Getting Unstuck

I don't believe in writer's block - you write, or you don't. You may write drivel, but at least it's writing. Sure, there are mornings when I approach my desk and the old noggin churns up... nada. Rather than wring my hands exclaiming, "Woe is me - the muse has left the office," I stick out my tongue at all that white blaring back at me.

Rarely do I suffer a surfeit of ideas; indeed, I have more I can handle right now and if someone would like to purchase my storylines for (at least) 3 novels, 2 non-fiction tomes, several short stories, and countless poems, I'll sell them to you for... hours, days, months, all more precious than geld.

But I digress.

My writing does get stuck quite often, especially when I need to dig deep and get visceral. It's damn hard to convey raw humanity without lapsing into melodrama, the cousin to sex scenes' purple prose.

Lately I've struggled with finding the good in a couple of otherwise unsavory characters. I need to revela a kernal of possible redemption because, of course, I want my readers to empathize enough with these nasty dudes to care about their journeys.

Here's a writing exercise to get yourself deep and dirty. Go as yourself - or in character.

Ask: What one statement could someone utter that would make you (or your character) want to pummel that person through the ground?

Write the statement.

Write a monologue from the speaker's mouth. Include 1) the statement, and 2) the reason behind the statement. Three minutes. Do not pause, do not edit, do not pass Go. Just write.

Here's mine: "You're just a fucking nut job."

I don't get you. You've got health insurance; hell, the state pays for it, all the pills you'd ever want or need. All the hospitals, the shrinks at your disposal, but what do you do? Nothing. Your prescriptions pile up on your dresser like a stack of Wendy's napkins.

Jesus, Lou. My tax dollars at work. So get up. Now. Stop lying there in your skivvies. Jesus, it stinks in here - have you even showered? And for Cripe's sake, open the blinds, why dontchya? Let the fucking sun in?

You have so much damn potential. You were the smart one, you know. And why are you so sad anyway? Three squares a day, don't have to work at some shit job at Purina, roof over your head that don't need fixing. But you waste it all, you're just a fucking nut job. Do something - anything. Goddamnit.

Even Ma got us to school. She made us cereal, the milk had turned, but still... she packed us lunch. She even made our stupid beds, Lou. She did stuff. That day, she did a lot for us. Remember? Before she jumped.



Have at it - what'd you come up with? Peace, Linda

Litany of Thanks

For the garden.
For the quiet moment this morning.
For today's cerulean sky.
For Coldplay's latest album which moves me to dance.
For my day job.
For modern medicine -
and ancient prayers and rituals.
For my new Dell netbook (now I can write everywhere).
For perseverence.
For low-fat pumpkin cheesecake recipes.
For my children, the brilliant, fun people they are.
For my husband.
For the rest of my family, far-flung.
For the Macy's Day parade.
For books.
For friends, virtual and cyber.
For passion.

For the creative impulse, which binds us all.
For the journey.

What are you thankful for today?

Peace, Linda

Flying the Coop...

Our baby robins flew the coop yesterday.

We watched the mother make her nest, pulling twigs and string and dried grasses to the Asian pear tree by our deck. Two cerulean eggs soon appeared. We watched them anxiously, scaring the mother every time we opened the screen door to peer into her household. Peeking tommies, we.

One hatched, a fluff ball; the second hatched two days later. We had worried it was a 'bad egg'. Mom fed them bugs and worms, regurgitating them into their mouths. Mornings, when I crept downstairs I could hear the family chirping "feed me! feed me!"

And today, gone.

Our own two kiddos will be gone this Saturday, a birthday party and sleepover. My husband and I have never been in the house without BOTH our children. Not in 9 years. We have so craved a few hours alone, but I suspect we will wander about aimlessly Saturday night, worrying and feeling bereft without their giggles and whining and arguments and cuddling.

On mental health... read HERE to find out what it is like for Ben, my protagonist in BRIGHTER THAN BRIGHT, to live with bipolar disorder. A wonderful piece by the NYT. Scroll down and click on the link to hear the actual stories, then return to read the comments. These stories will amaze and move.

On creativity... this dude's got it right...
"You practice an art to make your soul grow, not to make money or to become famous. And this would include singing in the shower or dancing to the radio or also drawing a caricature of your best friend, or whatever—all this makes your soul grow. And you meet a person who's done that, whether successfully or not, and you sense a larger soul." Vonnegut

Peace, Linda

Creativity... touchstone of the soul

“To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.” Joseph Chilton Pearce


Saturday was our annual Open Garden, where my husband struts his passion - his beautiful daylilies, all 200 or so varieties, plus the ones he's hybridized (imagine - flower nookie!). I have my little patch of earth as well, mostly herbs and vegetables - the practical stuff.

A gorgeous summer day, one full of good discussion, fantastic food (pesto and shrimp pizza, strawberry-rhubarb pie, lots of salads, and local cantaloupe), and capped off with a plant swap.

Sunday I strutted my stuff, wandering into my husband's usual territory - I gave a summer service at our Unitarian Universalist church (hubbers is the minister). I love the lay-laid summer services, so casual with chairs arranged in an ellipse, folks in shorts and sandals, and lots of discussion afterwards. My sermon was titled "Creativity, the touchstone of our soul, but why do we fear it so?"

A subject too near to my heart.

I've been pondering this issue of creativity, this wondrous river and its tangled tributaries and diversions. Such waters I've tasted - what a blessing to be human, to be able to parse words and sentences into prose.

Marketing my work has forced me to acknowledge the difference between the process and the product of writing. I've come to realize that no matter what the publishing outcome of BRIGHTER THAN BRIGHT, the most salient part of that book was the journey made to realize the story, both the inner journey made in imagining the lives of my characters and their world, and the outer journey made in the realization of my creative self.

And so it will be for every other poem or story or novel that falls from my fingers to grace once empty pages.

Creativity is a divine gift. My job as a human is to honor that gift. And one way for me to continue creating is to embrace a corollary to Pearce's truth: “To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being perfect.”

Very wabi sabi. Very well... perfect.

WHAT I'M READING: INTUITION by Allegra Goodman. She uses a roving third-person POV which I find disconcerting at times, sinking the reader into different heads within a single scene. She achieves this almost seamlessly, but not so well as Updike. But Updike is God, or as close as writer mortals come.

For a true poetic treat, read these five by Adam Fieled in the latest issue of OTOLITHS. Rarely do I read, then reread, a poem and sigh each time. These are poems I wish I'd written, especially When you bit... and Sheet Covered.

THE WRITING: Writing and pre-writing on PURE clipping along at a steady pace. Struggling with a kernal of a poem call THE GOD PARTICLE and contemplating a few flashes which are, well, flashes in my pan.

It's been tough writing, tough sorting through all this... stuff. It's like running at breakneck speed for a great distance, then suddenly stumbling. I've been falling into my writing, the process of it, and I guess it's something one must do to get to the other side.

Keep creating. Always. peace, Linda

Brainstorming, Barnstorming, and Breaking through the Block

Writer's Block. Like carpal tunnel, another malady of those who make their living with the pen, but worse; a severe constipation of the brain. There are times when the page stares blankly at me, mocking me. But usually my block is more along the lines of I know what I want to say - I can see and hear the entire scene in my head - but I can't find the words to describe it. That sort of resistance is easy to fix: exercise the right brain with rock-and-roll or a sweeping symphony, go for a run through crunchy, ochre-colored leaves, peruse the local Mona Lisas hanging in galleries, or pull out the watercolors and just do it. Myself, I withdraw to making tiny glass beads, little universes of Murano glass twisted and twirled in the heat of my torch, interspersed with slivers and gobs of silver wire and leaf.

But what happens when the ideas simply do not generate? When you, the writer, face a well sucked dried from a drought of inspiration? Brainstorming is one approach. The idea behind the concept is to generate ideas in an environment of suspended judgement. in other words, the right brain pontificates without that left interrupting. In a group situation, the ground rules for brainstorming are simple:

1/ avoid criticizing ideas.
2/ the more the merrier - the emphasis is on quantity, not necessarily quality (sort of like NANOWRIMO, now in full swing).
3/ be free-wheeling. No censoring here, simply spout.
4/ listen to other ideas and jump on their band-wagon.
5/ avoid any discussion of ideas or questions.

Now brainstorming is a Jim-dandy approach for folks who work in groups, but we writers are often a solitary, curmudgeonly bunch. We work... alone. So how to generate ideas whilst sitting holed up in our unheated cabins in the furthest reaches of rural-dom?

My friend Jimmy reminded me of the OBLIQUE STRATEGIES card deck created by Brian Eno, musician and producer extraordinaire, and his friend and collaborator, painter Peter Schmidt. Back in my college days, Dave, a fabu guitar player, turned me on to all things Eno, including introducing me to his OS deck, which he himself used to generate song lyrics. Eno and Schmidt intended the cards to help them get into the creative ways of thinking that they found increasingly difficult to attain. In other words, Oblique Strategies helps to jog the mind to new thoughts and ideas. Voila - creativity!

So what's in a deck? Depends upon what edition - there are five of them. And the format; the 'hard' decks contain words, phrases, and questions, and some editions were illustrated. There are on-line versions as well, using the same texts created by Eno and Schmidt but featuring art by others. The first OS said "Honor thy error as a hidden intention" (What a great philosophy). Other sayings:

State the problem in words as clearly as possible

Try faking it

What to increase? what to reduce?

Only one element of each kind

To get your creative juices flowing, head over to Brain Eno's random OS generator (and check out the very cool site, too).

And Elizabeth Friedman has figured out how to generate random haiku based on OS cards (but this is cheating the creative process, no?)

In other words, a provocative writing prompt. And fun.

How do you generate ideas for your writing and other artistic endeavors?

Hope this keeps your mind in the flow... Peace, Linda

Creativity – It’s all in your head

“Mind isn’t a tug-of-war with the left brain on one side and the right brain on the other, but a collaboration, an open exchange.” (Diane Ackerman, An Alchemy of Mind)

Editing and revising sometimes feel like glorified secretarial work: typo annihilation, grammar correction, formatting perfection. It’s easy to let the mechanics of writing override the rest of the process, to get so stuck on the getting the words exactly right that you miss the message. At least, this is the way I feel of late, revising Brighter Than Bright for the 8th time (yes, the 8th full revision; my friend Jimmy’s discovered enough ‘ouches’ to cause anemia). Editing gets old. Real quick.

I missed writing new stuff. Waking in the morning, cup o’joe steaming by my side, the full moon blaring through the window, the rest of the world asleep, greeted only by a fresh white piece of paper daring me to write… anything my mind desired. It gives me shivers just thinking about it…brrrrrr… The revision process removes me from my characters and their sticky, complicated, crazy lives. It has to, because this stage requires the entrance of distanced critic, not the emotional writer. In other words, the polishing stage requires the left hemisphere of the brain, the home of language and linear thinking and logic and laterality, to assert control of the creative process.

Left-brain thinking, though necessary, is not sufficient. My right brain, where images and patterns and spatial relations reside, is where the ideas flow from, where the brilliant bon mots and the realization that your protag sports a ying-yang tattoo under the right shoulder blade originate. It’s the imagistic, intuitive, FUN side of creativity.

After two solid months of sinister-side revisions, my right brain rebelled: WRITE!!!!! SOMETHING!!!!! OTHER THAN LINE EDITS!!!!!! At first, I was reluctant, feeling compulsive (and obsessive) about finishing this revision of my novel. So I started small: micro flash fiction and poetry. I’d steal a few minutes a day to tool away on a paragraph or stanza, feeling guilty I wasn’t spending the little ‘free’ time I had for ‘writing’ not finishing my much larger project. But something funny happened on the way to the forum… the more time I spent pontificating poems on paper, the faster and clearer and easier went the revising process.

The battle is over, my cerebral hemispheres have struck a compatible balance. At least for the time being. Here, a small poetry offering…
______

Gloria (Montepulciano, 1996)

In my sadness you lead me -
caretaker, confidant, friend –
through olive groves casting dark shadows
on burnt earth. We lay amidst silvered
sheaves, hidden from all
but the eyes of God and bees
buzzing, sodden and soporific.

Time slows, time stops,
clouds drape across an azure canvas,
The wind sounds low, softly stroking
the grass, your mussed hair, our tumbled limbs,
hearts halcyon in this infinite instant.
Eyes reflecting sky, you turn,
absolve my melancholy.

Sanctified, we sleep.
_________

FREEBIE: If you want to read some fascinating interviews on creativity with an incredibly talented and diverse group of artists, check out this blog: Cecil Vortex

May your mind transport you to places you never imagined, and provide you the tools to tell the world about your journeys… Peace, Linda

Bipolar Brains: Different From All the Rest

NIMH: Bipolar Youth Show Distinct Pattern of Brain Development

A fascinating new study shows how cycles of depression and mania change the actual structure of the brain in youth. Go to the link, click on the flicks - and see the dramatic gains in the growth of working tissue in the left hemisphere, the cingulate, and other areas regulating mood function. Meanwhile, grey matter loses ground in the right hemisphere. Spoken and written word functions reside in the left side of the brain, as does as the memory of words.

Neuroscience is proving what social scientists and psychologists have theorized for years - creativity, at least that related to the literary arts, does have some basis in mood. As a study of one (also known as an anecdote), I can attest: I write best when a bit of hypomania fuels my brain.

IN MEMORIUM... Please remember those whose lives were lost in planes, too-high towers, and the Pentagon six years ago today. Peace and prayers to the survivors. And a special tribute and thanks to those who perished trying to save their fellow humans. Peace, Linda