The Importance of Habit

You’ve got to make your cre­ativ­ity a habit, and stick with it! The impor­tance of this lit­tle tid­bit of wis­dom is very evi­dent to me all of a sudden.

Last week I was quite sick and I just could not get up in the morn­ing to get my daily hour of com­pos­ing in. I’ve lost an entire week, and I’m on a dead­line with scores due in March for a new com­mis­sion. But I had to give myself per­mis­sion to get bet­ter and make that a pri­or­ity, and so I did.

Now today I feel much bet­ter, and you know what? I couldn’t see the impor­tance of get­ting out of bed to com­pose! I had totally got­ten out of the habit. For­tu­nately I was able to guilt myself out of bed, and I ended up tak­ing my work in progress in a sur­pris­ing new direction.

The trick is that even if you don’t feel inspired, if you are too tired, or you don’t like the work you are doing, or even if you only get one or two mea­sures writ­ten, you’ve got to have that habit of cre­ativ­ity every day. Stick with it; it’s important!