writercises | Entries tagged with creativity

Original Posting Feb. 1, 2017

Writers Digest, March 2001, had an article on pages 32, 33, and 51, by Steven James with the title, "Put Punch on the Page." Basically it's about converting oral stories to written stories. I'm sure most of us have a personal story, a joke, an anecdote, some kind of a story that we tell people. However, when we go to write it down, somehow it just fizzles. So Steven lays out a way to go from the story we tell to the story we write.

1. Record your ideas. Brain dumping! Just get it out there on paper. Write it the way you tell it. Don't mess with it. And then take a look at what's missing.

2. Restructure your story. Find the hook, or as Steven prefers to call it, the gaff. Grab their attention. Start with action, energy, emotion, suspense, something to make the reader want to keep going. Hold off on the background and other stuff.

3. Reshape your story. Oral language tends to be immediate and informal. But now you're going for more complete sentences. Dialogue, keep it short and snappy, interruptions and all. Descriptive and narrative parts? Here you want sentences with detail, complexity, link. Be precise, make it good readable text.

4. Reveal your emotions. You've got emotion or an idea that you want to express. Show the reader through action and reaction what is happening. Remember, readers can't see your expression, so you have to give them the written hints. When you tell it, how do you convey the emotions, what do you do or say? Now, how do you translate that into text. You want the feeling and the mood, not just the same words, but through the story.

5. Reduce the confusion. Telling a story, we separate characters through inflection and expressions. Writing dialogue, you've got to add speaker tags. You may need to add new dialogue, additional transitions, details and descriptions. Don't get carried away, but do create images.

6. Remember the audience. Make sure your story is clear for the audience. Get someone else to read it, and give you a honest opinion about how it flows. Are there gaps, unanswered questions, unclear transitions? Now, reread it, and revise it until it's as exciting as the oral version was.

Incidentally, page 33 includes a "creativity starter." It's almost an exercise! So, put your writing hats on, and try this:

1. Select a personal anecdote you enjoy telling friends. Write it down.
2. Add structure. Is there extra background you should eliminate? Try making a brief outline of the story.
3. Review that outline. Do you need to revise some of the sentences so they work better together? Rewrite!
4. Add texture. Is there information about the characters or the setting that you can add to make this a richer story?
5. Check the transitions. What about those adjectives and adverbs? Can you drop some, make some more specific, or otherwise tweak them to help the story read smoothly?
6. Think about the audience. Who do you want to read this? What are they likely to have trouble understanding? How can you clarify? Go ahead, clean up your story and make it read like the wonder it is!

There you go! An anecdote, a personal story, turned into words!
tink

Current Mood: smeagles

mbarker.livejournal.com

Original Posting 2 Feb 2011

I've been musing about several ideas, prompted by David B. Coe's posting over here http://www.sfnovelists.com/2011/01/21/a-new-idea/

Very briefly, David seems to think that ideas, like the prompting of the muse, are basically not under our control. You can't tell where they come from, you can't make them appear when you want them to, they're just some kind of unpredictable spark. Oh, he admits that we can use "what if" to help develop ideas, but that initial spark is something special.

There's a part of me that agrees with David. You probably can't sit down and make yourself come up with one great idea when needed. On the other hand, you can't roll a specific desired number with dice either, although if you let me have a few rolls, I'll bet it turns up. In the same way, while we probably can't sit down and come up with one great idea, there are certainly some steps we can take to help produce a crop of ideas, and then pick out some good ones.

What do I mean? Well, I'm thinking of ideas as somewhat like a precipitate in a supersaturated solution. So to start with, you need a supersaturated solution of ideas -- lots of bits and pieces, lots of images, characters, events and such floating around in the old brainpan. How do you do that?

I used to have a book called Pictures for Writing. It was just a collection of somewhat odd pictures intended to spark your thinking. Nowadays, you can go over to the google images, or YouTube, or lots of other places, and poke around. Plenty of images to kick your thinking!

Or watch some TV or movies. Yes, yes, they aren't great models for writers, but... see what they suggest. Heck, I've been doing some summaries of TV cartoons. It's kind of relaxing, seeing how Shaun the Sheep sets up a problem, runs through several try-fail cycles, and then resolves the problem with a laugh.

Read some articles, do some searches, read some books. Read the news, take a gander through a tech blog, see what people are yacking about online.

Take a walk outside, visit a museum, contemplate some great art.

Heck, see what's on the Discovery Channel (if you are in a place where you have that).

One way or another, fill your head with stuff.

Okay? What methods do you use to set up your supersaturated solution?

Next, we'll look at what you can toss into your solution to get precipatation!

Current Mood: crystalline

mbarker.livejournal.com

Original Posting 27 Dec 2010

Hum...

Over here http://www.sfnovelists.com/2010/12/23/you-cant-teach-passion/, David B. Coe blogged about "You Can't Teach Passion." And...

For some reason, the title, "You Can't Teach Passion," kind of itched whenever I saw it. So I've been thinking about why that feels like fingernails on a blackboard to me.

I think I can probably agree with David that we can't teach passion, if we're talking about teaching as "sage on the stage" lecture presentations designed to fill time with the teacher talking and the students scribbling, sleeping, or staring into space, but probably not really engaged. Unfortunately, too many of us have learned to define teaching and learning in those terms.

On the other hand, that kind of teaching often does a very good job of eliminating passion. Even someone who has a dream, a vision, a fire burning often finds that kind of teaching acting as a tremendously effective dream quencher, blackout curtain, and fire extinguisher. Take a kid who's lively, outgoing, interested in the world around them, set them down in a orderly classroom with good teaching discipline, and pretty soon you're likely to have a quiet drone.

But, despite the excellent methods of eliminating passion that we have developed (documented at length as killer phrases in What a Great Idea! 2.0 by Chic Thompson -- that's nonsense, that's irrelevant, that's unproven, that's dangerous, that's not salable, etc. etc. etc. all of which say "No" to passion), we've also got some ways to encourage passion. See Michalko's Thinkertoys, Roger van Oech's A Whack on the Back of the Head and A Kick In the Seat of the Pants, or Edward de Bono's various books, among others. Ways to take that little flicker of interest and excitement, to blow gently on it and provide tinder to help it grow into a raging flame. To give passion creative outlets and let the dream become reality.

You can't teach passion. But you can quench it, so easily. And, on the gripping hand, you can encourage passion. Heck, you might even find a teacher cheering you on. And that's real learning.

(Who is still trying to figure out why the notion that some people don't have "the passion" or "the inspiration" or whatever it is makes me queasy. What do you think?)

Current Mood: passionate

mbarker.livejournal.com

Original posting 13 Nov 2010

Oh, drat. Over here http://community.livejournal.com/writercises/144276.html the aged nano notes are all about giving your characters some complications with health -- like coughing, sneezing, and all that. I finally gave in this morning, since we were joining friends for lunch, and dosed myself with my favorite allergy nostrum. Dried things up, but of course I've also got ringing ears, and will probably fall over later. Anyway... I don't particularly want to think about coughs and colds and other health issues (or are those unhealthy issues?). So let's just toss that tissue (we don't call them by trademarked names, right?) into the trashcan and move along.

One of the things I've particularly noticed during this round of nanowrimowing is my own need for at least a minimum bit of organizing, of scribbling and thinking through some frameworking before or during the writing. I tend to use bullet lists, especially for non-fiction writing -- just lists of points, often in short phrases, sometimes in questions. Scribble down the three or four points, arrange or rearrange quickly, then sit down and expand them out. And sometimes I do hand-written notes, which I find makes the dictation much smoother. If I sit down without anything, well, I kind of end up making lists on screen, which is okay, but somehow hand-written ones are better for me. I feel more productive if I scribble the notes on paper, then dictate -- and tearing up and tossing the notes is a nice feeling.

Which brings me back to my favorite checklists and such. I hadn't really used them to prepare, and I'm thinking that was a mistake. Now I'm going back and filling in... oh, some background and such... that I might have been reminded to think through if I had used my little checklists. Might not, and indeed, the rush of nanowrimo helps focus my attention on what I really need at this point to write the next chunk, instead of letting me get lost in worldbuilding and other delights of non-productive diddling. But still, I think there's a little balance needed, perhaps thinking through the checklists briefly while preparing, then doing some freewriting (a la nanowrimo) to expand and explore, then go back to the checklists sometimes to see how we're doing on figuring it all out?

While I'm wondering around (isn't it nice how that word and wandering can overlay?), take a listen over here (it's a podcast) http://www.writingexcuses.com/2010/11/07/writing-excuses-5-10-john-brown-and-the-creative-process/ where they talk about getting ideas. John Brown talks about creativity as a process, finding a problem, asking questions, and answering them. And, of course, the questions in the writing process turn around issues such as characters, setting, problem, and plot. Find something around you that excites you, then start asking questions about how to frame that with characters, setting, a problem for the characters, and a plot for them to try to resolve it. And John talks about using lists, writing down multiple possibilities, multiple solutions, until you've got a couple that sound good -- and then exploring those in writing. Fun stuff! And again, there's that notion that you need some thinking time, perhaps organizing it in lists, notes, and so forth, in between the wordmill time. But I have to admit, I think part of the lesson of nanowrimo is that doing it a little bit at a time, as you need it, may be a better way than spending a lot of time trying to figure it out ahead of time. You just don't know what you need until you try a bit, so more of an on-the-fly approach works well.

Last, but definitely not least, over here http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/11/brain-rewards.html there's some discussion about the idea that we prefer feeling certain -- our brain rewards us for being convinced that we're right. If so, this helps to explain confirmation bias (we look for evidence that matches our beliefs, and discount, avoid, and ignore evidence that doesn't fit). Which kind of makes that notion of pushing for a quota of ideas really important. Heck, even the idea of looking for at least a couple of good answers, not stopping with the first thing that you think of, starts to look like a good way to fight our own inherent bias to stop and ignore any other possibilities.

Well, that's enough mumbling for today. Back to the wordmill!

Write!

Current Mood: subdivided

mbarker.livejournal.com

Original Posting 28 Sept 2010

Writer's Digest, December 2007, pages 46-49, have an article with the title, "Mapping Out Of a Block" by Greg Korgeski, Ph.D. This is basically an article about mind mapping or concept mapping. The basic notion is to let yourself record and organize words and phrases in a visual . Some people do it on paper, some people use whiteboards or Post-it notes, and there are various software programs available.

Greg starts by suggesting three guidelines for your idea mapping.

However you do it, think about convenience and aesthetics. Paper, sticky notes, software -- whichever works for you. It should be easily accessible, and fast and easy for you.
Do a brain dump. Some people start in the middle, with the keyword phrase your question, and then work out from there. Or you can just start putting ideas down, randomly scattering them. Circles, boxes, arrows, question marks, use whatever helps you to think. Write down all the bits and pieces you can think of related to your project or question.
Sort and organize. With a lot of ideas laid out, you'll start to see ways they fit together. Draw lines, use a red pen, move things around. Add labels to lines. Tinker with it until you've got clusters and some kind of sense. Relationships, patterns, connections often pop out of this.

Greg also suggests using mind mapping at different levels. He gives three examples -- a single piece of writing, a writing program, and thinking about your writing career. You can use a mind map to build an outline. Or when you've just got too many ideas for one piece of writing, lay out a program. Let the clusters on the mind map be multiple pieces. Finally, you might want to try mapping your writing career. Look at the things you'd like to write about, look at the things you've already written, look at your areas of expertise, and look at your dreams or goals or passions. What kind of a mind map, what patterns, and links, and points of intersection come up?

Some of the mind mapping software available listed in this article includes:

Curio http://www.zengobi.com/products/curio/
final draft http://www.finaldraft.com/
mindjet mindmanager http://www.mindjet.com/
scrivener http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.html
supernotecard http://www.mindola.com/
tinderbox http://www.eastgate.com/Tinderbox/

So here's a way to organize your ideas, using visual clustering.

mbarker.livejournal.com

Original Posting 16 Sep 2010

Writer's Digest, December 2007, pages 42-45, has an article with the title "Blinded by the Light" by Leigh Anne Jasheway-Bryant. This is an article about another part of the creativity swamp, what Leigh Anne calls Too Many Ideas Syndrome (TMIS). This is the problem of having so many ideas that you just don't know what to do.

Leigh Anne suggests nine strategies that might help with picking an idea and getting on with it.

The red dress theory. When you go to a party, lots of women wear black dresses. A few wear red dresses. But, you're more likely to notice the ones wearing red dresses. They stand out, they get your attention. When you got too many ideas, look for the ones in red dresses. The bold, brash ideas. Those are most likely to be inspiring, motivating ones.
It's the stupid idea, stupid. Sometimes crazy, stupid ideas are the most fun. Go ahead.
This idea has legs. When you're overcome with ideas, take a walk. Without the lists and sheets of paper and all the other distractions, what stands out?
The assignment is due. Set your own deadlines. "Too much time often exacerbates confusion and indecisiveness, especially when you're faced with too many ideas. I've taught five-minute writing exercises in my classes for years and found they produce highly creative writing."
Mind over mind. Use a metaphor -- your imagination -- to cure TMIS. One writer thinks of writing as a garden. Some ideas, like weeds, need to be yanked, while others get watered and fertilized. Another writer thinks of writing as cooking. Ideas are like pots on the stove. Lift the lids, look inside, and see which one is closest to being ready to serve. Write that one first.
Give in to passion. Which ideas make you the most excited? Go with the ones that bring you the most pleasure. Go with the ones that you really want to do.
Organize visually. Many writers prefer cards on a bulletin board. Move them around, take down the ones you don't need, and see what's left. Color coding can help.
Go (meta) physical. Doctor Northrup, who writes nonfiction health books, uses tarot cards to help sort through ideas. "There's no magic in these cards; their intuition tool and help me get in touch with what my intuition is trying to tell me."
That's what friends are for. You need some friends you can bounce ideas off comfortably. Try pitching your idea to a friend.

That's the advice in the article. I think of these as various suggestions for selecting among ideas. Once you've got several ideas, screening them and picking out "the good ones" can be a hard job. These are some approaches to helping you with that.

[p.s. traveling this week, which means things are kind of wild and wooly about connections, but... start thinking about how to spend the next month, roughly? November is nanowrimo, right? So should we start planning how to scribble for a month? Who's doing nanowrimo this year, anyway? Come out, come out, wherever you are, and see the young witch... whoops! Later!]

Current Mood: sideways

mbarker.livejournal.com

Original posting Sept. 5, 2010

Writer's Digest, December 2007, pages 38-41, has an article with the title "Falling down the Rabbit Hole" by Emily Hanlon.

It's an interesting paean to creativity, to the dance between rational and intuitive, between technique and imagination. Hanlon urges us to get enough imagination into our writing, to avoid getting bogged down by the rational, linear, organizational side of things and miss the cosmic landscape of the imagination. Hanlon suggests we need to fall down the rabbit hole into Wonderland. Let go and freewrite.

I have to admit, I didn't find much in the way of technique, although the exhortation was delightful. There is one exercise provided. Let's take a look at that.

Start by identifying an incident in your life where you are absolutely certain you were the injured party. An argument or fight is a good place to start, since these have built-in dramatic tension. The stronger the tension, the better the story.

Ground rules:

don't try to re-create the actual incident.
Don't try to remember exactly what you thought and felt.
Let the emotions and the dialogue rise up, brand-new.
Relax, loosen up, and let the characters take on a life beyond your memory.
See the argument or the fight in your minds eye, just like a scene from a movie.
If you find it hard to use a scene from your life, make up characters. A mother and daughter, father and son, lovers, spouses, use your imagination.

Two parts.

Part one. Write the scene from one character's point of view. If you're using a scene from your life, start with your own point of view. Inner thought is what defines point of view. The other character can speak and act, but the inner thought comes from you, the point of view character. Use plenty of dialogue.

Part two. Put the first scene aside. Now write the scene from the other person's point of view. In the second scene, it's not your story. The inner thought, motivation, and drama all should come from the other person's point of view. The experience will be different. Let the story change.

"It's not easy for us to see the world from another person's perspective, but as writers, we must do exactly that. This simple but powerful exercise will give you a visceral experience of the power of point of view. Writing from the imagination doesn't mean that you're childish or crazy. In the realm of imagination, you'll find the truths, passions, characters and story your creativity hungers for."

So, the key point here is loosening up. Take a look from the other side, and see what happens.

Current Mood: squiggle

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:

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!
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.
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.
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?

Current Mood: flipflop

mbarker.livejournal.com

Original Posting 28 July 2008

There are days when the random quotes seem to be aligned. Take these, for example:

"No man has the right to dictate what other men should perceive, create or produce, but all should be encouraged to reveal themselves, their perceptions and emotions, and to build confidence in the creative spirit." Ansel Adams

"Do something. If it doesn't work, do something else. No idea is too crazy." Jim Hightower

"The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak." Hans Hofmann

"Is yours an honest lament?... Most are not, you know. Most self-imposed burdens are founded on misperceptions. We -- at least we of sincere character -- always judge ourselves by stricter standards than we expect others to abide by. It is a curse, I suppose, or a blessing, depending on how one views it.... Take it as a blessing, my friend, an inner calling that forces you to strive to unattainable heights." RA Salvatore

"Glamour, that trans-human aura or power to attract imitation, is a kind of vessel into which dreams are poured, and some vessels are simply worthier than others... A beautiful woman can turn heads but real glamour has a deeper pull... Glamour [is] the power to rearrange people's emotions, which, in effect, is the power to control one's environment." Arthur Miller

Five out of 10 of today's quotes from http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3 seem to me to focus on creativity, on striving to reach unattainable heights. Kind of a challenge, eh? Humbling, but also calling us to do it, to try!

And then, of course, there's this quote from Bob Hope?

"Middle age is when you still believe you'll feel better in the morning."

Write two paragraphs and call me in the morning?

Current Mood: flickering

mbarker.livejournal.com

Original posting: Wed, 19 May 1993 11:10:45 JST

[being a short diversion on a method of inducing ideas and spurring the elusive muse into a more rapid pace... or at least some locomotion.]

(shouldn't that be spelled loco notion? - tink)

Having drunk deep of the valuable wit and wisdom of this group (perhaps "being drunk on" would be more accurate - though I haven't touched a drop of alcohol), please allow me to return the favor with a bit of invaluable advice (invaluable meaning worthless? or beyond price? you judge. hum. 4K - about 80 cents? Alright, I've got 80 cents, do I hear a dollar, who'll give me a dollar...:-)

If you have the chance, take the T.A.T. (Thematic Apperception Test). However, take care. Let me explain.

The T.A.T. is a psychological profiling tool. It is quite simple in administration. The subject (that's you, if you get a chance) sits down and is given paper (blue books, that kind of thing). This may be as part of a group. Then a series of pictures are shown. For each picture, the subject has 15 minutes (30? I'm not sure anymore) to follow the directions. That is where there may be a problem.

The pictures, incidentally, are wonderful. Sometime I intend to track down a set to be framed and installed where I write. For example, one is the back silhouette of a figure with a rope above and below the figure. Is the figure male or female? Adult or child? Clad or unclad? Going up, down, or merely holding onto the rope? Where is the rope? What is happening? The ambiguity of the picture is almost total, allowing the subject to read into it quite a bit, which in turn (theoretically) allows the psychologist to read out quite a bit.

For, you see, the directions are that the subject should write a story about each picture. No further amplification is given of the instructions, and I, at least, presumed they wanted the most marketable, interesting story I could come up with. I suspect this was NOT a particularly good decision, although it kept me awake.

It also resulted in me being the only member of my group that consistently begged for more time with each picture, and that practically got down on the ground entreating the psychologists to give me a copy of my test books. (They refused, although they seemed surprised at the request. Perhaps their testing didn't tell them of my interest in writing?)

Ah, well. There are quite a few pictures in the series, and I thoroughly enjoyed the time dedicated to developing and quickly writing at least a sketch of a story for each one. (I took the test over 15 years ago, and still have fond memories of that short block of time spent dreaming up and writing down stories at a furious pace.)

So, if you have a chance, go take the T.A.T. - or at least bootleg a copy of the pictures and administer it to yourself. (In case you're wondering - at one point in college, I had the opportunity to have a fairly complete psychological profile done for free, and grabbed it. So for one week, in addition to classes and work, I took a battery of tests including the T.A.T. Later I had a reading by one of our modern-day witchdoctors, which was interesting. I've often wondered just whose research project I took part in. Or maybe they use this method to calibrate and double-check the tests against each other?)

If nothing else, pick up a book of photographs or other art, carefully avoid looking at the titles (cut them off if the pictures are from magazines), and then tell yourself a story about that frozen moment. Who are these people? How did they come to this moment, and where are they going next?

Simple enough? Try it! (Does that sound as though I'm prospecting for addicts, hunting another sucker for the gambling game, or otherwise soliciting you to take a chance with your sanity, wealth, or health? I suppose trying to get you writing could be considered in that light... what the heck, <Mae West accent, please!> why don't you come up and try it sometime?)

(yer assignments are due before the end of the world. please use the correct format and be sure to put your names on your papers, as there will be no chance for later revisions and may not be much time to track you down after wars...>:-) [horns, don't you know?]

Current Mood: graphic
Current Music: In Color, Jamey Johnson

mbarker.livejournal.com

original posting: Thu, 3 Feb 1994 01:30:03 JST

(being a rather abstract look at the same problem we've been kicking about anne frank, bosnia, area writers, and so forth...)

Start with the notion that people largely think in patterns - A happens, B happens, and people derive a pattern mostly by taking the common elements - most differences are tossed and lost. So the worm in the head builds ruts for itself...

Now, what does communication do? back to the old times - we get to send uncle joe around the other side of the mountain, then listen to him to figure out whether or not to go there. if he just says it's more of the same, skip it. If he says there's good eating around the corner, well, maybe we all take a hike. If he says they's monsters and they is coming this way, for sure we all take a walk the other way...

if he says there are golden temples and nymphs and fawns dancing in the mists, we clobber him on the head and have dinner (what a kidder that uncle joe was - there really were mists around there!)

anyway - the key is that we use communication to extend the territory covered by the ruts the little worm doth spin.

's aright? but suppose (just suppose) that there aren't so many virgin frontiers waiting to be crossed. still there are some interesting possibilities hidden behind or between the silky walls of the ordinary ruts. I.e., while the writer may find the easiest task is simply describing what's on the other side of the mountains, an interesting variation on this is helping the little worm break through and build some new ruts right here at home.

Notice that in any case, the job of the writer is never to simply repeat the well-known plodding ruts. even worms get bored, I guess.

This notion of writing as extending, building anew, breaking down, or reworking the perceptual grid through which we structure experience (virtual, fantasized, actual, whatever) is rather interesting to me. If this be true, then it seems as though humor (which generally involves a sharp change in perceptions) may be an integral tool in the process. For that matter, puns (rather than being a corruption of literary purity) are one of the tightest forms of writing, since they always involve two (or more) meanings (well-rutted patterns) being brought into conflict in a very compact form.

Admittedly, many readers may feel more comfortable with slower alterations in the internal scenery. Walk them along the ruts with just enough new stimuli to let them wallow in their torpid placidity, and they will reward you well for it. But perhaps the writer has claustrophobia and wants to open the windows...

hum - this argues that the writer whose background or context differs from that of the readers may have an easier time constructing a message which provides that taste of strangeness that we learned to love in ancient times (exogamy - the love of the stranger - was a practical necessity to survival of the species, as inbreeding does some very bad things in small groups). At the same time, they may have more difficulty linking their message to the well-known ruts of the readers, and I think most readers need some help in getting up speed before they tear through the edges of their own webs... (remember poor uncle joe!)

writing, then, may be considered as one way to counteract the staleness of inbred thoughts, to avoid being trapped in the labyrinth of tiny little passages that all look just the same.

I like that.
tink

Current Mood: rutted

mbarker.livejournal.com

Original posting: Fri, 15 Dec 2000 23:06:10 -0500

Here are four quotations:

The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong. Mahatma Gandhi

Poetry is the language in which man explores his own amazement. Christopher Fry

Never fight an inanimate object. P. J. O'Rourke

PRESCRIPTION, n. A physician's guess at what will best prolong the situation with least harm to the patient. Ambrose Bierce (1842 - 1914), The Devil's Dictionary

(Courtesy of http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3)

Contemplate, estivate, and let the neurons breathe, then consider writing something based on at least one of these quotations. Feel free to mix up all four, but be aware that they may tug and pry a bit as they get into that harness...

Write!

Current Mood: estivated
Current Music: Papa Loved Mama, Garth Brooks

mbarker.livejournal.com

I'm working on a course in creativity right now, and of course I've been looking at various books and other materials that I've collected over the years. Fair warning -- you are likely to be hearing bits and pieces as I mutter over the stuff. Prepare to duck now?

Among them is a Creative Whack Pack (r) by Roger von Oech. It's 64 cards each of which has has a little description -- a creativity strategy if you will. He identifies four roles, with 16 cards in each. The roles are interesting.

The Explorer discovers resources to help create new ideas. The Artist transforms resources into new ideas. The Judge evaluates ideas, making decisions about the idea. And the Warrior kicks things from ideas into action. Between them, they cover four major parts of the creativity process. Collecting knowledge and stimulation, generating ideas, picking and choosing, and then taking the steps to make the idea concrete and real.

Just as a first step in playing with this, you might consider how you tackle each of these roles. Since we are talking about writing, when you want to write a new story, where do you go to get your ideas? Do you look at the news, read old books, or what do you do to get the information for your ideas? And how do you transform those into pile of new ideas? What do you look for to pick out the one that you're actually going to work on? And what makes you sit down and turn it into a real story? You may want to have more than one strategy in your kit for each of these.

Just for examples, here are the first in each of the four roles in the Creative Whack Pack (r).

1. Give Yourself a Whack on the Side of the Head

The more often you do something in the same way, the more difficult it is to think about doing it in any other way. Break out of this "prison of familiarity" by disrupting your habitual thought patterns. Write a love poem in the middle of the night. Eat ice cream for breakfast. Wear red sox. Visit a junkyard. Work the weekend. Take the slow way home. Sleep on the other side of the bed. Such jolts to your routines will lead to new ideas.

How can you whack your thinking?

17. Think like a Kid

A high school teacher drew a dot on the blackboard and asked the class what it was. "A chalk dot on the blackboard," was the only response. "I'm surprised at you," the teacher said. "I did this exercise with a group of kindergartners and they thought of fifty different things it could be: a squashed bug, an owl's eye, a cow's head. They had their imaginations in high gear." As Picasso put it, "Every child is an artist. The challenge is to remain an artist that you grow up."

What would a six year old see if he were looking at your project?

33. See the Positive

"The human mind," notes scientist W. I. Beveridge," likes a strange idea as little as the body likes a strange protein and resists it with a similar energy." When you judge new ideas, focus initially on their positive and interesting features. This will counteract a natural negative bias, and help you to develop more ideas.

What's positive about the idea?

49. Take a Whack at It

You can't hit a home run unless you step up to the plate. You can't catch fish unless you put your line into the water. You can't make your idea a reality unless you take a whack at it. If you want to be a singer, go sing. Sing in the shower. Sing for your friends. Join the choir. Audition for a musical. Start now. As adman Carl Ally put it, "Either you let your life slip by by not doing the things you want to do, or you get up and do them."

How can you take a whack at your idea?

How can you shake yourself up? What would a six year old see? What's good about the idea? And how can you get started right now?

Right, write!

When we write, we get to rub our ideas together and see what catches fire.

Current Mood: blazing

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The Place For My Writers Notes

Entries tagged with creativity

TECH: Put Punch on the Page (moldy oldie!)

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TECH: Creativity Step-by-Step (Part 4)

TECH: Creativity Step-by-Step (Part 3)

TECH: Creativity Step-by-Step (Part 2)

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

FILL: Random quotes?

TECH: tit for tat

TECH: Meditating on Writers and their Context

EXERCISE: Take That Phrase...

EXERCISE: A Creative Whack?

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