What Is Creativity?

Joan Anderman was music critic at the Boston Globe for 12 years when she quit her job last year and transformed her life. Now, instead of critiquing music, she creates it. She has also created a website with the resonant name middlemojo and the tagline, "what happens when creative people get older and older people get creative." Anderman chronicles her own progress as a songwriter (so far, she counts "two and a half songs" to her credit), and interviews other musicians about creativity at midlife. Eventually, she will write a book about her own odyssey as a songwriter and what she's learned from other musicians she's talked to.

Walking Away From a Dream Job

"It sounds counterintuitive to leave a plum job like that," Anderman says, "But I needed a massive overhaul of my work life to jump-start my enthusiasm again."

As it turned out, leaving the newspaper was easier than she had anticipated. "I figured on a major identity crisis. Who would I be if I wasn't Joan Anderman from the Boston Globe? It's been a pleasant surprise that life really does go on after walking away from a job like that."

Anderman has been involved with music all of her life — in high school she entertained the fantasy of becoming a performer — but the concept of songwriting grew out of a collaboration with her middle daughter, who wanted to take a year off from college. "She and I would sit around and gin up ideas about a year-long project we could do together. We'd take her tuition money to fund our year, then write a book about our experience. First we talked about putting together a small music festival, then we said we'd make a record," Anderman says. Her daughter decided not to take a year off. "By then I was so invested in the idea I wanted to run with it," Anderman says.

"I had never written songs, not even in the days when I fantasized about becoming a singer. It appealed to me as a counterintuitive thing to do at 51. On a philosophical level, I was attracted to pushing back against that. On a personal level, I was thrilled and also mortified to be doing this on a website, in such a public way. It's an adventure."

How To Be Creative at Midlife

Anderman had been around music her whole life, but as a songwriter she knew she'd need a leg up. "I was really nervous. I had set up this huge project. I thought, 'What if I suck?' I told myself that if I failed, that would become my narrative." The first thing she did was to find a mentor. Jen Trynin, a rock musician who saw success in the '90s, agreed to get together with Anderman a couple of times a month. "We'd talk about songwriting, she'd give me guitar lessons. She was an all-purpose guru."

Then Anderman took her guitar on a sabbatical. "To give myself the best shot at songwriting, I went to the place on earth that is most inspiring to me, the California desert." She rented a cabin in Joshua Tree. At the end of the week, she had started two songs. "It was enough to prove to myself that I had ideas, that I could dream up a melody and write some words."

"The Most Thrilling Thing I've Ever Done"

Anderman calls this new chapter in her life as a writer "the most thrilling thing I've ever done." That doesn't mean it hasn't taken work. "I've had to mindfully cultivate a lack of inhibition. My job for years was to judge. Now I've had to learn not to critique myself. I have to tune out the part of my brain that says, 'Don't do that, it isn't original, it isn't interesting.'"

Posting her music on her website was another big moment. "I had to realize I'm not trying to impress anybody. I'm offering a window onto my experience as I become a songwriter." Anderman has been invited to perform her own music. "That terrifies me, but I think I might have to, don't you?" she says.

Her work time these days is a balance between keeping her website up to date — "It's like a beast that constantly wants to be fed" — and carving out enough time to song-write. "I need a big block of hours to cultivate the sense of mental freedom and openness to work on songs. If I were Paul Simon or Tom Waits, it would be second nature. It would just kick in."

Here's the moment Anderman knew her new life was a success. "My kids are excited and proud of me. When I played my music for my 18-year-old, he said, 'That's a song I would listen to.'"

Read the creativity secrets of Janeane Garofalo and other artists Joan Anderman has interviewed.