"Creativity is contagious. When we spend time with other artistic people we absorb and exchange a way of thinking, a way of looking at the world," writes Rick Rubin in The Creative Act. I'm still tiptoeing through this very patient treatise. It's one of those books you read slowly and thoughtfully, not rushing through each line to better absorb each word.
I'm a blue collar writer. My mortgage is my muse. I don't spend a lot of time of time pondering the nature of creativity. I prefer to create rather than think about what that word means. This doesn't mean I don't bask in the endorphin rush of telling a story in a unique and stylish fashion. I do. But it's an everyday process for me.
Work. It's fun and fulfilling and soul crushing at times. Writing is a very solitary act for me. Even when I collaborate on a project, I labor alone. I wouldn't have it any other way. When Joe Flacco spoke about seeing "guys sitting by themselves eating and I'm like, 'Man, I feel so bad for that guy.' You always want to go join him and now I realize, that dude was in heaven," he was describing me. I love solitude.
So when Rubin writes about spending time with other artistic people, I can't really relate. I've only been to one writing conference in my life. I got so bored I left before lunch. I don't do writers' retreats. On the rare occasion I speak with other writers we don't talk about the Oxford comma or literary influences. Writers compete. We're not the buddy-buddy type. (The lone exception is my Rocky Mountain brother Martin J. Smith, who coached me up on the fiction process. If you're thinking about writing a book, I highly recommend you checking out his Rocky Mountain Word Ranch.)
But I revel in the company of another group of artistic people: distance running coaches. This might not be a group that first comes to mind when talk turns to creativity, but coaching runners is an art form. I chuckle when I see websites talking about the perfect workout or the perfect amount of mileage to run your optimal race. There are no such things. It's mileage, speed, rest, intensity, and hills. Throw in heat, cold, rain, dust, wildfire smoke, rest, nutrition, and sleep.
With all those variables, it takes a true artist to know how to combine it all — not just for a day, but through the weeks and months of a June-December training evolution. And even when it's all planned right down to the work to rest ratio, there might be a scheduling conflict with the track, so everything changes on the fly. It's a lot.
It takes a truly creative soul to blend all those variables and make a championship team, so when I see my coaching friends at meets or hang out afterward to talk workouts, it's an amazing sensation of camaraderie. There are times when I have more fun talking coaching than actually watching the race itself. We compete against one another, so much so that there are times I put aside my longtime friendships to focus on winning. But I'm also the first guy to send a text congratulating their success — just as they do the same for me. Those are easy texts to write, believe me. But in some strange way, it makes us closer.
I can't imagine being an online coach, just churning out workouts and parsing results. Unlike writing, I need the human connection, hanging out with my runners and talking the merits of threshold versus VO2 max with my fellow coaches. That's my creative act.