lead you to your destination. 

Most importantly, what I got out of the book the most is that being an artist is a fluid term and lacks formal boundaries. Art can be almost anything if it's a creative process inspired from within. 

This book opened my eyes to the realization that the motivation I thought I'd lost wasn't truly gone—it was simply a redirection that I needed to embrace. The feelings of stagnation were not signs of failure but rather an invitation to pause and reflect. It guided me to turn inward and search for that spark from within, helping me understand that what seemed like a loss of motivation was a necessary shift in focus. In some ways, I found that the energy and inspiration I was searching for had been inside me all along, waiting for the right moment to resurface.