"The Creative Act" by Rick Rubin
Another (but above average) how-to-be-creative book.
Rick Rubin seems to be having his year in the sun. Even though he’s been the producer behind some of the biggest musical acts of the last couple decades, this book and the publicity that’s surrounded it (including his interview on 60 Minutes) has brought him a little more into the spotlight. And we’ve seen what a unique cat he is. Long unkempt hair and beard, never wearing shoes, asking Anderson Cooper if they could meditate for two minutes before their interview began, and being a music oracle who doesn’t write music or play an instrument. And now he writes a book.
Rubin’s zen-like approach to everything can come off as pretentious. It’s easy to see him as a man behind the curtain who doesn’t really make anything and simply blesses projects with his aesthetic judgement. But I can go along for that ride because what he’s ultimately doing is helping me see the creative process from different angles.
Art is an act of decoding. We receive intelligence from Source, and interpret it though the language of our chose craft.
In all fields, there are different degrees of fluency. Our level of skill influences our ability to best articulate this translation, in the same way vocabulary affects communication.
I can see how a passage like that would be a turn-off to a lot of people. Or sound uselessly mystic. But I get what he’s saying. He’s simply rephrasing something I already know in a fresh way that helps me think about it on a different level.
My recommendation is to use this book, not read it. I incorporated it as part of my daily writing routine, reading one of his 2- or 3-page chapters before working on my own projects. I did the same thing with Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art. It’s just enjoy creative stimulation to get me in a good headspace before I write. But I think if I were to plow through this 30 or even 15 minutes at a time, it would feel like a textbook padded with zen fluff.
As much as I liked it, if you need a creative kick, there are a few other books I’d recommend before Rubin’s. Like Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones, Austin Kleaon’s Steal Like An Artist, and Pressfield’s The War of Art.
Here’s Rubin’s interview with Anderson Cooper from earlier this year: