My work on text2cloud, which began in 2010 as a flight from paper and traditional publishing, had a profound effect on my thinking about how the act of writing changes when it takes place on the screen. Starting in 2013, my colleague Ann Jurecic and I began collaborating on essays that explored our own evolving sense that we needed to change both what and how we were teaching. After much drafting, revising, reversing, and restarting, we completed Habits of the Creative Mind in 2016.
How did going from paper to screen lead back to paper? Ann and I had been talking about this book for close to a decade, prompted by our shared dissatisfaction with how little of the writing done in school turns out to be of value, either to the teacher or the student. We wanted to produce a book about writing that broke with the finger-wagging tradition of writing manuals and steered clear of the template-driven approach that has come to define so much writing instruction. (Imagine our surprise when we discovered that teachers just down the hall from us were telling their students to produce paragraphs modeled on the “quote sandwich.”)
Can creativity be learned? We think so. Our book draws on our experiences team-teaching a set of courses that got us thinking in concrete terms about creativity as a way of thinking–as a habit that one acquires through practice. What does one practice? Paying attention. Asking questions. Making connections. Speculating. Reflecting. Going on a curiosity bender. Confronting the unknown. With practice comes a higher tolerance for ambiguity, a little less resistance to encountering your own ignorance, and a greater comfort with writing at the very edge of your understanding.
Can creativity be learned without making a mess? We don’t think so. Indeed, the obsession with tidy prose virtually assures the production of writing that is vapid, thesis-driven, and largely thoughtless. In Habits of the Creative Mind, we argue that it is only through engaging with the messiness of the real world that one has a chance of becoming a good writer. But this process isn’t a linear one. Indeed, we argue that becoming a better writer isn’t anything like going through a pre-mapped process; it’s the ongoing result of making thoughtfulness a daily habit.
We’re very happy that the cover for our second edition (2019) was based on a painting by my brother, Robert Maynard Miller. Rob has a truly creative mind: he excelled as a trumpet player when he was young, which led him to major in music as an undergrad and then to go on and earn his doctorate in electronic composition. Having acquired programming skills along the way, Rob worked at a number of startups during the dotcom boom and the landed in health care as a web designer, before moving steadily up the ladder owing to his comfort with questions that involved data, design, and culture. Along the way, he became a self-taught gestural painter. We absolutely love his work and are delighted to be able to share it with others.
(Second Edition)
And now, all of the sudden, the third edition is about to be released. Ann and I couldn’t imagine revisions after the second edition but, of course, we didn’t anticipate: COVID, the anti-vaxers, the murder of George Floyd, the Black Lives Matter protests, Trump’s refusal to recognize the results of the 2020 election, the Insurrection, the Dodd decision or ChatGPT, let alone teaching online and/or behind masks for two years or more. So, when we sat down to consider revisions for the second edition, we felt like we were reading a book from a long ago time. All of which made the substantial revision necessary and urgent. We think of this version as the closest yet we’ve come to being an antidote to despair and, as we stand of the edge of the rise of our insect AI overlords, the best resource we can provide for combating the automation and templating of every kind of communication and emotional experience.
For this edition, we asked our former student, Scott Reamer, if we could use one of his works for our cover and he graciously offered us, Convergence of Consciousness, which captures, he tells us, the essence of his experience collaborating with his mentor and friend, John Spears. Scott is a fearless creator who works across a range of media and we feel lucky to count him as one of our inspirations.
If you’d like an exam copy of Habits or would like to discuss the book, please get in touch using the form below.