Creativity - An Organized Approach

Welcome guest blogger Dan Wilson--playwright, actor, director, producer, improv comedian and all-around overachiever. Oh, yeah. And he also just happened to be the best man at my wedding. - Adrienne

Every writer talks about what every writer is asked: "where do you get your ideas?" Recently, I felt that the well of ideas had run dry. I have numerous half finished and barely started projects, but my mind wasn't brimming with ideas the way it usually is. I considered this a bit of a blessing, actually, as it meant I might be able to focus long enough to get some serious work done on older scripts.

The reason for the mental freeze was easy to pinpoint. I had recently bought my first house and my day job was going through an especially intense period. Add to that the trials of being in a struggling relationship, and it's no wonder that brain wasn't doing much in the way of creating new and tantalizing characters and scenarios.

So, the first thing is to get enough rest. An exhausted, emotionally stressed writer isn't a productive one. The second thing is to listen to people. I'm a huge fan of the voice notes feature on my iPhone. A sign, people on the street, an acquaintance telling me about an odd experience at work, or even odd things about what they do... all this becomes fodder. If I waited for even an hour, I'd forget the details, so I grab my phone, hit "Record" and make a note. People have quit introducing me as an actor and refer to me as "playwright", so no one is shocked, surprised, or offended that I'm blatantly mining their lives for material. Far from it, most people are pleased to know that their lives make for good fiction.

The second thing is also the third thing. Having a way to quickly grab moments of inspiration is vital. A pen and pad next to the bed is good, but I find that relying on my phone works better since it's regularly backed up and is with me everywhere I go. I use the phone as an alarm in the morning as well, so it's even available for those half-dream ideas that jerk me awake at night. Even better, I don't have to decipher my horrid handwriting later on down the road.

Finally, revisit all these notes when you have downtime. A character from a trip on the bus might suddenly bump up against a bizarre anecdote you saw in the news three years later, or meet up with the insane coworker a friend told you about. It's a party inside your head, and it's good to let everyone mingle ever now and again.

Dan Wilson has artistic A.D.D. In this venue he can be identified as a playwright. His works include "Sweetie Tanya: the Demon Barista of Valencia Street", "Get it? Got it. Good!", "Vagina Dentata", "411", and "Pinch", which have all been produced at various venues in San Francisco. He has also written and directed adaptations of the work of Neil Gaiman, Martha Soukup, and Ursula K. LeGuin (usually with their permission). His first play, "In a Distant Country" was first produced in Evanston, IL. Dan is the screenwriter of the oddest "educational films" ever created for  school superintendents: "Goode to Greate", and "The Adventures of Tom Sup: The Courage Squad versus The League of Blame". Both of these were done under a joint partnership between WestEd, ACSA and Dan's production company "Cassandra's Call Productions." He is a prolific improv comedy performer and can be heard on most of the podcasts at www.radiostarnetwork.com.

Dare I Admit It?

by Gigi

Deep breath. Here goes: I'm not really a writer.

OK, it's part of who I am. I write mystery novels, sure. But "writer" doesn't sum up my creative identity.

I should have realized it much earlier than I did, but after a brief detour in academia, I finally followed the creative path: I started taking art school classes, spent countless hours in the darkroom, and wrote a novel. So where does that leave me? I'm now a graphic designer, photographer, and mystery writer.

And you know what? These things don't seem like separate pursuits to me.

When I take my camera out and capture a cool scene (like this raven here), I imagine where it might fit into a story.

Not only did I leave the Brompton Cemetery with some ethereal photos taken with the new soft focus lens I was learning to use, but it was an overcast day and I was nearly alone aside from the birds... yeah, I left with some inspiration for a story.

I admit that's only two out of three. Photography and writing. Bringing all three creative pursuits together is the physical form of books themselves. My favorite art school class was Book Cover Design.

I've always loved book covers, but that class was when I started envisioning book covers myself (at right). I especially loved using my own photos and collage art to create a book cover, whenever appropriate, since that allowed me the most flexibility to create exactly what I imagined when reading a book.

I'm a graphic designer for my day job, but not designing book covers. If I ever discover more hours in the day, I would still love to be a book cover designer.

But even without a particular end goal, I can't really stop myself from mashing up these creative outlets.

Here's Dorian the gargoyle at left, imagining a scene from a gothic novel as I envisioned it in a larger photographic collage.

Martha Has Uncreative Titles

My latest manuscript is titled Kim Elder Dies. The heroine's name is Kim Elder. Guess what happens to her.

Yeah. This pretty much sums up my titling skills.

This also extends to naming-of-characters skills.

Remember that scene in City of Angels when Meg's character suspects Nic's character is non-human? He's cut himself in the kitchen and she notices his skin has healed. Then this approximate conversation ensues:

- What's your name?
- Seth
- Seth What?
Nic then glances to the cupboard behind Meg:
- Seth Plate.



Yeaaaaaaaaah, that's me, too, when it comes to names. I glance around and whatever hits my line of sight ends up as a name.

My boring blog title posts? My name + verb + theme.

See a pattern there?

I think I'm a very creative premise writer. I don't know why I'm so blah at other things. For me, creativity isn't an all reaching force infecting every part of my life. I'm not a creative person.

I can't draw. Art very rarely is viewed as anything but "pretty" or "eh." I stay within industry fashion lines. My home's design depends on symmetry. My plots are carefully excel-spreadsheeted out before each story. I follow Vogler's 12 step journey to a T. And my titles are very obvious.

It takes all kinds to write a book. Hopefully there's enough room in publishing for my kind of creative - the very neat, orderly kind. The kind that can't come up with decent blog titles. The kind that can't even figure out a creative way to end this post.

Honoring Your Creativity

By Lisa Hughey

So I’ve started and stopped a billion (okay, a slight exaggeration on the number, but this morning it feels like a billion) posts on this topic. I am not creative. At least not the way I’d like to be.

I think of creative writers as those who craft a line of prose so wonderful and lyrical that you’re forced to stop and marvel at it's beauty. But that’s not me.

Artists whose paintings/sculptures make you catch your breath at it's power. But that’s not me. I can’t paint or draw worth a damn (that was in an early version).

Photographers whose images stun you. But that’s not me. I take adequate photos with nice composition. (again earlier version).

I could go on and on, but I’m assuming that no one wants to read all the ways that I personally am not creative. I even started a post completely off topic because I wanted to re-cap the RWA conference, which was ‘oh so much fun’ this year.

I don’t have the creative gene needed to take an abstract concept and explore the meaning with beautiful language. My creative strength lies in pacing. In romance, in recognizing that unique and beautiful confluence of two separate people who because some characteristic of their psyche are perfect for each other and who become stronger as a whole.

And in plotting. In twists, in unexpected directions, in finding the universal truth in details.

Like the time there was a white banged up van with no windows (a kidnap van, my kids like to call it--uh yeah wonder where they got that from?) parked in my neighbor’s driveway, no lettering on the side and the driver was wearing a cap pulled down so far you couldn’t see his face.

Now, I know for a fact my neighbor is in Michigan for the summer. So of course I immediately think, hmm, perhaps they are being robbed. (hey, we’ve had a string of robberies in our community lately, I’m not completely paranoid!) I drive around the circle (we live on a circle) trying unobtrusively to figure out how to copy down the license plate number of the van without actually looking like I’m trying to copy it down, which never does work. I end up parking across and down the street, hovering behind my car, punching their plate numbers into the memo section of my phone, in case the police need it later.

But then I find out it’s merely a broken sprinkler main and their backyard is flooded. Okay. So perfectly logical explanation.

But now I might use that scene, the van, the driver and his passenger (who I’m sure are perfectly nice people), except in my work, the people aren’t perfectly nice, they are there to do damage in some way which I haven’t figured out yet. And when my heroine sees them, she will have the perfect method to get their license plate number, perhaps photographic memory (is there anyone in the world who *doesn’t* wish they had this capability?), but more likely she’ll use an intelligence surveillance technique that I’ve discovered in my research. And of course the license plate number will be registered to a fake company, and then...well now I’m getting tangential.

But hopefully I’ve taken that detail, that universal experience that everyone has had at least once in their life (of course if you are me, you have them all the time) and the reader connects with the heroine or hero over the shared experience, even though their method of dealing with the situation is completely different--assuming most of the readers out there are not espionage agents reading laymen spy novels on their day off.

Lisa

ps. If you want a recap of the conference, Rachael has a really fun one on her blog FYI, I was present at the ‘no pants’ conversation however *I* was fully dressed. We had a blast.

The Best Part

L.G.C. Smith

Dear L.G.C.:
I read your latest book, “Love and Death in Babylon” on vacation last week. It was great. I love all your books. My favorite was “Hang ‘Em High.” Sharidu, the initiate in the Temple of Astarte, is the best ancient detective ever. She’s smart, sexy and sassy. Love her! Can you send me a bookmark for LDB?

Since I love your books so much, I thought maybe I could help you. I don’t mean to have a big head, but I often have great ideas for books. The problem is I’m a programmer at Brildotcom and I’m really busy. I don’t have time to write so I thought I would see if you might be interested in using my idea. I know it must be tough to come up with so many new adventures for Sharidu. It’s taken me six years of reading your series to do it, but I thought of a fantastic story. I would be happy to talk to you about it to see if we might work out a deal. You won’t be sorry!

Sincerely,
Imani Diot


Dear Imani,

So you’ve read all my books, and it strikes you that I might have trouble coming up with creative ideas? Coming up with ideas is the easiest, best part of this job. I’ve been doing it since I was old enough to think. I can remember dreams I had before I was a year old. Can you? You know why I remember them? Because they were stories. About buffaloes and giraffes roaming outside my window. About the car taking off with me alone in the car seat. I remember, at four years of age, thinking about what it would be like if there were people with heads like buffaloes who lived in caves under the Black Hills, imagining them dancing around fires and inviting me to join them. I could recount for you every narrative fantasy line I’ve concocted from the age of five until five this afternoon, never mind all the books I’ve plotted, written or partially written.

I don’t need IDEAS. I have ideas. Lots and lots of ideas. I never run out of ideas. I run out of follow through. I run out of the will to sit my ass down and write as long as I should some days. Sometimes I even run out of good sentences, but I never, ever run out of creative ideas. Creative juice is what propelled me into writing and what has kept me writing for more than twenty years. I don’t need yours. I don’t have enough time to use all of my own. And if you appreciate my books, instead of trying to get money out of me because you value your own little idea so highly, why don’t you make sure all your sisters, cousins, aunts, friends and frenemies buy their own copies of my books instead of passing one around between all of you…

Oh, never mind! Scratch all that.


Dear Ms. Diot,

Thank you for your interest in my work, and for writing to let me know you enjoy my books. Enclosed please find the bookmark you requested.

Best wishes,
Lynn

No Rest for the Creative

by Mysti Berry

My favorite villains are truly creative.

Take for example Brigid O’Shaughnessey from Dashiell Hammett’s novel The Maltese Falcon. That woman creates whole new personalities with each thrust of Spade’s inquiring mind, and later, she weaves web after web of deception as annoying facts or bothersome questions emerge. When Sam Spade says at the end of the story that the bird is “the stuff that dreams are made of,” he’s too right. The gold-fevered imaginations of oily Cairo, urbane Gutman, and the deadly Ms. O’Shaughnessey feed directly into their creative skills at lying, cheating, and killing.  Skills they’ve clearly honed over a lifetime.

Being a technical writer by trade, I try to break everything down into component parts, even something as ephemeral as creativity, so that I can understand it better. (Maybe I shouldn’t blame technical writing for that personality trait. When I was younger than six my Dad had to yell at me for taking apart an electric clock, just to see how it worked. To be fair, he actually yelled at me for not being able to put it back together.) After chewing on the concept of creativity for a while now, I’d like to propose a theory of creativity. Not how to get it, or how to protect it from cruel critique groups or partners who say things like “don’t write a novel, you’d write the kind of novel I hate,” but rather, how creativity actually works.

The first step is imagination, the ability to spontaneously generate ideas or images that don’t yet exist, that have never existed in any other mind in quite the same way. If you dream, your imagination is still intact – even if you dream about calculus or chemistry!

The next step is to express that imagination in some physical way. Children who fingerpaint or grandfathers who carve trains out of hunks of knotty pine are being creative. So are teenagers who make up sleepovers that were never arranged with friends that never existed, just so they can go see Jack White in concert. But I don’t think a single creative act is the last step.

True creative output, performed over months and years and not just when the mood strikes, depends on two things: effort executed over consistent periods of time, and the honing of natural or acquired skills.  If I am to bridge the gap between technical writer and creative writer, for example, I must learn a cadre of skills that are seldom exercised in my day job, such as writing dialog that sounds like real speech but with the boring bits cut out, or the rhythmic possibilities in the alternation of scene and summary.

The toughest part about being creative is learning how to assess our own skills and abilities – in essence, to learn from our own mistakes. As a species, we don’t have the best record of that. Perhaps each attempt at a creative act is an expression of hope that we’ll finally learn, this time.

My new favorite villain, Bernie Madoff, was a bad man. But he was creative, like Brigid O’Shaughnessey. He could riff in the moment to create the illusions required to separate people from their money. He got better at it over time, presumably learning from his mistakes much more quickly than poor old Brigid did. We can only hope that our own creative output can rival that of Bernie or Brigid, just as we hope the output treats our fellows far better than the two of them ever did.

Mysti Berry has won awards as a screenwriter, technical writer, short fiction writer and novelist. Mysti's short fiction has been published in "Switchback," the online literary journal sponsored by University of San Francisco. She was an invited reader during the 2006 LitQuake festival in San Francisco. Her work has been included in published anthologies. She teaches for University of California at Berkeley Extension. Mysti is a board member of Sisters in Crime Northern California chapter, and has presented to that group. She lives in San Francisco with her talented graphic novelist husband Dale Berry.

If Music Be The Food Of Love

--Adrienne Miller

1809 London. Our hero saunters into a crowded ballroom. Amid the swirl of silk and jewels, he sees her. He’s been fighting his feelings for her, but seeing her like this--elegantly dressed, her hair falling in ringlets around her shoulders--he can’t deny them any longer. As Rufus Wainwright’s The Tower of Learning plays in the background, he realizes he loves her.

I’m sorry. What was playing? 

Well, at least, that was the scene as I saw it. I didn’t write in the bit about the Rufus Wainwright song. But from the moment that scene popped into my head, I immediately associated Simon’s love for Charlotte with that one song. It’s the same for every story, every character, every scene I have ever come up with. They all have a song. 

Music and creativity go hand in hand for me. I know people who need complete silence in order to focus on their creations. I am not of their fold. Even on the rare occasion that I have the house all to myself, the first thing I do is crank the tunes, and escape into the imagery the lyrics and melody create.

Music is like the key that opens the door to my creativity. The right song can help me find the emotional layers that were missing in a scene or the motivation for a character’s actions. I always start my day by listening to a song that puts me in the mood for what I am about to write.

Sometimes I attach a song to a scene or character. Other times, the song sings a character to life for me, like David Gray’s Ain’t No Love. (FYI,in honor of RWA Conference this week, Max’s story, has been determined by an independent judge *Martha* to be the best five word elevator pitch of all time. But that’s a post for another day.)

There are songs that paint a mood, like the sense of longing evoked by Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, or the devastation of James Blunt’s Goodbye My Lover. Then there are the big guns like Everlong by Foo Fighters, which inspired a whole paranormal world. I would love to write a book based on Damien Rice’s album O.

My husband is a songwriter and I’m always telling him how jealous I am of him. He can elicit in three minutes the same emotions it takes me 5,000 words to show. Of course, he might argue the opposite, since a few of his songs were inspired by books and stories.

Oh, and the song I listened to while writing this? Thunder Road by Bruce Springsteen, of course.

Julie doesn't like being creative under pressure

It's sad, but it's soooo true: for me, creativity and pressure don't make happy partners. They refuse to skip happily down the street together. They fight and claw at one another, each seeking precedence...but in my case, at least, the deadline always wins.

(To the right: searching for inspiration...)

In fact, I'd go so far as to say pressure --as in a deadline, or several deadlines-- crushes creativity as easily as a butterfly's wing under the heel of a heavy-soled boot.

Consider the word "deadline." Any wonder that it uses "dead"? As in "better not cross that line!!!" Doesn't it kill you to have to come up with something, anything, to turn in before the death knell tolls?

On the other hand, I'm a world-class procrastinator. Without something to shoot for (and rail against), I'm unlikely to get anything done at all.

Still, I'm realizing lately that being a full-time author means being called on the carpet, again and again, to be original and creative on command. Personalizing an inscription on a book? Write something memorable. Talking in front of a group of readers? Be insightful and funny. Answering emails? Better not sound like a form letter. Come up with something creative-on-demand for Facebook, and blogs, and the current book, and the other book, and public talks, and the Litquake liar's panel, and and and...

Makes a person feel downright...what's the opposite of creative? Derivative? Status quo? Expected? Uninspired? Unimaginative?

Boring and inadequate and downright dull.

Anyway, I imagine it's clear by now that I'm not feeling very creative. Maybe I'll go out and take a walk in the sunshine. And whine. Or take a nap. And whine.

Can whining be seen as a creative endeavor?

One Small Word

Creativity within constraints. My favorite way to work.

A surefire way to topple me into insta-panic is to say, "Here! A blank page! Put something creative on it, why don'tcha?" Not that people come around saying that to me. That would be weird.

To sit in front of a monitor and try to write something, anything, is just too hard. But if you know you need to write something which involves a papaya, a banjo, and a twelve-year old evangelist, something's gonna cook on that page, and you'll hardly have to try.

The same thing happens everywhere. If you go to the grocery store in order to make something for dinner with nothing in mind, you leave and head to Taco Bell, overwhelmed by the choices. (What? You don't? Oh.) But if you constrain yourself to the ingredients in your pantry and fridge, unless you only have tonic and dying limes, some awesome meals happen. (Or Taco Bell happens. As Taco Bell does.)

(If I may go slightly meta for a moment, that's one of the things I love about our blog set-up. At my own blog, I often try to Write A Post, with nothing in my head but the desire for more coffee. Here, we get a word. This week, it's Creativity. I can work with a word. It's just one small English word out of all the words in the world. That's a great constraint.)

Love the Brown Blobs

by Sophie


It astonishes me that there are people in this world who believe they are not creative.

“I can’t draw,” they insist. Not so. Anyone can pick up a pencil and make marks on paper. What they mean is “I can’t draw well,” where “well” represents what they think drawings ought to look like based on drawings other people make and assumptions about what drawings ought to represent.

If you believe that drawings ought to be photorealistic, then you might be out of luck unless you’re willing to devote a lot of time to developing that skill. If you have a vision in your head of what you want your drawing to look like, but you can’t match it with your efforts, you’ll end up frustrated.

But if your expectation is only that you’ll create an image that reflects what is going on in your head in some way, odds are you’ll be able to achieve it. I used to help with art in elementary school, and as my children got older I saw firsthand how the joyful renderings of kindergarden turned into the fraught and competitive and frustrating efforts of fourth grade, when kids were comparing their work to each other’s and finding it lacking.

In kindergarden, you can give kids a watercolor palette, let them mix all the colors until they have an unappealing brown, and watch them apply it until they’ve got a solid mass of paint on curling paper and you’ll still have a satisfied child who self-identifies as an artist. If you accept brown blobs without judgment – if you celebrate the brown blobs – then a child is free to keep making art with the confidence that there is value in the process, not just the outcome.

There are lessons here for the writer. A fear of the blank page is not native to us. We build it up over time as we develop judgment and expectations of our own work. Much of this is necessary – without discernment we can’t hone and improve our craft. But allowing judgment to interfere with the act of creating – not editing, not cutting, not revising, but sheer thought-to-keyboard creating – is a very good way to convince ourselves that we lack the magic. And without the magic we deprive ourselves of the joy.



Exercises like free-writing and morning pages are good ways to coax the mind out of its lair, but wouldn’t it be better if we never went into the lair in the first place? We have to train ourselves to keep judgment out of that early process. Much as telling a child to color in the lines or keep the red paint away from the green paint will introduce uncertainty and self-censoring into his work, demanding polished prose of ourselves in a first draft will kill our ability to take our story in fresh and imaginative directions.

Every artist starts by making brown blobs. Love the blobs and there is no limit to what you can create.

Topics Coming Soon

05.31.09 Writer

06.01.09 First Lines

06.15.09 Characters

06.29.09 Summer

07.13.09 Creativity

07.27.09 Movies

08.10.09 Food

08.24.09 Deleted Scenes