TECH: Creativity Step-by-Step (Part 1)

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

original posting Sept. 1, 2010

Writer's Digest, December 2007, pp. 34-49, had a series of articles about creativity. Since I am usually interested in such articles, I'm going to take a walk through them. Ready? Unbuckle your box and let's roll?

First, on pp. 34-37, there's an article called "Meeting of the Minds" by Michael J. Vaughn. It's a kind of quick survey of right-brain/left-brain theory. It starts out with a little story about Vaughn's mother, where he asked her about clipping a rose from her roses, and was reassured that the more you clip, the more roses bloom. He noticed that doing paintings actually seemed to energize his writing, and got to wondering what was going on.

The answer, of course, comes from studies of the brain that indicate the left hemisphere is more linear. It also handles language, both written and oral, and calculation. The right side does images, concepts, patterns. It's the spatial processor, that handles ambiguity and complexity, and puts the big picture together for us.

This doesn't mean that you use just one side -- they play together, usually. One outgrowth of these studies was Rico's clustering method -- write a nucleus word, then write associated words as you think of them around it. Add circles and lines connecting things. (aka mindmapping, I think?) This combines the wordy stuff from the left brain with the pattern-generating and handling of the right.

So, Vaughn personifies the two halves to help us keep track. Think about little Roger Right Brainer, shy, imaginative daydreamer, filled with ideas. However, there's also his big sister, Lucy Left Brainer, who is logical, noisy, and critical. So when little Roger comes up with an idea, Lucy is likely to say, "That's just stupid."

But, clustering and other tools help Roger get those ideas out, where Lucy can identify a pattern and then apply all those left-brain language skills to put it in order on paper. That moment when order comes out of chaos gets called lots of things -- apparently Rico called it the "trial web shift" which strikes me as a phrase destined for academic obscurity. Enlightenment, the "aha!" moment, and so on would have been much more attractive.

Tink muses: So it seems as if for real creative work, we need to let the right brain play a bit, then engage the left brain to sort out the pieces. Or as some books on creativity put it, generate, then select. Or that graphic that shows the broadening triangle, then the narrowing one...

Back to Vaughn. There's some good evidence for what might be called mixing it up
-- use instrumental music as a background for writing, or do some painting or
other visual work as an alternative to writing. Switch the parts of your brain
in use. "Prime the pump" with pattern play, visual imagery, other switches.

And since everyone likes methods or exercises, Vaugh provides four:

1. Rico Cluster: Write a word. Draw a circle around it. Write a word that you associate with it nearby. Circle that word. Draw a line back to the original word. Keep adding words and lines, developing a spider web, until you see a pattern emerge. Then take that pattern and write!
2. Cagean Chance Operations: John Cage (composer) recommends pure chance, based on a plan. For example, pick up a book, turn to every tenth page, and write down the first full word on the page. Then look at this list of random words. Is there a pattern? If not, pick a favorite, and use it as the core of a Rico cluster.
3. Vaughnean doodle: Draw some random lines that intersect like roads on a map. Don't think too much about this, just draw and slash. When they begin to assume shapes, put in some eyes, mouth, ears, nose. Take a look at the creature you've drawn. Write down who he is, what he's doing, how he feels. Or just use him as a main character in your story.
4. Amazing Technicolor Dreambook: keep a notebook and pen by your bed. When you wake, write down whatever you can remember of your dreams. Don't worry about sense, these are just notes on your right brain processing things.

Part one! Perhaps the key here is realizing that we all have a "dream generator" ready to be creative on one side of our brain, just waiting for the other side to back off a little. So, Lucy, sit down, we're going to listen to Roger for a moment.

Write?