Elaine Smith Writes

Anything She Wants

Category Archives: Creativity

Get in the river.

And let the river roll.

We’ve got such a linear society.

Enter kindergarten at the age of five.  Exit the school system 13, 17, 19 years later with an education (maybe) and a diploma (probably).  Get a job.  Work your way up the ladder.  Go to weddings in your youth, christenings in your middle age, and funerals in your elder years.

We’re sort of conditioned to know how things turn out.

Even the television that we watch tends to support the idea that things get solved within 42 minutes of air time plus commercials.

It can make us reluctant to embark on journeys where the destination is unclear.  Even scarier, there are journeys where we don’t even know if there is a destination.

It might be interesting to try approaching life like the explorers of old.

Henry Hudson didn’t know where the Hudson river came out.  He didn’t even know if it did.  He just set sail to see what he could see.

It’s amazing the things that happen if you just get in the river.

The current catches you.  You move along, sometimes through rapids, sometimes through shallows, but always advancing.  There are moments of great beauty and times when the current holds you up and moves you forward with unexpected support.  There are moments when the flood tide is against you and you wonder what possessed you to get started.

But it’s like the old story about the lady who resisted learning to play the piano in later life.

Do you know how old I will be when I finally learn?, she demanded.

Yes, came the answer.  Exactly the same age as you’ll be if you don’t.

So, today’s tip is to stop waiting to start.  We don’t always know how things come out.

Leap, and the net will appear.  ~ John Burroughs

Get in the river.

 

The Secret Door

Artist Dates made easy.

One of the main tools of Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way is the Artist Date, where you take your inner artist on a weekly excursion to spark your imagination.  It is, for me, and I think for other people, the most easily overlooked and often skipped of all the components of the 12-week journey back to creativity.

Now, however, for the armchair traveler in all of us, there is The Secret Door.

Using Google Maps street view, a company in the U.K. (selling windows and doors, of course) has built a website that takes you on a random visual excursion all over the world.  You won’t always know where you are, but the images are extraordinary.

So, go ahead.

Step through the Secret Door.The Secret Door

The Secret Door is presented by Safestyle UK

What in the world?!

Or, to be less politically correct…

WTF?!

There are people who just have too much time on their hands.

Which is fine.

Most of us do, really, now that we have achieved the 40 hour work week and vacuum cleaners.

I guess I’m just wondering today about what some people choose to do with it.

I’m not sure whether to call this wild originality (it is), or total ridiculousness (also true).

But, seriously.  Which is stranger?  That somebody actually came up with these two ideas for web pages, or that I found them, or that I am spending time writing about them, and…let’s be honest…you are spending time looking at them.

I do apologize.  But it’s like a train wreck.  You can’t help but look.

I am a Turtle

and

Postbox or Cheese?

If you have any explanation, any, that doesn’t involve the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), feel free to attempt to explain it.

In the meantime:

Saya kura-kura.*

Or, I wish I were, anyway. Then I would get some use out of that website.

 

*”I am a turtle” in Indonesian.

Creativity in everything

Make choices!

If I remember correctly, one of Jack Canfield’s tips in his book, The Success Principles is about making choices.  The point, I think, was to get in the habit of making choices rather than just going along with things.  If somebody asked you where you wanted to eat, Canfield suggested that you make a choice, advance an opinion, pick a restaurant rather than say, “I don’t care.”

Obviously, there will be times when you really don’t care where you eat.  You have more important things on your mind.  But making choices in small things helps you to make choices in big things.  You may remember that I’ve used this quote before from Tom Stoppard’s The Invention of Love.

Will you be a poet, or a scholar?
                I don’t mind.
Oh, it helps to mind.  Life is in the minding.

“Life is in the minding.”

I think, too, that creativity is in the minding.

This is a tip for me, especially, more, even, than you, because I think I am often guilty of trying to find the easiest way rather than the most creative.  But I am going to start asking myself more often if there is a more interesting way to do something.  Can I take a little more effort and arrange this furniture in a more pleasing pattern?  Is there something interesting I can do with these plants?  Other than stick them in the ground and hope that they grow?  What do I really want my new kitchen to look like?  How should it operate?  What gadgets are useful?  Or fun?

This is going to be a hard tip for me to follow.  I want things done easily.  Fast.  Inexpensively.

Creativity is, often, the opposite of all that.

I suspect, though, that practice helps.

And to that end, I’m going to see if I can’t do something interesting with my shoelaces.

Why don’t you take a look at that link, too?  And, when next we meet, we’ll compare patterns!

The answer

To one of the six horrible questions writers get asked.

One of the six horrible questions writers get asked is “Where do you get your ideas?”

My answer, lately, tends to be “I don’t have any ideas,” but I suspect the proper answer for most of us is “god only knows.”

But here’s a thing that could generate ideas. I haven’t used it.  I don’t know if the ideas are good ones.  But I figure anything that generates some ideas could lead to more ideas, so it’s probably worth a look.

In fact, it’s not just one idea generator, it’s a couple dozen.  (Or several.  I didn’t actually count.)

You should check it out.

Seventh SanctumTM

I suppose there may be some of you out there all worried that using an idea generator leads to a lack of originality.

Maybe.

But remember when we were discussing the One Plot?

You can’t have an original idea.

But you can execute an idea with originality.

What is Pygmalion and My Fair Lady but a recycling of an idea?  That one’s easy, right?  But here’s one you may not have considered.  Isn’t The Karate Kid a Pygmalion story?  Dirty Dancing?  You probably didn’t think “Just you wait, ‘enry ‘iggins, just you wait” had anything in common with “Nobody puts Baby in a corner,” but it does.   Is drilling “the rain in Spain” really so far afield from “wax on, wax off?”

The movie Dave is The Prisoner of Zenda.

There are no new ideas.  We all have to do the best we can with the old ones.

So, if you can find a tool that suggests some possibilities to you, I say use it. Idea generators are launching pads.  Diving boards.  The struck match just before it lights the fuse.

Dynamite not included.

The latest in a series

And maybe the weirdest one yet.

I’m talking about the long tradition of my mind baffling me.

This morning, I woke up—at least, I thought I was awake—and in those first few minutes when I knew I had to get up and before I actually did get up, I thought about what I have to do today.

One of the things I have to do today—and practically every day—is work on this blog.

So, there I was, lazily reviewing a mental image of the spreadsheet I have with possible topics laid out day by day, and trying to decide which one I might  like to select.

I settled upon “Pickle Pie.”

I composed a headline and a subhead.

I began to consider content.

And, I got up.

As I was walking down the stairs, I began to wonder if “Pickle Pie” was a real entry in my spreadsheet.  By the time I got into my office, I was fairly convinced that it was not.  By the time I got the computer booted up, I had decided—if it was not, this was the post I would write instead.  By the time I dealt with tech support on my website and solved the problem of why I was receiving email but suddenly could not send it, I had completely forgotten the original headline and subhead ideas.

Turns out the original headline ideas don’t matter, because I was right the second time.

There was no entry for “Pickle Pie” in my topic spreadsheet.

I have never heard of a pickle pie.  I don’t want to make a pickle pie.  I certainly don’t want to eat a pickle pie.  It sounds awful, frankly.

Before I started down this path, I had no idea if a person could actually make a pickle pie.

You can.

I mean, you can.  I’m not going to try it.

I did wonder, on that trip down the stairs, if it was anything like fried green tomatoes, which are connected in my mind somehow with fried pickles.  Which I have also never seen, eaten or made.  I wondered if you would use sweet pickles and a regular pie crust or if there would be something more savory added to the crust to go with a dill pickle.

Now, I’m just wondering about my sanity.

And, if you make the pickle pie from this recipe, I am wondering what it tastes like.

Perhaps you will let me know?

Now, this!

Is a writing tip I think I can use.

Came across this piece a couple of months ago in the New York Times.  I love the Times.  There’s a reason people refer to it as the “paper of record.”  It’s going to be sad when the ease and ubiquity of online news pushes it out of business.  (I’m hoping it figures out a way to reinvent itself—but, if anybody on the publishing staff is listening, I really don’t think higher and higher price are the way to go.)

All that aside, however, this column by Aaron Hamburger was an Aha! moment for me.

The piece is about outlining.

If you’ve read anything about writing—or went to high school—I’m sure you’ve been taught about outlining.  You may even have used it.  Term papers and so on.

When you get into creative writing, people still recommend outlines.  Sometimes, they suggest 3×5 cards rather than Roman numerals.  If you’re in film or TV, you might have heard of storyboarding.  It’s kind of the same idea.

The problem for me is that I never know what any piece of work is about until I get done with the first draft.  I don’t know what’s going to happen.  The events are a mystery to me.  Often, the characters with which I start aren’t the characters with which I end.

Sometimes, I just have a line in my head.  Or one scene between a couple of people.

The idea that there are writers out there who know the whole arc of the story before they begin—that boggles my mind.  BOGGLES.  With extra G’s.

Consequently, I threw outlines out the window fairly early.

But this idea of outlining after you’ve finished the first draft…this is a good idea.

Reading Mr. Hamburger’s explanation was a light bulb.  Of course, it would be helpful.  Of course!

If there’s a surer way to spot a hole in something, I can’t imagine what it could be.  Depending on how you structure your outline and what information you put into it, I’m thinking it could shine a spotlight on all kinds of difficulties.  Plot, pacing, logic…you name it.

So, I think you should read the article.

Meanwhile, I’ll just be over here outlining my play.

(Oh!  And pick up a copy of the Times.  They still have a great crossword puzzle!)

A message from Metro

Giggle while you’re reminded

Of Dumb Ways to Die.

I’m assuming this is a Public Service commercial for the British Metro system, although it’s not at all clear until the end that it has anything to do with trains.  It’s also not clear to which Metro system is bringing you the ad.  I’m just going by the English accent of the narrator at the end.

It’s a cute, creative video, but be warned.  You’ll likely be humming this little ditty days from now.

Oblique strategies

Whack your brain

A few days ago—nine or ten—I blogged about A Whack on the Side of the Head. the nudge into more creative thinking by Roger von Oech.  Today’s tip is about another tool to feed your creativity.

Oblique Strategies

Oblique strategies started life as a deck of cards.  Not ordinary playing cards, but a little black box full of small cards printed with “Over One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas.”

Created in collaboration by Brian Eno, a musician, and Peter Schmidt, an artist, these cards present you with a question, a thought, a suggestion designed to help you look at a problem in a different way.

Some of the cards will seem disconnected from your problem.  Obscure.  Confusing.

Sometimes, those are the best cards.

Some of them will present you with an obvious solution.  (More like an obvious path, since they aren’t really solutions.)

The cards themselves don’t seem to be available anymore, except, sometimes, on eBay.

You could make your own.  The full text of the various editions of the cards, as well as more history about them, on this website. There are downloadable zipped versions available at the same place for generating random cards on your own PC.

Or you can generate a random oblique strategy online here.

These are not easy if you are used to linear thinking, but they will reward you, I think.

Give it a try.

Say it with flowers

The easy way

Today’s find isn’t one of the incredibly useful publications I sometimes tout.  Nor is it a fabulous musicion or a crackerjack piece of software.

It’s just a bit of fun.

Courtesy of a German web services company.  I think they are German, anyway.  Their main web page pops up in German.  And their contact address includes the word Zugerstrasse.  I remember just enough of my high school German to be reliably certain that “strasse” means “street.”

On the other hand, the company might not be in Germany so much as any German-speaking country.

And none of that matters, because the web page I’m going to show you does not care what language you speak.

That’s because, in one sense, it speaks the language of flowers.

What it actually does is let you draw or write with flowers.  You can change the color, you can change the size, you can change the number of petals, but if you hold your mouse button and drag the mouse across the screen, you’ll get something like this:

(It looks better on a big screen.)

Anyway, try it.  You’ll like it.

Just click here.


View Elaine Smith's profile on LinkedIn