creativity

Learning to trust something so intangible is difficult for an instant gratification junkie and perfectionist like myself. I want the story to pour out of me correctly the first time, but it appears that’s not how my brain works. I’d become frustrated that my story wasn’t working the way I’d like it to so I went away from it for a time. I began to think, ‘Oh no. I can’t do this. I’m a failure as a writer…’ on and on. I became depressed and actually thought I had given up completely when I had some ideas regarding the story.

Perhaps it’s because I don’t understand this whole process that I get caught up in the negativity. I’m not sure. That or the fact that I’m prone to negativity and depression.

Learning more about what works for others can help me find out what works for me too. Like this article I found googling creative process this morning:

Take a Step Back – When you’ve been brainstorming for a while you need to take a step back and let things settle in your mind. Sleep is excellent for this. While you dream, your subconscious will go through information it has assembled, sorting and chewing it over. When you wake up the next morning you might just have figured things out. [a list apart]

Some of my best ideas have come to me in the shower. All I have to do is begin to think about a creative problem in the shower and solutions seem to pop up almost immediately. It’s hard to spend your entire life in the shower, I’m pruny enough without having to live under a stream of relaxing hot water. That and the fact that writing in the shower is extremely difficult. Water paper make for mush let alone the issues I might have taking this laptop in there with me. The thoughts of an astronomically high utilities bill isn’t attractive either.

What else works?

• Exercise – Walking is best for me right now. I’m sure running might help too. That will come in time.
• Environment change – Going to a place I don’t usually go to. I’ve found cemeteries very peaceful and inspirational places.
• Writing – I know it’s sort of a weird thing to say that writing helps me to write but the act of writing anything at all (yes, even blogging) tends to get the right side of my noodle working. It doesn’t have to be relevant what I am working on story-wise and ideas come.
• Meditation – Just sitting and clearing the cobwebs helps tons.

I pray my creative breaks are shorter, happier and more productive from now on.

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1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

4. Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.

5. Start as close to the end as possible.

6. Be a sadist. Now matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them — in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

– Vonnegut, Kurt Vonnegut, Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons 1999), 9-10.

[source americanstate.org]

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Carol has mentioned Make Magazine to me before, but I wasn’t really interested until I saw Mark Frauenfelder (also a blogger for Boing Boing) on the Colbert Report the other night. Now I’m hooked. I love this stuff. Nerdy cool for sure. We’ve subscribed and now get both the hard copy and digital editions.

I think the first thing I’ll build is the $14 Steady Cam from volume 1 of the magazine. I’ve seen it before but I’m feeling more inspired now.

We’re going to subscribe to subscribing to Craft Magazine as well at Carol’s urging. She needs to knit me a pie. I’m not sure why. There’s a lot of cool stuff there too.

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And I am absolutely NOT talking about the snack food. In this context I am using the word poppycock this way:

pop·py·cock (pŏp’ē-kŏk’) Pronunciation Key
n. Senseless talk; nonsense.

[Dutch dialectal pappekak : pap, pap (from Middle Dutch pappe, perhaps from Latin pappa, food) + kak, dung (from kakken, to defecate, from Middle Dutch kacken, from Latin cacāre; see kakka- in Indo-European roots).]

Online Etymology Dictionary
poppycock
1865, probably from Du. dialect pappekak, from M.Du. pappe “soft dung” (see pap) + kak “dung,” from L. cacare “to excrete.”

[source dictionary.com]

Apparently I used the word improperly in a couple of posts here on my blog in referring to a snack made for me by my wife. How do I know I misused the word? I got a letter:

download <%media(20070220-pcletter.pdf|PDF of letter" /> (208 kb) to follow along.

*** Let me qualify before continuing. I am feeling particularly grumpy today so a poorly written letter from a corporate lawyer wasn’t a welcome thing this morning.***

Here we go:

You spelled my name wrong. My last name is Browne not Brown, which is a colour or the last name of a favourite cartoon character of mine.

Second our postal code is incorrect. I’m not sure what country you’re trying to send mail to but it’s not Canada.

Third, you spelled your own product name wrong in the second paragraph of the letter. Perhaps you should add your product’s name to your word processor’s dictionary so the mistake doesn’t happen again. Just a helpful hint.

Finally, I immediately changed the wording in the offending posts on our “company’s websites” (personal blogs… wtf?). The snack my wife makes for me at Christmas time will be from this point on referred to as censored snack. See posts here: post one and post two from my blog and this one (I think the main offender as it shows up on page one of google using the offending word and ‘recipe’ in a simple search) from Carol’s blog.

When Google crawls us again this referral will go away.

Our sincerest apologies to the company in question. We will never ever refer to you or your products again. Also we shall not ever purchase or consume your products again, but will choose a competitor. Also we hope many people who read our blogs will respond in kind.

Fiddle faddle… one of Dad’s favourite words. He used it to replace another word that starts with F and is sometimes coupled with ‘off’. Which is something I’d like to tell a certain letter writer.

Here’s an edited video from one of the offending posts:

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