Creative Protest by the Invisible Artist

I just discovered Liu Bolin’s series of photos in which he camouflages himself to blend into a variety of backgrounds. These striking images tantalize the mind while making a statement about the artist’s invisibility in Chinese society. Liu began this project after authorities shut down his Beijing studio in 2005. I’m sharing these photos here both because they illustrate a beautifully creative political protest and because they engage my Muse with their mind-bending brilliance.

I had to look pretty hard to find Liu in the last picture!

You can see more of Liu’s photos at Damn Cool Pics. And check out this Daily Mail article for more information about Liu and his project.

Are You the Genius, or Is the Genius Working Through You?

I don’t share videos often, because I know many of us don’t have time to watch them. But this talk by Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love, touches on some fascinating ideas about the origin of creativity. Gilbert discusses the concept of the individual as a creative genius versus the notion of the artist as a conduit through which creativity flows. She links the end of the historical belief in an outside “daemon” or “genius” to the growth of both narcissism and paralyzing self-doubt in contemporary writers.

Highlights for me include her interactions with poet Ruth Stone and musician Tom Waits. Stone told Gilbert about poems barreling down on her while she races to get a piece of paper, only to continue on to be written by another poet if Stone doesn’t catch them in time. Waits shared a significant moment in his creative life with Gilbert, discussing his interaction with a piece of music when it came to him while he was driving down the freeway and unable to capture it.

The video is just under 20 minutes long—well worth a listen if you have the time.

Sandbox Challenge #7: Create a Vivid Character in Just One Sentence

If I told you I know a guy who wraps all his books in library-quality thick plastic covers, would you form an impression about his personal qualities as well as his bookshelves?

This is what a former writing teacher of mine calls a “clincher detail”—one little fact about a character that reveals a deep truth about his or her essence. An example from literature is Miss Havisham in Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations, who continues to wear her wedding dress decades after her fiancé left her at the altar.

Today’s Challenge: In one sentence, create a character with a small fact that reveals the larger truth of his/her fundamental nature.

Here are a couple of mine:

When he saw a homeless person on the sidewalk ahead, Jack grabbed the change from his pocket, carefully removed the quarters, and dropped the rest into the man’s outstretched hand as he walked past.

Janice always ate the contents of her plate in inverse proportion to her desire for each item, and, because of this, often found herself too full to eat the food she liked most.

As always, I’d love it if you’d share your creations in the comments section! And, if you can think of other characters in literature with great clincher details, please share that too.

Who Can Resist a Pile of Wrinkly Puppies?

The single most common search phrase that brings people here is—believe it or not—”shar pei puppies.” So I’m re-posting the photo that appears elsewhere on this blog and clearly brings in some non-writer traffic.

While we’re looking at the adorable little guys, why not use the photo as a writing prompt? I’d love to read any creative bursts inspired by the puppy pile.

What I Learned from NaNoWriMo 2008

It’s about that time again, the one month a year when tens of thousands of crazy people attempt to write a complete novel during the month of November, or National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). I did it last year and “won”—meaning I completed the first draft of a 50,000 word novel in 30 days.

While I usually write about fitting brief moments of creativity into the stressful busy-ness of life, it can be eye-opening to pursue a large, ambitious project like this and see where it takes you. So, without further ado, here’s what I learned from the experience:

• Don’t expect to write a masterpiece in 30 days. You’ve succeeded if you can complete a coherent piece of writing in that amount of time, creating the solid skeleton of a novel.
• You will learn a lot about plotting and pacing a story when you work that fast.
• Forget about intensive character development and lovingly crafted poetic passages for the moment. You can add these elements later.
• Dr. Wicked’s Write or Die is your best friend during NaNoWriMo. A fantastic tool to force you to meet your word count.
• Don’t think, just write. You’ll wind up with plenty of  less-than-stellar passages, but I bet you’ll also be surprised at some gems that arise out of this pressure-cooker situation.
• Don’t get stuck in a scene you’re having trouble writing—keep moving forward. Sketch the scene out briefly with a few sentences and move on. At 50,000 words, your novel will be short, so it’s good to have spots to finish later.
• Include a couple of subplots so you won’t wind up finishing your story before you reach 50,000 words.
• Don’t fret about the quality of your writing. First drafts are supposed to be rough and unpolished. Getting the plot down is key in this fast-paced exercise.
• Don’t do it unless you’re really committed to finishing. It’s not easy, and why set yourself up for a failure you don’t need?
• Approach the month as a giant writing exercise rather than as the chance to write a fantastic novel, and you will learn a lot from the experience.
• Back care is important when you’re spending so much extra time at the computer. An on-call massage therapist is ideal. Failing that, at least get up and stretch a lot.
• My most important point: forget everything I’ve said and do it your way. There’s no right way to complete a novel in 3o days—if my pointers help you, wonderful. If not, that’s fine too.

If any NaNoWriMo veterans have other tips, please leave them in the comments section. And best of luck to everyone participating this year!

More Great Quotes About Creativity

“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.”
–Henry David Thoreau

“Everything in the universe has rhythm. Everything dances.”
–Maya Angelou

“Nobody cares if you can’t dance well. Just get up and dance.”
–Martha Graham

“Sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
–Lewis Carroll

“The greatest masterpieces were once only pigments on a palette.”
- Henry S. Haskins

“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.”
- Pablo Picasso

“A line is a dot that went for a walk.”
- Paul Klee

100 Ways to Fire Up Your Muse

I just discovered writer/illustrator/guerrilla artist Keri Smith’s list of 100 Ideas to spark your creativity. These prompts include writing, drawing and other types of inspirational stimulants.

Find the list here, then print it and cut along the dotted lines, creating 100 squares of inspiration. Use them in any way that works for you. Pick a random square every day/week and follow its instructions. Or choose one that appeals to you and do it every day for a week. Journal about your creative experiments. Or join a friend/a group and do them together. However you use these, make sure you’re having fun!

Surreal Good Times

As I’ve mentioned before, I love looking at the search engine terms that bring people to this blog. My readers use so many lovely and interesting phrases, I can’t resist turning them into another poem. If you have a blog or website, these search terms can be a source of found words for the exercise I describe in my Sandbox Challenge #6. Big thanks to you searchers for supplying me with phrases for this piece.

The only words I’ve added: I, I’m, on, my, and:

I paint love falling apart poems
on monkey writing paper,
collages with words and pictures:
black cat shadow images,
abstract gray waves,
rainbow drops on dancing hands.

I paint hair like autumn leaves,
rays of light striking metal sculptures,
hands with love writing on them.

I’m waiting for white flower movie curtains,
my joy growing.

I don’t exist, I’m just a part of your imagination.

By the way, the title of this post is another phrase that brought someone here.

Sandbox Challenge #6: It’s Okay to Play with Your Words

Today’s Challenge:

1. Find some words and phrases you like. Places to search for these: inside the books on your shelves, in magazines or newspapers, on the Internet, out of the mouths of people near you, from your favorite poems, anywhere else words lurk. Or grab some from my word pile. Take phrases from several different sources if that feels right.
2. Piece your found words and phrases together in any way that appeals to you to create: a dreamy paragraph, a prose poem, a poignant line, a silly sentence, a haiku, anything that catches your fancy.
3. Feel free to add your own words as you write.
4. Don’t judge yourself. Be as silly as you want. Pretend you’re a little kid playing one of your favorite games. Paste wings on your words and see if they fly or if they crash in an impressive explosion.
5. If you like, post your creations in the “Pile on the Creativity” section of the Reader’s Sandbox. (I love it when people share!)
6. Most importantly, make sure you’re having fun while doing this!

Be Woodstock, Not Snoopy

I once heard someone say you can be either creative or cool, but you can’t be both. This idea stuck with me, because I think it reveals a deep truth.

It’s easy to argue the point, and to identify artists you consider both creative and cool. But doesn’t their brilliance actually reside in their original outsider status?

Whether you agree or disagree with me, there’s a point to be made for remaining your authentic self. “Cool” people do what everyone else does. They wear the clothes, participate in the activities, do the things everyone in the group they care about has labeled acceptable.

But true creativity lies in doing something different. Writing a story in the way only you can write. Painting a picture no one else could have visualized. Composing a song uniquely yours.

When I think about this concept, I like to visualize Snoopy and Woodstock. Snoopy epitomizes cool, with his World War I flying ace credentials and his glamorous, seemingly real fantasy life. But I prefer Woodstock. Woodstock seems to be lost in a fog much of the time. I like the way he flutters around, often upside down. Not very cool at all.

I wrote a lot of surreal stories in the 1990s, and couldn’t get many published. The trend in literary journals at that time was ultra-realism, seasoned with a hefty dose of minimalism. My colorful tales didn’t fit in.

I could have switched to the more popular literary style. I wrote a few of those stories, actually. I felt confident they were good, but they bored me. I’d written them with only half my heart.

So I made a conscious decision then to forget about publishing. To forgo striving to become great at what was considered the best kind of writing by the group I’d wanted to join. Though I knew I had the skills to write solid realistic pieces, my inner Woodstock wouldn’t let me do it.

I’ve spent the years since developing my craft. Filling up my creative reservoir. Writing with my whole heart. And it seems that surrealism has become just a bit more popular in the literary world lately. Perhaps I’ll dust off some of those old stories and start sending them out again. Or maybe not.

Either way, I’m grateful for the inner voice that steered me toward my authentic creative self. Because I’ve spent the last decade fluttering around, upside-down half the time. Bumping against Snoopy’s doghouse now and then. Acquiring a few bruises along the way. But finding myself arriving in unexpected locations. Discovering remarkable people, amazing places and astounding things I’d hate to have missed. And always, always moving to the beat of my own internal rhythm.

Celebrating the Creativity and Generosity of Organ Donation

Veering off my usual topic for a moment, I’d like to congratulate my husband on the 18th anniversary of his kidney transplant.  It’s been wonderful to have you around all these extra years, Bryan!

Kudos to the creative people who originally envisioned organ tranplantation, then turned it into a reality.

And an extra big helping of gratitude for all those who generously decide to be organ donors.

Perfectionism: A Great Muse-Strangler, Part 4

Have you ever written a story (an essay, a screenplay, a poem…), then decided it wasn’t worth the price of the paper and ink you wasted on it? Have you imagined people laughing when they read it (and not in a good way)? Have you believed your work had no sparkle, was boring, was not noteworthy?

If you’re a writer, the answer is probably yes.

In my last post about perfectionism, I discussed the importance of creating even when your life isn’t in perfect order. But what if you’ve managed to write something you don’t believe deserves to see the light of day?

Here’s a little secret my Inner Perfectionist tried to hide from me for a long time: a lot of what you write will be bad. Or uninspired. Boring. Or half-finished because the idea fizzled out. And that’s okay. It’s not only okay, it’s part of the creative process.

Let me repeat that, because it’s important: Producing bad writing is part of the creative process.

It’s easy to imagine our favorite authors sitting at their desks, inspired every day while they effortlessly write out the masterpieces we love, barely changing a comma once they’ve finished. But it’s important to remember they struggled just as much as we do.

Here’s a little proof:

Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression. The chasm is never completely bridged. We all have the conviction, perhaps illusory, that we have much more to say than appears on the paper. —Isaac Bashevis Singer

Easy reading is damn hard writing. —Nathaniel Hawthorne

Every writer I know has trouble writing. —Joseph Heller

Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. —George Orwell

The work never matches the dream of perfection the artist has to start with. —William Faulkner

I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within. —Gustave Flaubert

I could go on, but you get the point.

Here’s the only way I know to combat this problem: Allow yourself to make mistakes. Write with abandon. Fail spectacularly.

An editor once told me my submission to his literary journal was the silliest story he’d ever read. Ouch! My own Inner Perfectionist couldn’t have dismissed my efforts with more derision. But I didn’t let his comments stop me. Okay, I may have cried a little. Or cursed the editor for his abysmal judgment. It’s possible I stuck a few pins into my literary journal editor-shaped voodoo doll.

But then I picked myself up, applied some ego salve to my bruised psyche, and raised my pen again. Because here’s what I’ve learned: Creative gems live in the middle of piles of dreck. Diamonds aren’t mined from pits lined with sheets of diamond, and gold isn’t panned from rivers of gold. These things are more valuable because they are rarer than the rock and the water they inhabit. You have to get your hands dirty, covered in grit and slime, to pull out a gem. It’s the same with a work of art.

The only way to write a good story (essay, screenplay, poem…) is to write lots of bad stories (essays, screenplays, poems…). Embrace your mediocre writing and your pieces that fizzle out. Because the more rock you chisel through, the closer you get to a diamond. And once you start finding diamonds, a funny thing happens. Your percentage of dirty rock to diamond shifts, and you gradually begin to find more precious things within your huge pile of work.

It’s never going to be all diamonds and no rock. Not even close. But as you continue to work at your craft, you learn to spot the diamonds more easily and to mine them faster. You learn to polish dull gems and make them shine. And, perhaps most important, you finally learn to stop hating the rock. Because you realize it’s just a layer you must get through in order to reach the jewel within.