For the sixth straight day today, the sun was an hour late for its sunrise. Congress can say that our clocks should leap forward, but my biological clock remains confused by the fact that it has gone from bright to dark at the hour I wake up. Despite my grumpiness at the sun and at politicians, I have managed once again to compile some of the best tweets on creativity and writing. I give you an all-new edition of Creativity Tweets of the Week. May it brighten your day.

CREATIVITY

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  “12 Inspiring Career Guides for Creative People,” Mark McGuinness, Lateral Action: Whether you are a fine artist, a freelance writer, or an aspiring TV producer, a conventional career guide isn’t for you, Mark writes. Instead, he provides information on 12 books he think might help the creative professional in you.

• “A New Tool for Creative Thinking: Mind-Body Dissonance,” Jesse Prinz, Scientific American: Triggering creative thought can be as simple as forcing oneself to have an inappropriate facial reaction. (Jesse explains it better than me.)
• “The Value of Confusion,” Mitch Ditkoff, The Heart of Innovation:  As part of the creative process, embrace confusion, “a state of mind in which the elements you are dealing with appear to be indiscriminately mixed, out of whack, or unable to be interpreted to your satisfaction.” You might also want to read Mitch’s post titled “The Romance of Creativity.”
• “‘Flow’ and Psychosis in the Artist’s Experience,” Scott Barry Kaufman, PhD, Huffington Post: Last week I included several links on schizotypy, a form of schizophrenia that could be an element of the creative flow of many artists. This article is a nice one-stop-shop post on the most recent research on this topic.
• “MBTI, Keirsey Temperments and Creativity,” Michelle James, The Fertile Unknown: Quick, what’s your Myers-Briggs score? We love to see ourselves categorized, and Michelle is a corporate creativity consultant, so you should love her chart mapping creativity against common personality indicator tests.

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  “Creative Leadership: A Challenge in our Times,” Bruce Hammonds, Leading and Learning: The best way to foster creative adults is to foster creativity in our children. This post contains ways our schools could bring out the creativity in students, including relinquishing control (a big ask of any educator).

WRITING

• “Promotion Publishing Wizard: Author Christina Katz,” M. E. Anders, Fit Physique: A Q&A with the author of Get Known Before the Book Deal shares insights on building an author platform. Wisdom includes common mistakes platform-builders make, including confusing socializing with platform development, and thinking about themselves more than their audience. See also a recent post by Christina, “Creative Every Day: Need Your Butt Kicked?“
• “I Did Everything Wrong… And Still Got a Contract,” Tim Sinclair guest blogging on Rachelle Gardner’s Rants and Ramblings: On Life as a Literary Agent: An inspiring story of how one writer landed an agent and a book contract despite not “following the rules.” This is part of a “myth” series by Rachelle, which includes “Myth Busting: Part 1,” “Myth Busting Day 2: Myths about Agents,” and “Myth Busting – Our 3rd and Final Day: Money! Marketing! and More!“
• “The Power of Peer Recommendations & Reviews,” Jody Hedlund: Jody (a client of Rachelle Gardner) examines a compelling statistic for any author marketing their work — 78% of us trust peer recommendations but only 14% trust ads.

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  “Clear and Present Danger: Overwhelming Ourselves into Apathy,” Danielle Meitiv, Brave Blue Words: Danielle, a sci-fi and nonfiction writer, is also an oceanographer (how cool is that?). What is tempting her away from her creative writing? Something a lot of us can relate to — constantly reading bad news, including news about the environment.

And on a more serious note, I direct your attention to “Artists and Galleries Around the World Band Together to Send Japan Earthquake Relief” from ArtInfo.

Here’s hoping you get lots of sun this week, when you want it. And here’s a toast to the fact that for all of us in the U.S., the powers that be won’t be messing with our clocks for another eight months or so.