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Books: The creative perks and pecks of chickens

Chicken Scratch small

JO KADLECEK reads Ann Byle’s ‘Chicken Scratch: Lessons on Living Creatively from a Flock of Hens’…

Ann Byle
Chicken Scratch: Lessons on Living Creatively from a Flock of Hens
Broadleaf Books, Minnesota, US 2023. 
ISBN-13: 978-1506484136

Chicken Scratch

 

“Byle, a veteran reporter and Christian writer/speaker, has taken her relationship with a flock of backyard chooks to a new level: as writers often do, she observed them as way to better understand her own creative process. The result is a fun, insightful and well-researched book that explores the various steps and common attributes to creating in just about any field, using, of course, chickens as the driving metaphor.”

Who knew chickens could offer humans anything other than, well, eggs and dinner options? But as Michigan author Ann Byle has long believed, chickens are about so much more than food. In fact, they are a lot like the creative life, “profound, but also funny, exasperating and down-right weird.”

Byle, a veteran reporter and Christian writer/speaker, has taken her relationship with a flock of backyard chooks to a new level: as writers often do, she observed them as way to better understand her own creative process. The result is a fun, insightful and well-researched book that explores the various steps and common attributes to creating in just about any field, using, of course, chickens as the driving metaphor.

Equal parts memoir, journalism and instruction (complete with interactive exercises/questions, parables and bibliographic references), Chicken Scratch starts with Byle’s own journey to how such a book came about (I can only imagine the marketing pitch) before introducing us to a cast of pecking characters: her “mentors” in creativity whom she names, watches, learns from, and shields from her dog. From each interaction emerges questions of why we create and how the creative process looks to humans across careers. The flock’s quirkiness serves as springboards for better understanding and enhancing the elements and impact of anyone’s creative process, meaning she’s read and interviewed a number of other creatives to ground her thinking, ideas and perspectives. 

Think Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way meets Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point.

The result is a refreshing stroll through her henhouse, looking at the attributes that define most artists in their work, which Byle suggests is any human being: curiosity, risk, imposter syndrome, fellowship with other creatives (“Creativity doesn’t happen in a vacuum”), caring for the process and even looking at the business side of raising chickens, ie, making art. 



With clever chapter headings such as, “Moving Full-Flock Ahead Means Letting Go”; “Fowl Play is No Fun”; and “Egging on the Gift of Creativity”, Byle gives us plenty of real-life examples, careful research and pithy quotes to join her on her journey. She also uses rich anecdotes from other writers and artists as well as solid data and a wide variety of expert insights (ie, Malcolm X, Brene Brown, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Anne Lamott), all in a voice that is clear and accessible and mostly free of cliches. 

“Creatives – and those seeking to live a creative life – are called on to let go of those things that sabotage a creative life,” Byle writes. “Among them are perfectionism, expectations, procrastination, and fear. When these are replaced by creativity, joy and fulfilling work, among so many other good things, we thrive.”


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While there are subtle nods to Christian faith and the theology of Imago Dei (created in God’s image), Chicken Scratchdoesn’t provide an overt framework for connecting creativity to our beliefs. It does, however, dig into countless practical lessons, examples and interviews on creativity, art, literature and of course, chicken-keeping that reflect an overall common Grace. 

But Byle’s aim (as well as her publisher) probably wasn’t to disciple people in their faith. It was to invite all creatives from all strands to think and act more intentionally about their art and creative process. And given the seriousness of many new book releases as well as the often gloomy global news, Chicken Scratch is an enjoyable romp through the necessity of creative living in, and for, today’s world.

“Your creative self is ignored at the expense of your art, whether your art is cooking, architecture, sewing, writing, painting or woodworking,” she writes. “Feeding one feeds the other. I may be proficient at avoiding things I don’t like, but I’ve learned that basic care and maintenance means increased creativity and a much better life.” 

And chickens, Byle suggests, can be ideal mentors for nurturing that “much better life.”  After all, as Dwight Baker (of Baker Book House Company) says in his endorsement of Byle’s book, “The most successful bird species today is the domestic chicken, with a global population of 24 billion birds. Chickens rule because they shrewdly trained eight billion humans to generously provide for them, so Ann Byle has the numbers on her side when she talks chickens.”

 

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