Posts Tagged creativity

Creativity Boosts

By on April 24, 2023   /   Articles, For Writers, Writing  

Sometimes, a month or so before the end of a long, dark winter, I start to feel my creativity wane. Everything feels a little cold. A little hidden. A little like it’s waiting for some magical thing to energize it. This year it’s taking longer than usual for that energizing force to show up. And, I’m not alone here. Even the buds on my fruit tree aren’t bursting forth yet. Maybe it’s the still too dark days, or the snow storm in the middle of April, or maybe it’s just not yet time yet. Whatever the reason, I weary of waiting, so I have been poring through my bookshelves, the internet,  and the local library, looking for inspiration. Here’s a list of what I’ve found:

Fairy Tales, Folktales, and Archetypes.

The symbolism of the shoes in Cinderella. The archetype of the Dark Man in dreams. The Ugly Duckling. The Baba Yaga. I’ve dug up old stories, new to me stories, and some new ways of thinking in the following books.

Fearless Girls and Wise Women, and Beloved Sisters

Dismayed by the predominance of male protagonists in her daughters’ books, Kathleen Ragan set out to collect the stories of our forgotten heroines. Gathered from around the world, from regions as diverse as sub-Saharan Africa and Western Europe, from North and South American Indian cultures and New World settlers, from Asia and the Middle East, these 100 folktales celebrate strong female heroines.

Fearless Girls, Wise Women, and Beloved Sisters is for all women who are searching to define who they are, to redefine the world and shape their collective sensibility. It is for men who want to know more about what it means to be a woman. It is for our daughters and our sons, so that they can learn to value all kinds of courage, courage in battle and the courage of love. It is for all of us to help build a more just vision of woman.

 

Women Who Run With the Wolves

Within every woman there is a wild and natural creature, a powerful force, filled with good instincts, passionate creativity, and ageless knowing. Her name is Wild Woman, but she is an endangered species. Though the gifts of wildish nature come to us at birth, society’s attempt to “civilize” us into rigid roles has plundered this treasure, and muffled the deep, life-giving messages of our own souls. Without Wild Woman, we become over-domesticated, fearful, uncreative, trapped. Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D., Jungian analyst and cantadora storyteller, shows how woman’s vitality can be restored through what she calls “psychic archeological digs” into the bins of the female unconscious. In Women Who Run with the Wolves, Dr. Estes uses multicultural myths, fairy tales, folk tales, and stories chosen from over twenty years of research that help women reconnect with the healthy, instinctual, visionary attributes of the Wild Woman archetype. Dr. Estes collects the bones of many stories, looking for the archetypal motifs that set a woman’s inner life into motion. “La Loba” teaches about the transformative function of the psyche. In “Bluebeard,” we learn what to do with wounds that will not heal; in “Skeleton Woman,” we glimpse the mystical power of relationship and how dead feelings can be revived; “Vasalisa the Wise” brings our lost womanly instincts to the surface again; “The Handless Maiden” recovers the Wild Woman initiation rites; and “The Little Match Girl” warns against the insidious dangers of a life spent in fantasy. In these and other stories, we focus on the many qualities of Wild Woman. We retrieve, examine, love, and understand her, and hold her against our deep psyches as one whois both magic and medicine. In Women Who Run with the Wolves, Dr. Estes has created a new lexicon for describing the female psyche. Fertile and lifegiving, it is a psychology of women in the truest sense, a knowing of the soul.

 

Creative Kick Starters

I picked up a couple of old favorites and some new reads for a fresh perspective, a pep talk, and a reminder to just keep going.

Big Magic:  Creative Living Beyond Fear

A must read for anyone hoping to live a creative life… I dare you not to be inspired to be brave, to be free, and to be curious.” –PopSugar

From the worldwide bestselling author of Eat Pray Love and City of Girls the path to the vibrant, fulfilling life you’ve dreamed of.

Readers of all ages and walks of life have drawn inspiration and empowerment from Elizabeth Gilbert’s books for years. Now this beloved author digs deep into her own generative process to share her wisdom and unique perspective about creativity. With profound empathy and radiant generosity, she offers potent insights into the mysterious nature of inspiration. She asks us to embrace our curiosity and let go of needless suffering. She shows us how to tackle what we most love, and how to face down what we most fear. She discusses the attitudes, approaches, and habits we need in order to live our most creative lives. Balancing between soulful spirituality and cheerful pragmatism, Gilbert encourages us to uncover the “strange jewels” that are hidden within each of us. Whether we are looking to write a book, make art, find new ways to address challenges in our work, embark on a dream long deferred, or simply infuse our everyday lives with more mindfulness and passion, Big Magic cracks open a world of wonder and joy.

 

Keep Going:  10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad

In his previous books Steal Like an Artist and Show Your Work!, both New York Times bestsellers, Austin Kleon gave readers the keys to unlock their creativity and showed them how to become known. Now he offers his most inspiring work yet, with ten simple rules for how to stay creative, focused, and true to yourself–for life.

The creative life is not a linear journey to a finish line, it’s a loop–so find a daily routine, because today is the only day that matters. Disconnect from the world to connect with yourself–sometimes you just have to switch into airplane mode. Keep Going celebrates getting outdoors and taking a walk (as director Ingmar Bergman told his daughter, “The demons hate fresh air”). Pay attention, and especially pay attention to what you pay attention to. Worry less about getting things done, and more about the worth of what you’re doing. Instead of focusing on making your mark, work to leave things better than you found them.

Keep Going and its timeless, practical, and ethical principles are for anyone trying to sustain a meaningful and productive life.

 

The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles

A succinct, engaging, and practical guide for succeeding in any creative sphere, The War of Art is nothing less than Sun-Tzu for the soul.
What keeps so many of us from doing what we long to do? Why is there a naysayer within? How can we avoid the roadblocks of any creative endeavor-be it starting up a dream business venture, writing a novel, or painting a masterpiece?

Bestselling novelist Steven Pressfield identifies the enemy that every one of us must face, outlines a battle plan to conquer this internal foe, then pinpoints just how to achieve the greatest success. The War of Art emphasizes the resolve needed to recognize and overcome the obstacles of ambition and then effectively shows how to reach the highest level of creative discipline. Think of it as tough love . . . for yourself.Whether an artist, writer or business person, this simple, personal, and no-nonsense book will inspire you to seize the potential of your life.

 

 

Write for Life: Creative Tools for Every Writer

Julia Cameron has been teaching the world about creativity since her seminal book, The Artist’s Way, first broke open the conversation around art. Now, in Write for Life, she turns to one of the subjects closest to her heart: the art and practice of writing.

Over the course of six weeks, Cameron carefully guides readers step by step through the creative process. This latest guide in the Artist’s Way Series:

– Introduces a new tool and expands on powerful tried and true methods.
– Gently guides readers through many common creative issues — from procrastinating and getting started, to dealing with doubt, deadlines, and “crazymakers.”
– Will help you reach your goals, whether your project is a novel, poetry, screenplay, standup, or songwriting.

With the learned experience of a lifetime of writing, Cameron gives readers practical tools to start, pursue, and finish their writing project. Write for Life is an essential read for writers who have completed The Artist’s Way and are looking to continue their creative journey or new writers who are just putting pen to paper.

 

The Creative Fire: Myths and Stories on the Cycles of Creativity

In Search of La Chispa: The Elemental Source of Your Creativity

An expanded edition of the classic on creativity by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés, this spoken-word masterpiece guides you through the dark labyrinths of the psyche in search of la chispa–the ember that is the elemental source of all creative work.

Dr. Estés teaches about the hidden aspects of creativity, including the negative complexes that prey upon creative energy. The Creative Fire includes many special insights for people who create for a living: artists, writers, teachers, and others who must depend on their creative instincts every day.

 

Fun

I treated myself to some books that were just fun. Playful books. Silly books. Joy for joy’s sake books.

Fortunately, the Milk

An absolute delight of a madcap story for the young (and young-at-heart) by New York Times bestselling author Neil Gaiman, with equal parts pirates and piranhas, adventure and aliens, oddity and love.

“I bought the milk,” said my father. “I walked out of the corner shop, and heard a noise like this: t h u m m t h u m m. I looked up and saw a huge silver disc hovering in the air above Marshall Road.”

“Hullo,” I said to myself. “That’s not something you see every day. And then something odd happened.”

Find out just how odd things get in this hilarious story of time travel and breakfast cereal, expertly told by Newbery Medalist and bestselling author Neil Gaiman and illustrated by Skottie Young.

 

Framed

Get to know the only kid on the FBI Director’s speed dial and several international criminals’ most wanted lists all because of his Theory of All Small Things in this hilarious start to a brand-new middle grade mystery series.

So you’re only halfway through your homework and the Director of the FBI keeps texting you for help…What do you do? Save your grade? Or save the country?

If you’re Florian Bates, you figure out a way to do both.

Florian is twelve years old and has just moved to Washington. He’s learning his way around using TOAST, which stands for the Theory of All Small Things. It’s a technique he invented to solve life’s little mysteries such as: where to sit on the on the first day of school, or which Chinese restaurant has the best eggrolls.

But when he teaches it to his new friend Margaret, they uncover a mystery that isn’t little. In fact, it’s HUGE, and it involves the National Gallery, the FBI, and a notorious crime syndicate known as EEL.

Can Florian decipher the clues and finish his homework in time to help the FBI solve the case?

 

I’m still trekking through the woods, but I’m starting to see the beginnings of a pathway out of the creative darkness. The breadcrumbs left by these books helped me. How about you? What are your go-to reads during tough creative times? I’d love it if you’d share in the comments.

 

 

 

 

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Creative Braining

By on December 26, 2022   /   Articles, books, For Parents, For Teachers, For Writers  

BRAINS! BRAINS! BRAINS!

As much as I’d love it to be a post about zombies; this is not a post about zombies. 

It’s about creating.

Although it’s not about creating brain-eating reanimated beings shambling endlessly in search of the living, I hope to shed some light on how we creators shamble endlessly in search of creating something unique and satisfying. And it all starts in our heads. In our brains to be exact. 

My mother was known to use the phrase, “You put crap in. You get crap out” when addressing her five, often rock-headed teenage sons. My lone sister, a voracious reader of all things, never seemed to receive this nugget of wisdom from mom. It appears the boys were singled out because of the music, horror movies, comedians with “poor language choices”, etc. that we consumed. Nevertheless, “Crap in. Crap out.” has stuck with me. (Thanks, Mom!)

I recently bought Scientific American’s Secrets of the Mind from their awesome catalog of eBooks. These books from Scientific American are compilations of their articles about a particular topic which I highly recommend. Secrets of the Mind has not disappointed me so far. In fact, it hits the ground running with the Introduction, “Mind from Matter” by Andrea Gawrylewski, and breaks into a sprint from the very first article, “How Matter Becomes Mind” by Max Bertolero and Danielle S. Bassett.  

Bertolero and Bassett’s article is about the network architecture currently being defined and refined in their and others’ recent brain cognition research. I was fascinated, to say the least. We’ve possessed accurate maps of the human brain for quite some time with the brain regions defined by their functions, i.e. vision, motor, emotions, etc. However, these accurate and defined maps of the brain do very little to explain how the brain really works. 

The next wave of research is examining just how these regions fit into the network of the brain to allow us to be walking, talking, thinking, and creating humans. And you know what? It turns out Mom was right again! Crap in certainly leads to crap out in the brain.  

An experiment by US radio engineer Archie Frederick Collins in 1902 tried to use a human brain as a radio wave detector. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The nitty-gritty of a brain network:

The brain network, like most networks, consists of basic building blocks named nodes and edges. Nodes are the units of the network, which, in the brain’s case, are the individual neurons. Edges are the connections between the nodes. The brain’s edges are how neurons are intertwined with the other neurons. 

The brain has modularity, it has a localized network where the nodes show stronger connections to each other. Such modules have specific functions. Sensory and motor cognitive processes involve adjoining modules that are mainly confined to a specific lobe of the brain. The brain needs to put together or process information from multiple, confined modules to make sense of cognitive tasks.

Imagine reading a book without being able to incorporate the emotional modules. The reader experience would be greatly diminished. Since our brain can’t let that happen (You have to take that emotional hit in Bridge to Terabithia to experience the total impact of the story, right?) it’s evolved hubs.

Hubs are nodes where the brain’s different modules meet. They control and mesh activity from multiple modules. Some of these key hub modules, like the frontoparietal control module and the default mode module, make important global connections between brain lobes. 

Secrets of the Mind

As we can see, a network in our brain is built upon a structural framework of nodes, edges, modules, and hubs. A rigid, standard architecture, right? Yes and no. If the parts and processes are similar in all of our brains, why don’t we all think, act, and react similarly? Why aren’t we all like a shambling species of zombies thinking and responding the same to the same series of inputs?

It’s because we all have slight variations in the way the circuits in our brains are wired. New methods of mapping and analyzing brain activity show we all have distinct “fingerprints” inside our heads. Plus, if a brain network has strong hubs with many connections among modules, its modules are segregated from one another allowing for more efficient storage and processing. 

Stronger functional connections show a stronger functional capacity. 

This specific organization allows the brain to function as an integrated network of thoughts, feelings, quirks, flaws, and mental strengths. It allows us to establish our unique identity and maintain it. Our brain network makes us who we are today and tomorrow.

In Austin Kleon’s classic, Steal Like an Artist, he says,

“A wonderful flaw about human beings is that were incapable of making perfect copies. Our failure to copy our heroes is where we discover where our own thing lives. That is how we evolve.

So: Copy your heroes. Examine where you fall short. What’s in there that makes you different? That’s what you should amplify and transform into your own work.

In the end, merely imitating your heroes is not flattering them. Transforming their work into something of your own is how you flatter them. Adding something to the worlds that only you can add.”

It all fits in. It all makes sense in the grand scheme of how our creative brains work.

Science shows it.

Artists show it.

Mom knew it all along.

We are the sum of all we take in. Our wonderful and unique brains take all the data we feed them and then process it into something only each of us can produce. When we allow ourselves the courage to create from what’s between our ears, we create something brand new and unique. The more we stock our brains with quality input data, the more we have in the creative well to draw from.

Austin Kleon gives the advice, “Write the book you want to read.”

How do you do this? By using your unique fingerprint of nodes, edges, modules, and hubs to do the work of turning the things you input into outputs only you can create.

Creative braining wins!

Read. Write. Repeat.

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Spring Training 2022!

By on March 4, 2022   /   Articles, For Teachers, For Writers  

“Practice isn’t the thing you do once you’re good. It’s the thing you do that makes you good.”  – Malcolm Gladwell, OUTLIERS.

Creating something from nothing is 100% magic. One simply has to employ the fruits of the innate gift handed down from the creativity gods. Simply grab a pen and paper, find an inspirational environment, hit the creativity switch, and wait for the muse to arrive. Simple.

WRONG!

Creative work is a doing thing. It’s work. Sometimes hard, hard, hard work but most of the time it’s rewarding work. We are wired to create. The reality, however, is it’s not magic. It’s work. Three steps that are often listed as the way to becoming a better creative are study, practice, and feedback.

Wait! 

Did someone say, “Practice?”

The memory of NBA superstar Allen Iverson’s 2002 press conference popped into my head when I thought of the word “practice”. AI’s rant on practice is a favorite and often repeated saying at the Hays House. 

And since creative work is a doing thing, transformation only comes from doing the thing. Whether you’re seven working on your first creation or seventy and writing a family history, doing the work to do better work is important. Sorry AI, but practice is at the core of elevating the skills.

Despite what AI might have thought back in the day, practice matters.

It’s early March 2022. Spring training time for us writers and creators (and hopefully, soon for the Major League Baseball players and coaches.) Time to take a critical look at how we treat our craft and produce our creative work. Time to evaluate how we practice and then tweak or adjust the routine as needed to take our work to another level.

It’s time to analyze how to improve and get better. Creative work is a constant move forward. Here are a few tips for better practice that I’m going to incorporate into my 2022.

Practice with a Purpose

There’s so much awesome in this video excerpt from sketchnote expert Eva Lotta Lamm’s Pragmatic Sketching Masterclass. 

Video Link: Eva Lotta Lamm: How to Practice Effectively 

The value of a regular and deliberate practice is transformative. Keep in mind the performance and enter into the practice with expectations. 

Focus on:

  • The doing.
  • What’s going on.
  • Notice what’s happening instead of judging what’s happening.

Practice widely

I’m a former strength and conditioning coach. I’m also a fan of a power training guru named Marty Gallagher. I first became aware of Mr. Gallagher after reading his essay with its nod to The Band, Fitness From the Big Pink. What I’ve liked about his training philosophy is it’s a simple, multi-faceted approach to physical and mental transformation. 

According to Coach Gallagher, “Your fitness efforts fail because you are one dimensional in a four-dimensional universe.”

This is also true for creative efforts. One-dimensional creative practice often results in the creator hitting a rut and losing enthusiasm. Trying a variety of activities can unlock creative growth and transformation in the desired skill or in a completely different direction. Try something new when you feel your practice hitting a rut. Transform.

Creative practice is eerily similar to physical training. A multi-faceted, well-balanced approach to any form of training is a great plan of attack for improving skills. Marty Gallagher’s balanced approach for transformational training includes progressive resistance training, cardiovascular training, nutrition, and brain-train. Creative training might include drawing, poetry, meditation, music, or free-writing. The sky’s the limit here. 

Try new things. Perform them badly. Fail. Practice. Try again. Transform.

As Marty Gallagher said, “With practice, tangible gains generate enthusiasm and enthusiasm causes the trainee to redouble their effort.”

Blank Page

People often freak out about the blank page. It is intimidating. This intimidation ingrained in us since most of us were kids stems from the idea of the blank page will be eventually graded AND should strive for perfection. We should be thinking instead of a blank page as an invitation to make something instead of an assignment.

Practice is an invitation to transform the empty space in front of us with the contents of our creative brain. Instead of a place to make mistakes, we should treat the blank space as a place to make things happen. 

No right. No wrong. Just a formerly blank page that is now alive with ideas.

Just Do It!

The most important thing about practicing and training your creative self is that you do it. That’s the process. One word, one mark, or one idea at a time moving forward towards transformation.

As a sign from the creative universe that this was the right topic for my post, this was in the weekly newsletter for an online drawing class I’m taking. 

“You will find that, without exception, practice will reward you, so be brave, be committed, keep putting your pencil to paper and you will be pleasantly surprised.”  – Drawing Nature, Science and Culture: Natural History Illustration 101 weekly course newsletter (3/2/2022).

Happy Spring Training!

Be brave. Be committed. Keep putting your pencil to paper.

Do the work. Enjoy the ride.

You will be pleasantly surprised.

 

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