The Creative Mind After the Book Is Finished

“You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.” — Maya Angelou

There is an interesting moment that comes after writing a book.

For months—sometimes years—the ideas live very close to you. You question them, refine them, rearrange them, wrestle them, and occasionally even give up on them. Then one day the book is finished. It goes out into the world, and what has been a very private conversation becomes someone else’s.

I thought finishing The Creative Mind Fully Lived would feel like arriving somewhere.

Instead, it seems to have opened another door.

People have begun telling me what they notice when they read it. One reader told me the Reflections made her want to journal—to stay with what came up long enough to discover what was actually true for her. A minister asked whether there would be a teacher’s guide because she wanted to teach from the book.

Those conversations have caused me to look again at something I thought I had finished. And perhaps that is the point. A creative mind is never really finished.

Not because there is always something more we need to accomplish, understand, or become, but because life keeps giving us another opportunity to experience what we already know in a new way.

There is a considerable difference between understanding a principle and discovering what it looks like when someone disappoints us, when plans change, when the body frightens us, when we lose something we love, or when life simply refuses to cooperate with what we had in mind.

That is where an idea becomes lived. I have become increasingly interested in that space. What does what I already know look like here? What does coherence look like in the middle of chaos? What does alignment feel like when there is no obvious answer?

What happens when I stop trying to make life conform to my understanding and become quiet enough to notice what is actually present?

These are not questions I finished answering when I finished the book. If anything, I am more interested in them now. Perhaps that is what happened when I finished the book.

The writing stopped.

The living continues.

The Creative Mind Fully Lived explores the ideas behind this reflection and what it means to bring them into everyday life. Learn more about the book.

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