The Spark and the Grind: Secrets of the World's Most Important Creators

"Generating creativity takes an effort to make the initial spark. Thomas Edison once locked himself and five coworkers in his lab, where they labored for sixty hours without sleep to finish a working printing machine. This is the first truth you have to understand about creative endeavors: the spark comes to life at the expense of the grind. You will always run into problems when your efforts stop at the initial spark because rarely is the first spark the hottest and most potent. This was clearly true with Edison, who went on to win more than a thousand patents—including the light bulb—by working eighteen-hour days most of his life and famously finding '10,000 ways that won't work.'"