Author Talks: Ten ingredients in the ‘secret sauce’ of creativity

In this edition of Author Talks, McKinsey Global Publishing’s Esther Chung chats with bestselling poet and teacher Maggie Smith about her new book, Dear Writer: Pep Talks & Practical Advice for the Creative Life (Washington Square Press/Simon & Schuster, Spring 2025). After her first Author Talks interview on new beginnings and motivation (Keep Moving) and her second on conquering adversity and grief (You Could Make This Place Beautiful), Smith thoughtfully offers ten principles of creativity that make writing and art accessible for all. She provides prompts and other tools to inspire writers to unleash their creative juices and lean into what they love. An edited version of the conversation follows. You can watch the full video at the end of this page.

Why did you write this book?

There’s often not an easy answer as to why one writes a book. As a writer, I have been using craft books for more than 20 years. I have a shelf in my room, in this office, that contains all craft books, and I’ve been teaching from them. I remember getting a copy of Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, which is a classic, when I graduated from high school because I was into writing. I remember looking at that book and realizing, “OK, this is not an academic text. This is a human being who has a real human, accessible, compassionate, encouraging voice, who’s walking me through these things.”

I thought, “I would love to do this someday.” Now at this point in my life, I think I’ve finally amassed enough experience and information to be able to pass it on to someone else. It was just a joy to get to pull all this teaching experience and thinking about writing between two covers.

Like the ‘Surprise’ chapter, what surprised you when writing this book?

One of the big surprises with this book was how much fun I had writing it. When writing this book, I sat down and was off and running. We often don’t realize how much information about something that we do is stored in our brains and available for quick download to share with other people.

This book was just fun to write, and I hope that the enthusiasm comes through in the voice, suggestions, and the prompts. I hope readers feel that perhaps they’re having a conversation with a friend or hearing from a friend about writing, as opposed to hearing from someone who is gritting their teeth while writing a craft book.

Why ten chapters? If you had to choose an 11th, what would it be?

I drafted this book several years ago, and it was a completely different book. I shelved it. It was just sitting, waiting for me to write my memoir, and then come back to it.

Once I finished the memoir and I was ready to come back to Dear Writer, I looked at the first draft and I thought, “Actually, four years have gone by. I will completely rewrite and reimagine this book. I want to have principles of creativity compose the structure, or to think about it in a sort of metaphorical way. If creativity were a recipe, what would the ingredients be for me personally? What’s the secret sauce?”

People constantly ask me questions such as, “Where do your ideas come from?” or “How do you know when something is done?” or “How do you revise something and make it better, and not worse, in the process?” When I sat down to rewrite this book, I had no idea how many principles or ingredients I would end up with. Yet I filled two pages of a legal pad with every word I could think of that was related to what I do daily.

I thought, “Well, no one wants to read a craft book that contains 75 principles of creativity and how they can apply to your life.” That felt very unwieldy. So I started winnowing it down and thinking, “OK, what is the right word that would encompass a lot?,” because each of these ten terms covers a lot more ground than the word itself.

And because I’m a “word nerd,” I think a lot about words as expandable suitcases, where if you open one up, you can unzip it, and there’s a lot inside. So, I winnowed it down and arrived at 13, which is my lucky number. But I reluctantly narrowed it down to ten because reading ten chapters would appeal to most people and feel doable.

The chapter that didn’t make the cut was “Wholeheartedness.” It was one of the first words I wrote down in that initial list. Through the course of winnowing it down, I realized that wholeheartedness, or love and devotion for what you do, isn’t its own element but the underpinning of every other ingredient. Wholeheartedness is woven all through this book and through every creative act, even though it’s not explicitly named.

How have your teachers shaped you and your artistry?

My teachers are everything. In a lot of ways, for many different reasons, the life I get to have as a writer is incredibly unlikely and feels like a minor miracle. I live in the center of Ohio, where I have lived my entire life. I’m a single parent and an introvert. I used to be the person who couldn’t give a three-minute oral presentation while holding 3-by-5-inch cards without being up the entire night before, sweating and shaking throughout it.

A lot about my life right now feels very unlikely. Many good things that have happened to me have been thanks to the generosity of other people, many of them writers, teachers, and mentors who gave of their time and expertise and who offered encouragement. They helped me get unstuck when I was stuck and showed me a path when I didn’t think one was possible.

More than just thanking them in the book, I try to live as a literary citizen and to mentor and teach people in the spirit in which I’ve been mentored and taught. The way that I’ve been mentored makes me want to lift others. I want to be someone who gives a pep talk, invites someone to do something, or shares someone’s work with more people, however I can.

What is a ‘beauty emergency’ and how did that family tradition come to life?

I don’t remember the first time I used the term beauty emergency in my house, but I think it came about because it’s language that children will understand. If you are at a window in your house and you see an incredibly vibrant, purple-and-pink sunrise and you want your kids to see it, you can’t just say, “Hey, come here.” My kids won’t come running for that, and they may not even come running for a sunrise. To a seven-year-old, the idea of your mom yelling, “Sunrise” from the kitchen may not be exciting.

I realized if I inserted the word “emergency” in what I was saying, people would come to me. So we started yelling, “Beauty emergency” whenever we saw something that was so beautiful and so fleeting that if you didn’t run and see it right away, it’d be gone.

A sunrise is a perfect example because it will be beautiful a minute later, but it won’t be the same. That very vibrant pink or purple will just be a faded peach a minute later.

The beauty emergency began as a way to get my kids to lock in and show up for things that were important. I liked the idea of taking a word and repurposing it in a way that we don’t think about. So often, when we think about an emergency, we think about something negative, whereas an emergency is just something that’s happening now. And that can be a beautiful thing. The poet in me takes a negative word and finds a way to flip it.

Now, it’s not unusual to hear my son yell, “Beauty emergency” and we know to go to where he is and to look at what he’s looking at. I suppose if I’m not passing anything else onto my children, the beauty emergency is something I’m happy to have passed on.

Why is it important to know the root of a word or its meaning in a different language?

My kids are always rolling their eyes when I say, “Do you know the Latin root of that word is this, which means this? Doesn’t that make you think about the word and the way you’re using it in a different way?”

“Amateur” is a really good example because it’s so often used in a negative way. For example, saying, “Oh, you’re not a professional. You’re an amateur,” diminishes what a person is doing, as if to indicate they’re not so good at it. Frankly, it’s dismissive to call someone an amateur. Yet I’m an amateur at plenty of things. The idea at the root of “amateur” is “to love,” as in doing something that you love for the love of the thing, not because you expect to master it.

Maybe mastery isn’t even the goal. Maybe just enjoying the experience of doing something is enough. We don’t have to be the best at it and win a trophy. It makes me embrace trying new things and being an amateur. And that just comes from the word. The same applies to the word “courage.” Knowing that the root of “courage” is “cor,” which is “heart,” makes me think about being brave in a different way. I consider how courage is also big-heartedness, strong heartedness, or wholeheartedness. It’s that secret 11th ingredient in the secret sauce.

I’m endlessly curious about language. It’s incredibly rich. And often, the way that we use it in our daily lives flattens it or zips up that suitcase, so we don’t really know what’s living inside of it. My goal as a poet and as a writer is always to get to the multidimensionality of language—to unzip that stuff and see what’s inside.

How might a business leader be inspired by the book’s principles or activities?

One of my core principles is that creativity is not just for artists. There are so many people who think they’re not creative, and they’re just wrong. We all are creative. Even problem-solving is creative. Brainstorming is creative.

Changing your mind about something, weighing your options—all of these things are creative. Every conversation we’ve ever had with another human being is creative. The idea that a book about creativity would only be for people who consider themselves artists, whether they’re amateur artists or professional artists, is misguided.

All of us are existing and doing creative things every day. The principles of creativity in this book don’t just apply to writing or making art. They apply to just living fulfilling lives. Things like paying attention and processing disappointment or frustration, having to rethink something, or being curious or rigorous.

These aren’t just principles we use when we make art. These are things that we use when we live our lives, even our personal lives. I think of this book as being for humans, not just for artists. Regardless of profession, there are portable skills within these ten principles that anyone could use.

What’s the difference between a ‘tortured artist’ and a perfectionist?

I don’t know anyone who identifies as a tortured artist. I don’t think they exist. It’s a trope that we see in film primarily and on TV. But everyone I know who makes things—whether they’re a writer, a painter, a photographer, a dancer, a choreographer, an actor, a filmmaker, a knitter, a ceramicist—does it because they enjoy it.

They probably wouldn’t do it if they didn’t enjoy it. The idea of the tortured artist is just a character type. It’s not someone I’ve met in the world. I don’t think artists need advice for making their practice more joyful unless they’re perfectionists.

That’s not quite the same thing as being a tortured artist. But being a perfectionist will torture you if you are an artist. There are bits of the book on keeping soft hands and letting yourself fail, letting yourself fall, and trying again to embrace errors as part of the process, and sometimes breakdowns are breakthroughs when you’re making things.

Maybe those bits could be useful for people who find themselves banging their head against a wall when the thing that they make isn’t perfect on the first try—because, news flash, none of us makes anything that’s perfect ever, and certainly not on the first try. Unlearning some of those perfectionistic tendencies would help those creatives who are perhaps not enjoying the process as much as they could.

How is gen AI impacting the writing process for your students?

Art needs to be made by humans. AI can’t hope or dream or imagine. We need imperfect, fallible, messy, beautiful, miraculous human beings to make real art.

I know a lot of teachers who are teaching high school English, freshman composition, and undergraduate creative writing who are having a terrible time in the classroom because of students using AI to write their papers and do their creative work, which makes no sense to me. It’s supposed to be your mind, your consciousness on the page.

If I were in the classroom right now, I would be going back to pens and paper. That’s what I would be doing. “Hey everybody, here’s some paper. Here’s a pen. Write for ten minutes” or, “Here are five questions I want you to answer.”

I hope that maybe it’s like a pendulum swing when new technology is available, and that the pendulum is swinging one way right now. I am not anti-technology. But I don’t think we should let it do our creative thinking for us, because it simply cannot.

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