What tiny things does an everyday creative person do in support of her creativity?

When she has an idea, she writes it down.

When something catches her eye, she sketches it.

When she walks down the street and something catches her attention, she is not embarrassed to stop and look.

At work, between routine calls, she steals a minute, not to play computer solitaire or browse the Internet but to make a quick note in support of her thinking about her new suite of paintings.

When the light at dusk does something to her heart, she pauses to feel it and maybe to capture it.

An everyday creative person’s whole life is peppered with these tiny events. Out of conscious awareness, her mind is working. What arrive are thoughts, visions, images, and answers. To these she pays great attention.

Every invention, every sonata, every intellectual awakening, every novel, every Nobel Prize-winning answer to a problem in math or physics, every wonderful painting, starts right there, with that tiny flick of the mental wrist as you capture the fruits of your own thought processes.

Do grand things in support of your creative life—but also do the tiniest things.