Most days, when asked, I say I’m a writer. On days when I feel honest, I waffle. Because yes, I write, teach writing and both have and write more books about writing than any other subject. I have an advanced degree. But in fact, my creative passions and output cover way more than words. What I really am is a bricoleuse, one who adapts “what is at hand in imaginative and intuitive ways to solve problems.”

I believe that inspiration is everywhere–no farther away than the tips of your fingers and whatever’s in reach. And I mean that quite literally. You may have been told to search in the clouds, but how do you get to the clouds? Start, for example, with the arm of your chair. Grasp it and feel its density. Run your hand across its textures. Identify the materials, their growth in a forest and manufacture from steel or plastic or stone. Name the process, the place, the sorts of people involved in shaping it. See their crooked eyebrows and hear the gasp when they get a splinter in their thumb. You breathe in impressions, raw materials, and a sense of momentum. You’ve been inspired. When you exhale in words, colors, movements, or tones, you’ll be making something new. Ride that breath to the clouds. 

I think I became a creative because I was given time to explore my environment and tools to mess around with when I was a kid. I made stuff up and got to hang out with it. That’s still pretty much all I’ve got. I gather up things and people, putz and moodle, arrange, rearrange, get interrupted, revise,  interrupt myself, revise, revise, revise, and deliver what some call creative work. When I do it for others to use on their own expeditions, that’s called teaching.