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Five Ways to Foster Your Creativity and Spark Innovation

Aug 19th, 2010 by Linda Naiman

Replenish your creative stock

In the The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron contends that, “In order to create, we draw from our inner well. This inner well, an artistic reservoir, is ideally like a well-stocked fishpond… If we don’t give some attention to upkeep, our well is apt to become depleted, stagnant, or blocked… As artists, we must learn to be self-nourishing. We must become alert enough to consciously replenish our creative resources as we draw on them — to restock the trout pond, so to speak.”

She advocates filling three pages a day with spontaneous writing, letting thoughts emerge without censorship. She also advocates taking two hours out of the week, to give yourself an “artist’s date” to engage in whatever strikes your fancy.

Writing morning pages and going on “artist dates” led  me to finding my calling, and changing my career. I doubt I would have become a published author without these practices. So, get interested in something, and have fun exploring and experimenting. Creativity, play and learning, go hand in hand

Discovery through play

Play might sound frivolous in the face of the economic downturn we are contending with, but it may well be the catalyst that frees our imagination to conceive a sustainable future in business, economics and society. Through play we open our receptivity to imagination, intuition and daydreams.

While the rational mind is important, ”We gain a new perspective when we learn how many of the greatest scientific insights, discoveries, and revolutionary inventions appeared first to their creators as fantasies, dreams, trances, lightening-flash insights, and other non-ordinary states of consciousness.”
~ Willis Harman and Howard Rheingold, Creativity: Liberating the Unconscious for Breakthrough Insights

Reclaim your imagination

In science, the obvious role of imagination is in the context of discovery. Unimaginative scientists don’t produce radically new ideas. But even in science imagination plays a role in justification too. Experiment and calculation cannot do all its work. When mathematical models are used to test a conjecture, choosing an appropriate model may itself involve imagining how things would go if the conjecture were true. Mathematicians typically justify their fundamental axioms, in particular those of set theory, by informal appeals to the imagination. — Timothy Williamson, author, scientist and  professor. in the New York Times

Stuck in a box? Look at it from a Cubist perspective

It takes skill to distill the complexities of world around us into its essential components. Picasso and Braque, the inventors of Cubism, captured the essence of form by reducing subject matter into its most basic elements — the sphere, cube, and cone. They pioneered a new way of seeing, by simultaneously showing us multiple views of a subject from different perspectives in time and space. The outcome of their art is one of both simplicity and complexity.

This style of painting was born out of a desire to create a true representation of 3d reality in 2d space (the canvass).  They depicted their subject matter from multiple perspectives because in reality, we don’t perceive the world around us from one viewpoint or focus.  Cubism dramatically shifted our perceptions about how we perceive and interpret reality.

View your challenge through multiple perspectives in time (past, present, future) and space (from every angle you can think of) to spark new insights and creative ideas. Look for simple elegant solutions on the other side of complexity.

Develop your radar

Go to leading-edge art exhibits, groundbreaking theater, and visit trend-setting neighbourhoods. Marshall McLuhan said “Artists are the radar of the future.” They are the intuitive messengers of the future. What are they telling us?

Look for the symbols and metaphors that foretell change. Art is about learning to see and being willing to feel. In a world of change, success comes from looking for the next opportunity and having the ability to find hidden connections and insights into new products or services, desired by the customer. Developing the radar to spot an opportunity, takes creativity.

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Coaching Leaders and Managers: Control Freak Confidential

Aug 13th, 2010 by Linda Naiman

“Help!” says a new client, “I recently got promoted to a management position at work. How do I find the balance between leading and being in control, without being a control freak?”

As a former prima donna, I’ve been on both sides of the fence on this issue. When I was a design consultant, many of my clients were dictator/director-style leaders, and I was a bit that way myself. They had to be in control, and I had to control the integrity of my art and design, while still serving their business objectives. You might think this is a bad combination, but I found ways for this to work. (I’m talking about healthy people here, not tyrants and bullies.)

The dictator/director personality style

The dictator/director-style1 leader has favourable qualities which can make them fun to work with:

  • Quick thinking, astute
  • Creative, visionary
  • Decisive, bottom line focused
  • Focused on big picture
  • Strategic
  • Goal/outcome oriented
  • Excellent negotiators
  • Fast paced and want others to be the same

On the downside, they can be miserable to work with if you are not prepared. They can be:

  • Impatient
  • Poor listeners
  • Overly judgmental
  • Overly controlling
  • Mistrusting
  • Lacking in empathy

To survive, I learned to present concepts that appeal to the dictator/director-style personality:

  1. The first rule is to listen carefully to what they want and need.
  2. Present ideas for achieving the goal clearly and concisely, backing creativity with logic. To avert failure, make sure you deliver what they need, as well as what they want. (Needs and wants aren’t always the same thing.)
  3. Always ask for their input, so they feel they have some control and involvement in the process.

Managing Control

As a manager you have a responsibility to deliver the goods, and it’s important to make a distinction between being in control and being controlling. Emergency situations may require command-and-control leadership, but in an economy that demands creativity and innovation, an overly controlling boss risks killing employee engagement and initiative.

So, what can you do to take charge of your inner control freak? The first step might be to review the list above and assess your strengths and weaknesses. Your most important attribute and the key to your success, is your ability to be likeable and have healthy relationships with others.

Tim Sanders, author of Love is the Killer App, and the Likeability Factor says having people want to be around you “is truly the secret of a charmed, happy and profitable life.” He defines likability as “an ability to create positive attitudes in other people through the delivery of emotional and physical benefits.”

The owner of a thriving Canadian retail business recently told me the secret to his success is all about Care. Above all else he cares about his staff and customers and his core value is the nurturing of relationships. He hires competent people in sales and to run the day-to-day operations so he can spend time focusing on the big picture, planning, consulting with his customers and coaching his staff when they need help.

He tells his staff what the company goals are and gives them leeway to figure out for themselves how to achieve those goals. In that way they tap into their creativity and do what is meaningful to them. This is key. Assuming your staff is smart and capable, give them the “what” and let them figure out the “how” even if is different from what you imagined. What’s important is the end result.

For example, Toyota2 has long believed that factory workers can be more than cogs in a manufacturing machine; they can be problem solvers, innovators, and change agents. Toyota gives every employee the skills, the tools, and permission to solve problems as they arise and to prevent new problems from occurring. The result: Toyota consistently outperforms the competition.

John Mackey, founder and CEO of Whole Foods3 (USA) says his goal was to “create an organization based on love instead of fear” and describes Whole Foods as a “community working together to create value for other people.” At Whole Foods, the basic organizational unit isn’t the store but small teams that manage departments such as produce, prepared foods, and seafood. Managers consult teams on all store-level decisions and grant them a degree of autonomy that is nearly unprecedented in retailing. Each team decides what to stock and can veto new hires. Bonuses are paid to teams, not to individuals.

Enlightened Managerial Practices 4

  • Provide supervisory and organizational support and  encouragement. People need to feel their work matters
  • Acknowledge ideas even if you don’t use them
  • Persevere through tough problems
  • Mandate information sharing & collaboration
  • Prevent political problems from festering
  • Provide realistic due dates and budgets
  • Give people recognition for a job well done. Say Thank You. Celebrate success in ways that are meaningful to your staff
  • Create opportunities for learning when things go wrong

The purpose of management is not to control, but to help people succeed by removing the barriers that hinder performance.

Sources:

1: Adapted from PCSI, Coachworks Int’l

2, 3: “Innovation” by Gary Hamel, Harvard Business Review, Feb 2006

4. Adapted from “How to Kill Creativity” by Teresa M. Amabile, Harvard Business Review, Sept-Oct. 1998

Coaching for creativity and innovation:

Wouldn’t you love to talk about your work with a trusted thinking partner?

Most managers don’t have anyone they can talk to about their workplace challenges. As a trusted and confidential thinking partner, I can help you clarify, reflect, re-frame, challenge assumptions, improve relationships, discover new perspectives, make informed decisions, and formulate strategies to help you achieve your goals.

Coaching conversations take place by phone for weekly or bi-monthly meetings. Peer coaching through the Triangle system is also available.

http://www.creativityatwork.com/CWServices/coaching-LN.html

Please contact me to book a call.

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Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff says he has a personal stake in supporting artists in Canada, as well as the CBC

Aug 12th, 2010 by Linda Naiman

“People think I spent my life up there in the ivory tower, Ignatieff  told an audience in Kingston, “ I actually spent 20 years as a freelance writer and journalist. I wrote screenplays. I wrote a couple of films. I lived by my wits. The writing life is a world of six-month contracts, Ignatieff explained, “and that’s the reality of life for many in the arts community in Canada.”

Quebec Liberal Convention / Congrès biennal du PLC(Q)

Michael Ignatieff

“For 20 years I lived six months at a time. No safety net. No pension. No coverage. That’s the life of an artist, he said. I lived the insecurities of it, I lived the thrill of it. The thrill of being your own master. I lived the thrill of reaching an audience with no help from anyone except for what was coming out of my pen. I understand this world. I understand its risks; I understand its perils.”

“At critical points in my development as a writer, the Canada Council was there for me. It must be there for all Canadians,” Ignatieff said. “At critical points in my career, I made television documentaries for the CBC. I made radio documentaries for the CBC. The spinal column of public culture in this country is a well-funded and sustainable public broadcaster.”

Ignatieff said that support for the arts also makes economic sense, especially when it comes to funding new media and design, responsible for hundreds of jobs in Montreal, Vancouver and even St. Catharines.

“This is one of the biggest industries in our country,” he said. “You’ve got to understand both that you want to support the lonely individual artist that I once was and you also want to support an industry that draws credit, income and prestige around the world to this place called Canada.”

Ignatieff is the author of 17 fiction and non-fiction books, as well as several documentaries, much of them written while he lived abroad.

Source: Thestar.com Jul 14 2010
Photo by / par Robert J. Galbraith

I had no idea Ignatieff lived like an artist, and I’m glad he values the arts and  creative industries.

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Creativity at Work Newsletter: Is America suffering from a creativity crisis?

Aug 11th, 2010 by Linda Naiman

Creativity at Work Newsletter, July/August 2010

Thinking out of the box

L Naiman ©2010

Is America suffering from a creativity crisis? Pundits have been buzzing about this question ever since Newsweek ran “The Creativity Crisis“ as their cover story last month.

“For the first time, research shows that American creativity is declining. What went wrong—and how we can fix it?”

Creativity tests, developed by E. Paul Torrance, have been used for over 50 years to measure the creative thinking skills of children. Scholars have been tracking the children, since that time, recording creations such as patents, businesses founded, publications, art exhibitions, hardware innovations, public policies created, leadership positions, and buildings designed.

It turns out the Torrance test is surprisingly accurate in predicting future creative outputs.

The average Torrance scores of U.S. children rose steadily until 1990, but have  since  declined. It is the scores of younger children in America — from kindergarten through sixth grade — for whom the decline is ‘most serious.’

The report, authored by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman, says creativity outside the U.S. is rising: throughout Europe and Asia, schools that once encouraged rote learning are embracing creativity, while the trend in the U.S is to focus on standardized curriculum, rote memorization, and nationalized testing.

Researchers say creativity should be taken out of the art room and put into homeroom. The argument that we can’t teach creativity because kids already have too much to learn is a false trade-off. Creativity isn’t about freedom from concrete facts. Rather, fact-finding and deep research are vital stages in the creative process.

American teachers warn there’s no room in the day for a creativity class. Hmm. So do managers in the work place. Yet a recent IBM poll of 1,500 CEOs says creativity is the number one ‘leadership competency’ of the future.

Students need to learn how to solve problems, and how to conceptualize, not how to memorize everything the teacher says. Creative thinking should be integrated in the school curriculum.

So, what is creativity learning exactly?

  • questioning and challenging assumptions, information.
  • making connections and seeing  relationships between people, places and things
  • envisaging what might be
  • exploring ideas, keeping options open
  • reflecting critically on ideas, actions and outcomes.

Creativity is just as important in science and engineering as it is in art and design.  The most creative people in any discipline have the ability to combine ideas from disparate domains and combine them in novel ways to create something new and useful. If creativity is not incorporated in schools and in the workplace, the consequences will indeed be felt in the marketplace.

Canada has everything going for it — except innovation

Canada isn’t off the hook. John Armstrong, a member of the Ontario Task Force on Competitiveness, Productivity and Economic Growth, says  “Canada’s lack of innovation results in poor productivity,” (Globe and Mail July 14, 2010) but he doesn’t make the connection between creativity and innovation.

Experts have been reporting on the Canada’s dismal innovation record for years. Roger Martin, dean of the Rotman School of Business at the University of Toronto, says “Innovation is not invention. [Canada’s] innovation policy is actually an invention policy and that is why it is doing so little for the economy. The key is to move from a producer-driven perspective to a consumer-driven perspective – from invention to innovation.”

Martin says, invention is producer-focused —the invention is something the inventor wants for himself/herself. “Innovation works backwards from the user or the consumer. An innovation makes possible the meeting of a consumer need – whether articulated or not – in a value-adding way that wasn’t previously possible.” Source:  Canada at 150: Rising to the challenge

Kevin Lynch is vice-chair, Bank of Montreal Financial Group does make the connection between creativity and innovation, in the Globe’s Report on Business July 21, 2010:

Creativity lies at the heart of modern competitiveness. Innovation is the ability to create new products and services, to produce existing products in new ways, and to develop new markets. It drives productivity; it drives growth; and it drives our living standards.

I have been teaching this for years, and I’m glad business leaders are finally realizing that creativity is a crucial element of the innovation equation.

Forget about brainstorming?

Ironically, the subject of brainstorming has been getting bad press lately. An article on the failure of brainstorming, was featured in Newsweek’s report on creativity, and was immediately denounced by the creativity and innovation consulting community. Have a look at Marty Baker’s “Creativity Central” blog.

Design innovation protocol for better brainstorming

What’s wrong with brainstorming?  I’ve identified eight reasons why brainstorming doesn’t work, and what you can do about it.

Related links

Charlie Rose panel discussion

Listen to a panel discussion on creativity, hosted by Charlie Rose, featuring Ashley Merryman (co-author of the Newsweek article), musicologist Aaron Berkowitz of Harvard University and Bruce Alberts, president of the National Academy of Sciences.

Creatively intelligent companies and leaders: Arts-based learning for business

Journal of Business Strategy, Volume 31 issue 4, has published a special issue on creatively intelligent companies and leaders: Arts-based learning for business. Guest edited by Harvey Seifter and Ted Buswick

Pixar University’s Randy Nelson on Learning and Working in the Collaborative Age

The Dean of Pixar University explains what schools must do to prepare students (and themselves) for new models in the workplace. He makes  a  compelling case for arts-based learning to develop 21st century thinking skills.

GE Ecomagination $200 Million Dollar Challenge: Powering the Grid

Due date: September 30, 2010

About The Creativity at Work Newsletter

The Creativity at Work Newsletter provides overviews of new research in creativity and innovation, ‘best practices’ of leading organizations, links to new or relevant websites and an array ideas and techniques from innovation experts

About Creativity at Work

Skills in critical thinking, creativity, communication, collaboration and innovation are crucial for achieving success in a global Creative Economy.

Here’s how we can help ->

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Creatively intelligent companies and leaders: Arts-based learning for business

Aug 11th, 2010 by Linda Naiman

Journal of Business Strategy, Volume 31 issue 4, has published a special issue on creatively intelligent companies and leaders: Arts-based learning for business

Guest edited by Harvey Seifter and Ted Buswick

Here is an excerpt :

For about 20 combined years, a large part of our professional energies and personal passions have been engaged by the use of artistic skills, processes and experiences as learning tools: in complex global corporations, small and medium-sized businesses, professional associations, universities, historical and cultural centers, government agencies, leadership academies, and non-profit organizations.

In 2005, we edited a special issue of this journal (Vol. 26 No. 5) in which we documented the emergence of arts-based learning for business as a field of practice and traced this trend to the confluence of two explosive forces in the 1990s – the increasingly rapid rate of change in the business environment, which often outstripped the capacity of traditionally-managed organizations to adapt effectively; and an exponential increase in the complexity and social interconnectivity of the global marketplace.

The result was a demand for new organizational models and learning tools to help knowledge workers better cope with radical unpredictability, adapt to change, surface creativity, and innovate. We also cited specific examples of companies using arts-based applied skills training in areas such as teambuilding, executive presence, and intercultural communications; and reported on the growing awareness among senior business leaders of the benefits to their companies from these new forms of arts-business partnerships.

At that time, because creativity and innovation were becoming business concerns of paramount importance, arts-based learning was increasingly the subject of worldwide attention, a large and growing bibliography, and even television documentaries. To offer just two examples of the growing interest: in 2004 Harvard Business Review cited Dan Pink’s idea that The MFA is the New MBA as one of its breakthrough ideas of the year while in Japan, at roughly the same time, NHK identified arts-based learning in business as one of the ten most important emergent trends of the twenty-first century.

In the past five years, as business success has become ever more closely linked to the development of creatively intelligent companies and leaders, the field of arts-based learning has continued to evolve dynamically, experiencing four major trends. The first three, which inform much of the writing contained in this new special issue, are extraordinarily promising. The fourth presents a serious challenge to those of us who champion the practical use of artistic skills, processes, and experiences in business. We will come back to that trend – and how we may begin to work together to reverse it – in our closing paragraphs.

The first and most striking of the trends we have observed has been an accelerated growth of interest in our field, to a point that today arts-based learning in the workplace is no longer a little known or fringe phenomenon. Indeed, it has been experienced by hundreds of thousands – perhaps millions – of people, and incorporated into organizational development programs at a majority of the Fortune 500. Arts-based approaches have also been integrated into the curricula of many of the world’s most prestigious business schools, and arts-based tools are being used in employee training programs by a growing number of local, regional, and national governments in North America and Europe.

A current global overview is offered in Nick Nissley’s article, “Arts-based learning at work,” in which he surveys leaders in business, training, and academia about the relevance of arts-based learning and weaves the responses into a clarion statement supporting arts-based learning’s role in strategy, creativity, and leadership.

This issue also offers examples of how arts-based learning has been applied successfully in leading companies and organizations, including InterContinental Hotels, GlaxoSmithKline, Target, IKEA, Samsung, Bang & Olufsen, IBM, Kepner Tregoe, and LexisNexis.

Download a PDF of  Nick Nissley’s  article “Arts-based learning at work: economic downturns, innovation upturns, and the eminent practicality of arts in business”

Thanks to the editors of this special report for permission to publish these excerpts.

Purchase a copy of the report here

Resources for arts-based learning  for business

The Intersection of Art and Business: A context for arts-based training and development in the workplace

The Alchemy of Leadership: Developing the Artful Leader

Please contact me (Linda Naiman) if you would like to know how arts-based learning can benefit your organization.

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Pixar University’s Randy Nelson on Learning and Working in the Collaborative Age

Aug 10th, 2010 by Linda Naiman

The Dean of Pixar University explains what schools must do to prepare students (and themselves) for new models in the workplace. He makes  a  compelling case for arts-based learning to develop 21st century thinking skills

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Eight reasons why brainstorming doesn’t work, and what you can do about it.

Aug 10th, 2010 by Linda Naiman

Idee e scenari sulla privacy

Creative Commons License photo credit: lucamascaro

Why do people hate brainstorming so much?

If the same people who work with the same problems everyday meet and discuss these problems using the same language and procedures the outcome is always predictable. Sameness breeds more sameness. Seeing the world with old eyes only helps produce old ideas. —Arthur VanGundy, PhD

Sounds tedious doesn’t it?

Here are seven more reasons why brainstorming doesn’t work:

  1. Lack of preparation. You can’t just call a meeting and ask people to brainstorm without any preparation.
  2. Lack of focus. Proceeding with a poorly defined topic.
  3. Judging every idea as it is put forward.
  4. Letting a few participants dominate the discussion.
  5. Lack of structure. Creativity without structure produces a formless mess.
  6. Fear of being wrong or stupid
  7. Brainstorming done badly by unskilled facilitators.

Alex F Osborn, an advertising executive (and the O in BBDO) invented brainstorming in the 40s. He devised four basic rules intended to reduce social inhibitions among group members, stimulate idea generation, and increase overall creativity of the group:

Foundational rules of group brainstorming

  1. Focus on quantity: The greater the number of ideas generated, the greater the chance of producing a radical and effective solution.
  2. Withhold criticism: By suspending judgment until after the idea generation phase, participants will feel free to generate unusual ideas.
  3. Encourage wild ideas: Wild ideas make people laugh, and laughter stimulates creative thinking.
  4. Combine and improve ideas: Good ideas may be combined to create better ideas.

These four rules are a good start, but brainstorming is only one small part of the innovation process. Following a design innovation protocol will ensure focused, directed, strategic creative thinking, to help you produce desired results:

Design innovation protocol for better brainstorming

  1. Define the objective/challenge, and determine what will make the project successful. Hint: Focus on what would add value for your customer. Draw up a specific problem or opportunity statement, which describes what you are trying to achieve.
  2. Choose the right people for your project. Break out of silos, and include people from diverse backgrounds, as well as your customers (internal and external) to generate ideas from multiple disciplines and perspectives.
  3. Research background information and gather data on customers, the marketplace, and competition. Identify the needs and motivations of your end-users. Collect stories about what works, and what drives people crazy. Make sense of your research by looking for patterns, themes, and larger relationships between the information, and extracting key insights.  Encourage a  mind-set of questioning, and challenge assumptions, such as, “This is the way we’ve always done it.“
  4. Frame opportunity areas. Don’t just focus on problems. Focus on the outcome you want to achieve. As David Cooperrider, one of the originators of Appreciative Inquiry (AI), states,  “The seeds of change are planted in the very first questions we ask.” The basic process of AI is to begin with a grounded observation of the “best of what is,” then ideate through vision and logic “what might be,” informing the design of “what should be” and creating a blueprint for the new innovation—“what can be.”
  5. Ideation begins before you even have a brainstorming session. Creativity comes from a blend of individual and group ideation. Give people time to think about the challenge at least a week before your brainstorming session, so they have time to incubate ideas on their own. (Give them time to reflect on ideas and improve on them, after brainstorming as well.)
    • Host your brainstorming session using a skilled facilitator and play by Osborn’s rules.  Brainstorm as many ideas as possible to serve the identified needs of your end-users. Ask questions like “What if…?” “What else…?” and “In what ways can we…?”
    • Embrace the principles of improvisational theatre: Refrain from sarcasm and pre-judging others. Build on the ideas of others, think in terms of ‘yes and’ rather than ‘yes but;’ make your partners look good, listen as well as talk, play team-win, let go of the need to control a situation, lead through a common vision, and celebrate small wins. This will help you establish an atmosphere of fun, humor, spontaneity, and playfulness. If your culture is one of fear, brainstorming won’t work, so make it safe for people to generate ideas, without the worry of being ridiculed.
    • Use a variety of idea generation techniques in your meeting to spark ideas, and appeal to the diverse thinking styles of your participants. Try visual thinking, semantic intuition and brainwriting. Allow between 10  and 20 minutes for each technique, depending on the discussion and the  energy of the group.
  6. Review your objectives, and select the most promising ideas. Does this add value to the customer? Evaluate your ideas, based on criteria such as feasibility, desirability, and market timing.
  7. Prototype. Combine, expand, and refine ideas in the form of models or sketches. Present a selection of ideas to the client, get feedback, revise and make a decision about what to implement. Michael Schrage, research fellow at MIT, says, “Effective prototyping may be the most valuable core competence an innovative organization can have.” Reactions to your prototype, inform your innovation. “Innovation is about good new ideas that customers will pay a premium to adopt and use!”
  8. Implementation: Formulate an action plan using SMART goals: Specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely. Assign tasks. Execute. Deliver. How will you measure success?
  9. Learn: Get feedback from the end-user, and determine if the solution met its goals. Discuss what could be improved. Document the project online, for easy access to ideas, mistakes to learn from, and best practices to emulate.
  10. Celebrate. Pause. Start your next project. Continue to improve.

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What is the task of Art?

Aug 5th, 2010 by Linda Naiman

This excerpt is from the autobiographical documentary Buenos Aires, meine Geschichte (1998) by German Kral, an Argentinian filmmaker.

As he neared the end of his life,  Jorge Luis Borges, Argentine author and poet (1899 – 1986),  expressed  his thoughts on the “task of art:”

The task of art is to transform what is continuously happening to us, to transform all these things into symbols, into music, into something which can last in man’s memory. That is our duty. If we don’t fulfill it, we feel unhappy. A writer or any artist has the sometimes joyful duty to transform all that into symbols. These symbols could be colors, forms or sounds. For a poet, the symbols are sounds and also words, fables, stories, poetry. The work of a poet never ends. It has nothing to do with working hours.

You are continuously receiving things from the external world. These must be transformed, and eventually will be transformed. This revelation can appear anytime. A poet never rests. He’s always working, even when he dreams. Besides, the life of a writer, is a lonely one. You think you are alone, and as the years go by, if the stars are on your side, you may discover that you are at the center of a vast circle of invisible friends whom you will never get to know but who love you. And that is an immense reward.

Thanks to www.openculture.com for the  quote.

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