Fan Mail Letter No. 3 ? Twyla Tharp

Over time I have become skeptical and sometimes even hostile towards the self-help section of a bookstore, be it online or actual store with a physical address.? So much of what is written for that genre and thus stocked on the shelves is insipid, impractical, over-hyped, and sometimes just mind-numbingly stupid.

(I wasn?t kidding about my hostilities.)

I?m not saying everything of that sort is cut from the same sad cloth.? Not at all.? There are gems? within that genre that balance innovation and idealism, reality and practicality, compassion with forthrightness.? Such a mix is possible, and today?s fan mail was sent to an author of one such example, Twyla Tharp.

Photo by Jack Mitchell, found via Google Images

Twyla Tharp is one of America?s most celebrated and innovative choreographers as well as the author on one of the best how-to books for creative people that I?ve ever read, the aptly named The Creative Habit.

I?m not one to write book reviews.? A) The task deflates me.? B) The point of these fan mail posts is to express admiration for a person rather than express analysis, such as one does with a book review.? But I will at least explain why this book prompted this letter:? in plain speech Tharp tells riveting stories to illustrate the structures, the practices and the mindsets that form the type of creative habits that lead to meaningful creative output.? Each pearl of advice is strung so as to be accessible, doable, elementary but with grace. There is no dumbing down, no palliative dross, no hyperbolic excess.

If you?re looking for advice that is substantive, there is no substitute for profound knowledge and Tharp draws on her decades of work in multiple creative fields as well as her impressive study of creative giants from whom she?s taken many, many cues.? While you might not aspire to Tharp?s levels of self-discipline or bars of achievement, her book still has much to offer the struggling creative, and it does so in a way that is straight-up, deeply felt and sublimely shrewd.

That is no small feat.? That is the exact sort of feat that prompted me to write what follows.

Dear Ms. Tharp -

I?m writing to tell you how much I appreciate your book, The Creative Habit.? I have gained so much by having interacted with it, and therein is the difference, therein is what separates it from similar such books I?ve read in the past.

Rarely have I interacted with a self-help book.? Rarely have I been spurred to not just consider the advice between a book?s covers, but to act on it, thread it into my life.? Rarely have I read a self-help book more than once, underlined passages, written marginalia, and restructured my creative practices accordingly.

Your book is one I keep on my desk at all times.? Just seeing the cover and flipping through pages can be enough to help me navigate a rut, start writing, approach yet another draft of something written previously.

I also simply like the way you think and how you phrase your ideas, the economy and vividness with which you express yourself.

This book is a gift.? That became completely apparent to me as I finished my second reading of it. ? Many thanks.

Best wishes to you -

Melissa Grossman

For more information about Twyla Tharpe, visit http://twylatharpe.org

Source: http://flyingready.com/52-pieces-of-fan-mail/fan-mail-letter-no-3-twyla-tharp/

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