Make A Creative Leap

Jump, and you will find out how to unfold your wings as you fall.

—Ray Bradbury

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

Growing a Tale

When no one would listen, I planted my words in an empty field near my home. Later, they grew into phrases, then sentences, then paragraphs.

One day I went to water my words and found an entire village had sprouted up, with houses and shops and people.

I sat on a bench and wrote down the stories of all the characters I’d grown.

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I’m having one of those weeks when it’s hard to find time to write much. So instead of a longer conversation about this metaphorical story I’ve written, I’ll just say it’s important—vitally important—that we writers and other creative types keep pursuing our art even when no one listens to us. When the people in our lives don’t “get” what we’re doing, when publishers reject our offerings, when it seems like no one will ever be interested in what we’ve written.

Always listen to your inner voice.

Always pursue your passion.

Keep writing from your heart and one day a village will sprout up. It may not happen when you expect it to. It may not look the way you visualized it. But if you continue to honor your need to express yourself creatively, in your own way, you will be cultivating your inner artist. You will be strengthening your unique voice. You will be growing a body of work, even if it doesn’t appear to be a cohesive piece or collection for a very long time.

Never, ever let anyone or anything stop you. Because the world truly needs your unique vision.

10 Ways to Stay Creative During the Busy Holiday Season

1. Redefine your idea of creativity. If you don’t have time to write for half an hour, spend that time making up stories with a child in your life while buying or wrapping presents.
2. Use a tape recorder to write bits of dialogue and scenes while driving to and from errands.
3. Write in the shower.
4. If you’re working on a larger project — a novel, a screenplay or even a short story — take five or 10 minutes before bed every night to write the next paragraph or just the next sentence.  You’ll keep your momentum going even when you don’t have much time.
5. Carry a few index cards with you wherever you go and make the commitment to fill one with something creative every day when you can find a few minutes.
6. Write a prompt on an index card for each day you expect to be busy, and commit to freewriting for 10 minutes using that prompt.
7. Enjoy some non-writing creativity. Make interesting holiday decorations, cards and presents. It all stimulates the muse!
8. Schedule a writing appointment or two for yourself during the holidays. Put it on your calendar like any other appointment. Then go somewhere away from the madness of your life and keep that date.
9. Turn your holiday stress into a character and write about him/her. You can find an example here.
10. If all else fails, escape to the bathroom and write for a few minutes!

And the last word: don’t beat yourself up if you aren’t able to write as much as you planned. Enjoy your holidays and start fresh in the new year.

Let Your Imagination Roam the World

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.” —Albert Einstein

“Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young.” —W. Somerset Maugham

“For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.” —Vincent van Gogh

“The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, are of imagination all compact.” —William Shakespeare, Mid-Summer Night’s Dream

“They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.” —Francis Bacon

“Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try!” —Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Thinks You Can Think!

“The Possible’s slow fuse is lit
By the Imagination.”
—Emily Dickinson

“I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them.” —Pablo Picasso

Turn Your Creative Gems Into Word Clouds

If you haven’t discovered Wordle yet, it’s a little program that turns your words into clouds. You can enter a story, a poem or a blog URL, and you’ll get something like the image above. Play around with the colors, font and other layout options for a fun creative break!

10 Ways to Get Your Muse Out of Neutral

1. Go somewhere public—a cafe, a mall, a park—and eavesdrop. Write down the most interesting thing you hear and create a scene around it.
2. Watch an old movie or TV show you loved as a child (for me, it’s The Partridge Family). Let yourself really feel what you loved about it when you were a kid. Then do a freewrite from that place of childlike joy. (Write about the movie/show or whatever else comes up.)
3. Eat something you’ve never eaten before. Eat it slowly, and experience the texture, taste, feel and smell of it. Compile a list of adjectives, verbs and nouns that describe the experience. Make the list as long as you can. Then use the words to write a love scene.



4. Go to an outdoor place you love—a pond, a beach, a woody path, a park—and write there.
5. Do a freewrite. Make yourself keep writing for at least 10 minutes. Start with “I remember when…” Or, for something different: “I don’t remember when…” Better yet, do both.
6. Go for a walk and pretend you’re from another planet. Notice everything—sights, smells, sounds—as if you’re experiencing it for the first time. Then write about something you encountered on your walk.
7. Make a collage from pictures you clip from magazines. A day later, look at what you’ve created and write about the theme you see in the pictures or a story they tell.
8. Take an hour for yourself and do whatever you feel like doing. Spend the last 10 minutes of the hour writing about whatever comes up.
9. Find something you wrote in the past—a journal entry, a note, a list, a homework assignment, an e-mail—and write about the person who wrote it as if he/she was a character rather than an earlier version of you.
10. (Variation on Number 3): Eat something you loved as a child but never eat now. (For me, it’s a Pop-tart.) Eat it slowly, and experience the texture, taste, feel and smell of it. Compile a list of adjectives, verbs and nouns that describe the experience. Make the list as long as you can. Then use the words to write about someone from your past.

Let Go of Control to Steer a True Creative Course

One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time. —André Gide

When I turned the page of the small calendar by my desk to December, I was greeted with this quote. It feels so true to me, of all types of creativity and also of life in general.

Today, I’m going to let Gide’s words and this photo speak for themselves. I hope you find them as inspirational as I do.

Visual Inspiration

Since I’m still on Thanksgiving vacation, I’m going to leave you with some images to engage your muse. If you’d like a writing exercise, use one of these as a prompt for a paragraph, a short story, a poem, a memory, a journal entry…or wherever your muse takes you.

SUNRISE ON THE WINDOW:

SADNESS:

ROAD TO NOWHERE:

PERSPECTIVE:

FIELD OF BARLEY:

Get Creative Now!

As we head into the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday, I’m offering a round-up of the writing exercises I’ve created for this blog. All of them can be done in 15 minutes—or take longer if you’re inspired!

Use a clincher detail to create a vivid character in just one sentence

Dream up some metaphors

Embrace your bad writing

Transform a creative block into a character (with another example here)

Turn your life into a movie, a bubblegum card, a fortune cookie…

Use a word pile to create something tasty

Write a haiku about creativity

Create a faux-history for a random item

Dive into a word pool to write about a physical, emotional or creative journey

Use the environment to reflect a significant change in a character’s life

Turn found words and phrases into something new

For bloggers—create a poem using search engine terms

You’ll also find photo prompts here and here, and some 5-minute creative quickies here.

And, if you want to work on something larger, write the story of your life with a series of 6-word memoirs.

Why I Don’t Speak Cello

On Tuesday morning, a cello sat on the sidewalk outside my house. I considered engaging in a musical conversation, but instead rushed off to work.

On Wednesday morning, the sidewalk looked up at me with empty eyes.

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I have a confession to make. Lately, I haven’t been practicing what I preach on this blog. Circumstances in my life at the moment have had me working long hours six or seven days a week, every week, for a while. Life has been particularly stressful. And I haven’t been maintaining a creative practice.

This blog itself does give me a bit of an outlet. But I haven’t devoted any time at all to what I call my soul-writing. The fragments of fiction and poetry, the phrases of metaphor and memory my Muse hands to me. Moments of creativity that may become pieces of a larger project or may just feed my deepest self by merely existing.

But this past weekend, I didn’t work at all, taking two days in a row off for the first time in quite a while. And guess what happened? My Muse took the opportunity to begin nudging me. Or maybe he’s been nudging me all along, and I just haven’t been listening. At any rate, a couple of metaphorical micro-stories flowed into my mind. And once I started writing them down, more arrived.

Perhaps not surprisingly, they all speak to issues of creativity and writing. I’ve shared one above, and I plan to continue sharing them and write about the issue each describes. ”Why I Don’t Speak Cello” illustrates my current period of overworked stress. Something extraordinary sits on the periphery of my life, and I’ve been refusing to engage with it. Creativity is always extraordinary, you know.

My life hasn’t slowed down, in spite of the fact that I actually had a real weekend. And my stress level remains high. But this little story my Muse handed me reminds me that I can still take 15 minutes to talk to the cello before I rush to work.

15 minutes a day. That’s how you learn to speak cello—or become a writer, or maintain a creative practice—no matter how much crazy life throws at you.

And if you do ignore the cello until it disappears, just remember to stop and talk to the timpani and the trombone when they arrive.

You Know You’re a Writer When…

I keep a copy of Adair Lara’s humorous You Know You’re a Writer When… on my desk. I like to glance through it now and then to remind myself that some of my quirks actually seem to be common qualities of creative scribes.

Here are a few that resonate with me today:

You know you’re a writer when…

You copy and paste the e-mails you write into your journal.

You look up “parsimony” in the dictionary and don’t stop reading until you hit “psalm.”

At parties, you check out the bookshelves the way other people snoop through medicine cabinets.

You fell in love with a man because he used “frisson” and “palimpsest” in cocktail-party conversation.

And some of mine:

You find yourself more engaged in your characters’ lives than your own.

You have a favorite pen, and you know your writing is better when you use it.

You proofread and polish your e-mails until they shine.

You ignore your dinner companions at a restaurant, listening instead to the conversation at the next table because you might be able to use some of the dialogue in a scene you’re writing.

Anyone want to add some of yours in the comments?

Can Watching a Tennis Match Enhance Creativity?

According to this article on Scientific American’s website, a simple eye exercise may lead to greater creativity. A study published in the journal Brain and Cognition posits that increasing the communication between the artistic right side of the brain and the logical left side of the brain results in greater creative ability.

Scientists tested subjects on a creativity task both before and after they performed the eye exercise—following an object as it moved back and forth horizontally for 30 seconds. This movement is thought to enhance cross-talk between the brain hemispheres. They found the subjects performed much better on the task after the exercise, while the control subjects who stared straight ahead for 30 seconds showed no improvement.

So the next time you’re stuck for a creative description of your character or just the right word to make your sentence sing, why not try it?