Creativity

Sometimes you've just got to have a spur to create. It's NOT, as contemporary culture would have you think, a luxury or an indulgence. Creativity is what makes us human. We create. We adapt. We evolve. We flourish.

Here are some ideas and links for getting your juices flowing:

NaNoWriMo.org -- National Novel Writing Month comes around each November. I'm in love with it. Take a 30-day deadline, write like mad each day for at least 1,667 words, and, voila, at the end of the day on November 30, you have a 50,000 word novel. I've done it four and a half times. I know it's possible. (Now, if I could only focus on the re-writes…)

Sabrinawardharrison.com -- Sabrina Ward Harrison is my new role model. Messy, creative, fearless AND fearful at the same time, she published her journals about creating and re-creating herself. She writes and creates beautiful and complex art.

Writersdigest.com -- Check out the writing prompts section. Create and post.

Theartistsway.com -- The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron is a classic. Do the book in order, pick and choose what you like, come back again and again. Yes, it's time consuming, but isn't it time you invested in yourself?

I'll add more links as I find them.

Happy creating!

Heat of the Moment

I'm not usually a big one on studies, but two came up recently that, when looked at together, explain a LOT of bad decisions.

The first was that productivity and critical thinking plummet when a negative or bullying person leads the process. Not only do people not want to work, but when they shut down their natural intellectual questions about the issue at hand, they move into "Group Think," in which they can justify any bad decision. One example is Nixon's White House staff planning a burglary to violate the privacy of Daniel Ellsberg. The "Final Solution" devised by the Nazis is another. Both situations had incredibly strong willed leaders and a breakdown in checks and balances of multiple points of view.

The second was in Harvard Business Review. Two researchers found that short-term negative emotions led to some irrational long-term decisions. Read more here.

Lesson: Don't make a long-term decision if you've been upset and keep your intellectual integrity by asking questions even in the face of a bully. It'll be better for the world in the long run.

Time to think...

Here's to vacations... time to travel (or, as for this coming week off, to not travel), to think, to take photos, to read books and magazines, to fix up the house, to create new things, to laze around, to laugh, to watch movies, to search through websites, to enjoy talking with John....

I'm all for vacations. And vacations are all for me. :-)

Snow. It still brings a thrill as it courses down from the heavens, cloaking the ground, the trees, the buildings, and everything with a soft mantle of white.

This morning, CBS Sunday Morning featured wonderful photos of snowflakes taken by Cal Tech physicist Kenneth Libbrecht. (See more pics at SnowCrystals.com, which kindly permits bloggers the use of images such as the one at left.)

Individually, they are a wonder. As a group, they can be spectacular.

Right now, they are collecting outside. By morning, everything will look different. The colors will be gone. Just white.

A delight.

Life Goes On...

Yes, Virginia, there is life after NaNoWriMo. I proved in 2005, 2006, and 2007 that I could write a 50,000-word novel in one month. I'm very proud that I completed the challenge in those years. This year, however, I had broken several of my previous rules -- I told people that I was doing NaNoWriMo and even what my story was about, I didn't wear a silly hat, and I let the goal overtake the fun of the writing -- and that spelled disaster.

Am I sad that I didn't reach 50,000 words? You betcha. But, I am glad that I reached 22,093 words. That told me a great deal about what I was missing in the process. I was missing a central situation that was compelling enough to carry me through to the target word count. I was missing a sketch of the story to help carry me along. A mere line or two would have helped.

By mid-month, I knew I was in trouble. Then, when it became clear that I wasn't willing to give up my entire life to make the target, I gave up the challenge and I forgave myself.

That's a good thing.

But, I'm not going to give up. I'm reading Stephen King's "On Writing," searching out online resources about revising a manuscript (www.hollylisle.com has some interesting things to say on the subject), and getting energy up for restarting the fiction-writing habit, especially with the upcoming holiday.

When you get thrown from a horse, it's good to get back up and start riding again.

NaNoWriMo2008

I've been slogging through my fourth novel, wondering what's going to happen next and how I'm going to complete 50,000 words by Nov. 30. I'm not that far off target right now, but I'm still not where I should be.

It's not easy being a month-long novelist. There's persistence, creative problem solving, forgetting/ignoring the daily pressures of life, giving up watching TV in prime time, and self-trickery/bribery involved (no candy until you finish 1,667 words!). All in my spare time, the little that I have of it.

I'm savvy now to my writing ways, though. That's part of the problem. I've always been a seat-of-the-pants fiction writer. I start out not knowing ANYTHING significant about the novel except the first line. It doesn't always stay the first line, but it always starts there. Some years I've had vague, random situations and images floating in my brain in the days before.

I couldn't catch them easily. They were like shadows passing in the night. Some years, I had a great opening situation and the characters took off improvising their lines and actions in a wild romp.

The first year was the easiest, I think, to quote my wise niece Nico, because I didn't know I didn't know. I didn't know that I didn't know what I was doing. I just did it! I didn't know what I was doing, what to expect, and the sky was the limit. Since then, I've come to think that I know a little something about crafting a work of fiction. Oooohhhh... that was dangerous. Now I have expectations that my first draft won't be crap.

But all first drafts are crap, to paraphrase Hemingway.

So here's the situation: I've crafted 17,550 words so far....and until this morning, I didn't know what the heck was going on. I had vague notions. My two main characters were running around the desert, young girls who should have been back home spending their summer vacation bored and complaining like most self-respecting pre-pubescents. But, no, my characters had to go flying off in a magic carpet for adventure.

As the word count grew, I was throwing all sorts of trouble their way -- mysterious assailants, losing their valuables, running away from danger, buying a donkey that they couldn't take back home with them -- but they weren't growing, the tension wasn't building, and, frankly, I didn't know how I was going to pull 50,000 words out of them.

But now, this morning, I thought, I'd better sit down and figure out, even if it's still vague, some sort of plot arch. What are they doing so far from home? Why did matter that they were there, now? So what started out as a fantasy novel has turned, I think, into a geopolitical thriller involving magic carpets that can travel through time and space, family secrets, a bloodless coup d'etat in a major Middle Eastern country, spies, and poor judgment by a 12-year-old who just might end up changing the course of history.

Who'd have thunk it?

Between Keys

Another longtime friend, Suzé DiPietro, has published her second novel as well! (These literati are coming out of the woodwork these days! See the next post.)

This rock 'n rollers-meet-vampires romp, entitled, Between Keys, is available on Barnes and Noble's Web site.

I'm so proud of her, as well. I have the added pleasure of having been there when the plot was just an intriguing idea to talk about as we walked along the Ocean City beach lo those many years ago.