Amy Tan on Creativity

Re-posted from Yasmin's blog: Conversations on Dance: Inspiration, the Creative Habit, and the Artistic Journey


Oh, TED, how I love thee. Technology, Entertainment and Design. Three of my favorite topics merged into, among other outlets, annual conferences and a free online video website of short talks by domain experts that make you go 'hmmmmm." I could peruse TED for hours on end and get my mind and heart poked, prodded and inspired. The TED video in this post is Amy Tan's humorous exploration and explanation of her creative process.

Amy Tan is a Chinese-American writer who penned several best-selling novels, including The Joy Luck Club and The Kitchen God's Wife. Mother/Daughter relationships are a central theme in The Joy Luck Club and also a central theme in her TED talk about developing her creativity.

Other constants on her creative path include synchronicity, uncertainty, moral ambiguity, chance and experience. She poses open-ended questions about where creativity might come from. Could it perhaps stem from a muse chromosome, some cosmic enlightenment, experience from past lives, childhood trauma, identity crisis, and/or neurological quirks such as psychosis or depression?

Once again, creativity's shadowy companion seems to be some shade of fear. If you visit Amy Tan's website, you'll find a section called Anxiety Tip of the Day with the caption "Don't worry, Be Anxious." In the following two quotes from Amy Tan, her fears include The Internal Censor and Anxiety. Who hasn't felt these particular shadowy companions?

1. "When I say we, I don't mean you necessarily... I mean me and my right brain, my left brain and the one that's in between that is the censor and tells me what I'm saying is wrong."

2. "There are at least eleven levels of anxiety and they all operate at the same time."

She ends her talk with conviction in hints from the universe and the lack of an absolute truth. Uncertainty is a good thing, she says. This is supported by the title of Tan's website blog "Blur of the Moment: Lack of Clarity is a Writer's Truth." The more Tan is aware of serendipitous events, the more of them occur and the greater focus she receives as she searches for particles of truth. Not an absolute truth, mind you, but particles of truth.