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Posts Tagged ‘creativity’

Why write? It’s a question writers get asked a lot. There are a lot of challenges to writing, both internal and external, and overcoming them can take persistence and focus and a good handle on what and why. So I periodically ask myself just that: why write? 

Here’s one author talking about her history with writing: Patricia Cornwell, novelist: Imagination saved me

Jamie Coomarasamy speaks to Patricia Cornwell, one of the world’s best-selling crime writers, whose books have sold more than 120 million copies worldwide… Her imagination became a refuge during difficult years, shaping the stories and characters she would later create.

Ann Patchett’s The Getaway Car is another interesting look into the author’s development as a writer, but everyone’s answer is different.

My version of why tends to revolve around an essential truth: I want to be part of the worlds I’ve loved since I was a child. I want to be a book in the library of life.

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“Because nerds like us are allowed to be unironically enthusiastic about stuff… Nerds are allowed to love stuff, like jump-up-and-down-in-the-chair-can’t-control-yourself love it. Hank, when people call people nerds, mostly what they’re saying is ‘you like stuff.’ Which is just not a good insult at all. Like, ‘you are too enthusiastic about the miracle of human consciousness’.” ― John Green

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Like many people, I sometimes flash back to mistakes I’ve made in writing or elsewhere. It’s annoying, how they pop up unbidden, their lessons knocking gently (or otherwise) as if I’d forgotten. 

I’ve come to the conclusion that it may be easier to move on from those moments if, instead of trying to ignore them, I respond with “yes, and…” It’s a classic technique in improv comedy, of course, but it can also help mitigate the sting of past negatives by acknowledging them while also making space for the positive. Balance out the scales.

“Yes, that thing that’s been swirling around in my head for a week was kind of a silly thing to do, and remember when I also did that other thing that was awesome?”

A little trick I find useful:)

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It’s end-of-summer, change-of-season, back-to-school time, and for me that means taking a moment for a little reflection and reassessment. I also like to use this time as an opportunity to clear the decks.

I don’t know about you, but I tend to accumulate mental notes to myself, project plans, ideas that have persisted over the course of the year. Now is a great time to cross those items off my list. Maybe an idea is so small that it seems not worth doing, but it’s been taking up space in my mind. Time to get it done. Maybe it’s so big that I’ve been avoiding it. Time to decide if it’s worth tackling or if it should be deliberately shelved in favor of other projects. Either way, I get it off my list and out of my head. 

And once the decks are cleared? I can look forward to a new season and new ideas.

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“I could tell you my adventures—beginning from this morning,” said Alice a little timidly: “but it’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.” — Lewis Carroll

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“I believe that there is one story in the world, and only one. . . . Humans are caught—in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too—in a net of good and evil. . . . There is no other story. A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well—or ill?” ― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

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“…I guess what I’d say is that the best way to predict the future is just observe very closely the present. So it’s close observation of what’s going on in at a moment. And it’s also, the other thing is being interested in the thing you’re interested in rather than the thing everybody’s talking about… that’s good because it means that it’s gonna be fresh and different.” — Michael Lewis

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“Zero is the only amount that gives your body nothing to build on.” — Arnold Schwarzenegger [strike-through added]

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I may have mentioned before that I had a transformative encounter with a scary movie as a child (and still don’t like Dutch Colonial architecture) and don’t enjoy horror. I don’t often read it or write it, at least not on purpose, but my sleeping mind sometimes forgets that.

I woke this morning with a six-word story in my head.

Go away! We buried you yesterday.

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I like books and I like maps, which is why I was excited to run across this website combining the two:

Reading Maps – Maps & Travel Routes from Books & Films

The site’s tagline is “Journeys from fiction drawn on the real world.” That won’t be much use when it comes to Middle Earth or Star Wars, but is very cool when considering more local stories. Like Homer’s The Odyssey. Or Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. Or Little House on the Prairie, which was somehow not where I expected it to be! 

They have lots of classic books and also movies (like Raiders:). Have fun!

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