What is she dreaming about?

ten for Tuesday, dreams, thoughts, ponderings…by Kitty Griffin

Here, for your thoughts are ten story starts, snippets I've stored in my many notebooks. And if you'd like some music to go with them, try the Italian composer Ludovico Einaudi, I find the music sets me free, unbound to the far reaches of wishes and dreams.

STORY STARTS

One, starting with dialogue

"I want a change in attitude, missy," Dad snapped. "After all, this move is for you."

Because of me, she wanted to scream. Because of what I did.

Two, a silly start

"Lizard," said Wizard, "I need your tail."

"Wizard," said Lizard, "it's not for sale."

Three, an Irish start

The mirror reflected a face as sad as a wed Wednesday.

Four, another Irish start

She held the pen in her hand, the notebook lay open and ready for words. How could she describe this place? Every color of the rainbow, as long as it was green.

Five, a dangerous start

You need to find her. You need to tell her that the forces of darkness are hunting her.

Six, YA 

"I want to have your face tattooed on my ass."

"Why?"

"Cause you're always on it."

Seven, YA 

The counselor leaned forward, her eyes blinking. "So tell me, what do you think about your parents?"

"My parents? They're okay. As long as I can run from them."

Eight, creepy

"You know who's killing the children?"

Nine, wacky

My father will visit any place he has a relative, or where Elvis lived.

Ten, prickling

She'd been told to sort the laundry. Someone had balled up a shirt and stuffed it into the pant legs of a pair of jeans. Why? As she pulled the shirt free and shook it her mouth opened and she sucked in air. Where had all that blood come from? Whose was it? 

How Creativity Works...or doesn't

     I am currently in the midst of a big fat writer's block...I have some things I have been working and working on and not finishing, and some things I am waiting (and waiting!) to learn the fate of...and I am also  hoping for a light bulb to go off because I am in desperate need of a new good idea.  And while I am not-so-busy doing all of that, I am reading Jonah Lehrer's book IMAGINE   How Creativity Works.  It's been a wonderful distraction.  I now know that I must surround myself with walls painted blue, travel,  or move to a big busy city.  In addition I have also been assured that "...the feeling of frustration - the act of being stumped - is an essential part of the creative process..." Thank goodness!

Some of his information is familiar to me; like the benefits of surrounding yourself with a mixture of people and sharing ideas, interrupting your focus by taking a break when you are in a rut, or just letting go (when we  have become guilty of "constraining our own creativity.")  I have skimmed through much of the technical left brain/right brain, alpha wave rhythms and neuroscientific stuff, though I am now saddened as well as terrified to have learned of frontotemporal dementia.  What has intrigued me the most have been the anecdotal gems about the invention of the Swiffer by Procter and Gamble, how Nike came up with their "Just Do It' slogan, where the first Barbie Doll came from, and 3M's emphasis on innovation.  I was particularly surprised with Pixar's innovative office design, placing all of the employee restrooms in such a central location as to necessitate all employees interacting.  "The studio knows that an office in which everyone is interacting is the most effective at generating new ideas, as people chat at the bathroom sink...The secret of Pixar from the start has been its emphasis on teamwork, this belief that you can learn a lot from your coworkers...that's always when the best stuff happens: when someone tells you something you didn't already know..."

Feeling hopeless is one of the most common frustrations of many a creative journey.  Even Bob Dylan at one point told his manager he was done writing songs and had nothing else to say.  In 1965 he planned to move to Woodstock, leaving his guitar behind, to write a novel.  And it was out of his having felt at an end of one phase of his career; after he'd stopped searching, "...an answer arrived...."  Lehrer speaks of such tales of insight following an impasse, of eureka moments, how in that lonely Woodstock cabin Dylan found a way to fully express himself.  From hopelessness "he rewrote the possibilities of music."  "Like a Rolling Stone" was the result. 
So there's hope for all of us. Though in the meantime you can act like a 3M employee.  If they are struggling (with a difficult technical problem) they are actively encouraged to lie down on a couch by a sunny window, play a game of pinball, or daydream.  Sounds creative to me.

How to Make Your Writing and Editing More Creative, aka, the Power of Blue

by Cynthia Light Brown

It wasn’t a coincidence that Archimedes had his epiphany about buoyancy while taking a bath. There are advantages to not paying attention. When our focus is pulled away and we’re distracted, our unconscious has a chance to make associations between disparate ideas.

As writers, we all know the importance of BIC, or butt in chair. You have to actually get words on paper. But when we hit that wall of creativity, or we need to sift through the ideas we come up with, we need something different. We need distraction and blurriness.

There’s lots of new research that backs up what people have known for a long time. If you’re having difficulty with a difficult plot point or how to make a character more memorable, sleep on it, or take a long, hot shower (check out Jonah Lehrer’s book IMAGINE: HOW CREATIVITY WORKS to be released March 19, or this article in the Wall Street Journal).

But what’s perhaps surprising is that letting ourselves be distracted is even more important to help us discern which ideas are good ones, and which are better left hidden (see here for more on that). Which means that before you take out the editing pen, you need to have time away – the longer the better. And it turns out that this works best if you are happy when you come back to the editing. So just tell your husband (or wife) that you REALLY need to take a week-long trip to the Caribbean to prepare yourself for editing your next best-seller.

Here are a few of my favorite ideas for encouraging creativity, culled and adapted form the WSJ article:

1. Daydream.

2. Pretend you’re a seven-year-old.

3. Think exotic – pretend you’re in a lost civilization, or in Outer Mongolia. Or maybe the Caribbean.

4. Surround yourself with blue (red, on the other hand, helps you be more alert). There’s lots of blue water in the Caribbean.

5. Seat yourself outside a 5-foot-square workspace, which helps you internalize the metaphor of thinking outside the box. This actually, really-truly helps. Who knew.

6. Live abroad. I’m thinking that while I may not be able to actually live abroad, I could take a nice long trip to somewhere like, say, Jamaica.

7. Work when you’re sleepy. This actually helps improve success rates on creative puzzles by 50%.

8. Have a glass of wine. Or two. Think Hemingway.

I’m off to visit St. Lucia (at least in my daydreams...). I’ll spend the day on the beach daydreaming and surrounded by rich, blue water, dig a huge sand castle while pretending to be seven, then head back to the cabana for a few exotic tropical drinks and a late night of editing while sitting next to a large box.

Entrepreneurship. Creativity. The American Way.

by
Dave Amaditz

Change. Uncertainty. It's a bit daunting for most of us to think about. More so for me it seems, as I age. Daily routines and keeping close to the certainties in life are coping mechanisms I use to get by. Recently though, the stable foundations I crave were somewhat shaken. On second thought, I'd say they weren't just shaken, they were rocked to the core.

After waking from elective surgery, my right arm was in severe pain and paralyzed. This complication was completely unexpected, and in my case, magnified, because use of my legs and hands are already limited because of my spinal cord injury.

Although the details of what I had to go through between then and now aren't the focus of this post, I can say with certainty, that for the last four months, my life has been extremely uncertain. The reality of what I was facing turned out to be much different than what I expected.

I thought I'd be in the hospital for a few days. It turned out to be a month. I thought that following discharge I'd immediately resume my normal activities. Two months with the therapist coming three days a week and one month following that I'm still struggling to achieve my pre-operative functionality.

So what does all this have to do with writing, this month's blog topic of patriotism, or this posts title?

Well, when I finally felt energetic enough to think about writing, one of the first things I did was to check out this blog. We were posting about whether there would be a future for picture books, whether the traditional book would still be around since the advent of e-books, what role publishing houses, editors and agents would have in the acceptance and publication of our writing.

As a writer who's followed the business, these topics weren't completely new to me. However, perhaps because of the complications from my surgery, it seemed so blatantly obvious that change was a-coming and coming fast. It scared me. I felt somewhat lost and frightened. And I found myself wondering, even if only for a short time, if writing was something that would be there for me when I was ready to once again hop onto the writing bus.

The questions foremost in my mind quickly became... How these changes would affect me and what could be done about it? The same two basic questions I faced following my surgery.

In no particular order I settled on doing the following. It was not so much a conscious effort as something I simply did, my way of coping, you might say.

1. Obtain knowledge, since after all, knowledge is power. I read all the material I could find about what was happening in the business (by the way, during rehabilitation I used any spare time to educate myself on what had happened to me during my surgery)

I talked to those with first-hand knowledge about the situation... My doctors and therapists were the primary contacts when it came to rehabilitation. My fellow Route 19 writers were first and foremost regarding industry news. This helped to ease my mind. This let me know how to attack the problem.

2. Don't become complacent.  Just taking the first step instead of hiding in your shell where it is comfortable, where you don't have to face the problems or where you can pretend the problems don't exist seems so simple and obvious, but can be the most difficult. However difficult though, pretend you're in the Nike commercial and "just do it". The problem won't get better, and in some cases, may get worse by doing nothing.

3. Don't let the situation overwhelm you. If you feel this is happening don't look at the whole picture because the task might then seem too large to tackle. (This leads to the next suggestion.)

4. Establish goals. Take life and your problems one step at a time, one day at a time... and on those really bad days one hour or one minute at a time. Don't worry if the goals are too small. Keep in mind where you were so you can get a clearer picture of where you currently are and where you are going.

5. Keep in mind why you do what you do. For me, I write because I love to write. I love the sense of accomplishment I feel when I complete a story. I'm happier when I get a story published or a positive critique, but it isn't entirely about that.

I did, and continues to do my therapy because I want to become the best person I could. I want to show my family, especially my children, what can be accomplished through hard work.

6. Keep the faith. Believe in yourself. Believe in those around you. Surround yourself with those who will support you. Surround yourself with those with knowledge that can help you become successful.

I take this one step further. I believe that whatever happens in life is all part of God's plan. I gave up long ago questioning "why" things happen. Instead, I find it much easier to move on and to move on quickly.

7. Find humor in the situation. Even when things seem the worst there's always something to laugh about. It probably won't be at the exact second something bad has happened, but as you reflect, there will certainly be something you will remember. During my most recent problems, I often complained that I was never "so tired or so sore from doing so little." My friends reminded me that that "I was, after all, getting older."

8. Think about others. When I think my situation is bad I put myself in the shoes of others. I quickly realize how fortunate I am. If that doesn't work, I read the newspaper, watch the television or volunteer to help those less fortunate. It doesn't take long to realize there are others whose lives are much worse than mine.

9. Don't let change keep you down. Don't let it frighten you. Look at examples from the past. I was reminded often by my father, through his father, that at the turn of the 19th century Americans were worried about jobs and about their future because of a new invention called the automobile. What would happen to those who made the wagon wheel, wagons, and those who shoed the horses? In the late 1970s the Pittsburgh area, known for its steel mills, saw thousands upon thousands of jobs lost. What would ever take the place of mother steel? Who could have predicted the success of personal computers and a little thing like the Internet?

So today, when you turn on your computer, your Ipad, Nook, or whatever other reading device you use to read the latest about the demise of the publishing industry, the downfall of picture books or the future of the young adult novel, remember it's probably not as bad as it seems. Have faith in your fellow Americans. Have faith in their entrepreneurship. Have faith in their ingenuity. Have faith in their creativity. Count on one of your fellow writers to let their creative minds develop a solution to the problems now facing the publishing industry. After all, change is inevitable and in America it happens quickly.

Who knows, future writers might think the worrying we've recently done is just a bit silly.