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Keeping Productive through Tough Times, or How to Survive the Fuchsia Hammer of Doom

Posted in Life, Writing, tagged , , , on October 5, 2010| 8 Comments »

The weekend before last, I was having a writerly conversation with a group of writerly friends.  One of them was expressing heartfelt admiration of a mutual friend of ours, who, he said, had totally mastered the problem of emotion getting in the way of writing.

Even if you’re not a writer, you probably know about this little problem.  It’s when you have a to-do list a mile long, or angelic plans to clean out your closet today, or work projects to complete, or writing to accomplish.  And then something happens.  It doesn’t matter exactly what something is (a particularly disappointing rejection letter, bad personal news, someone wrote something nasty about your favorite hat on Facebook, or what have you); the salient feature of the something is that it’s completely upsetting and derails any work you had plans to accomplish that day (or that week, that month….)

Back to my writerly conversation.  I thought to myself, “Well, that’s great, but it’s not so difficult really.  After all, when I’m writing a first draft of a novel, I’m pretty reliable about cranking out my daily word count in spite of everything else going on.”

Be careful what you think to yourselves, my friends, because four days later, life took a swing at my head with an oversized and ridiculously colored hammer (I think it was fuchsia, but it took me so much by surprise I wasn’t at my observational best).  And before I knew it, I was eating my words.  Imagine me staring at the blank page that was supposed to be my blog post the next day.  Not so difficult, huh?  How could I possibly write an entertaining and interesting blog post with a pounding head (the hammer struck pretty hard, apparently) and emotional turmoil swirling in my brain?

Well, obviously I managed, since I published a blog post last Thursday.  And equally obviously, I’m managing again with this post.  But now this pesky problem has earned my interest.  Life is, in my experience, going to knock me down every so often; how do I keep my productivity in the face of these challenges?  Here’s what I’ve come up with so far:

1.  Manage expectations. So maybe I won’t get everything done on the to-do list today after all.  But if I can prioritize the tasks that are really critical, or pick a couple tasks that I feel more confident I can manage (this may be errands, or reading the next chapter in my current nonfiction book, or cooking dinner), then I won’t completely lose momentum and will be better set up to deal with tomorrow.

2.  Take a break. Anything I need to accomplish will seem extra overwhelming while I’m in the heat of strong emotions.  If I can take a short break and do something soothing (play the piano, take a walk, read something fun, play mindless computer games), I’ll be in better shape to tackle what I need to do.

3.  Vent. I’ve recently read that venting actually makes a person more angry instead of less, but even if that’s the case, I find it helpful.  Just knowing someone is on my side comforts me to the point where I have a clearer head.

4.  Channel your emotions into your work. Maybe that anger can give you the extra burst you need to put all those packets together.  Or maybe your disappointment will encourage you to send out that story again.  Or maybe you can use what has happened as inspiration for your blog post (hmm, now you see what I’m up to, don’tcha?)

5.  Compartmentalize. If you can get this down, it can be golden (as long as you don’t take it to extremes, of course).  As I’m writing this blog post, I’m still upset.  If I stop to think about it, I can feel the headache, the neck tension, the tightness in my stomach, and I can dwell upon exactly why I’m feeling the way I do.  Or I can not stop to think about it right now and write this blog post instead.  It’s not that I’m not upset, it’s that I can push the upset off to the side while I complete this task, or even several tasks.  At some point, I’ll have to stop and deal, but it doesn’t always have to be right now.  Believe me, if what you’re upset about is important, it’ll be there waiting for you when you finish.

6.  Find the silver lining. Yeah, I know I just wrote about this, but it too belongs on the list.  Finding a good point, any good point, can be crucial for managing your mood, especially once you’re over the initial shock of whatever is going on.  And if you can manage your mood, then writing (or project planning, or programming, or making phone calls) won’t seem quite so hard after all.

Anyone else have any ideas on how to keep on task in the face of emotional difficulty?  Anything you find particularly effective?  I eagerly await hearing about your experiences.

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Silver Linings: Writing What You Know

Posted in Arts, Science fiction and fantasy, Writing, tagged , , on September 30, 2010| 3 Comments »

A fringe benefit of being a writer (or other artist, since this certainly applied to my songwriting and singing) is that everything that happens in your life can be recycled into your work later on.  And by everything, I mean the bad stuff.  I recycle the good stuff too, of course, but while that good stuff was happening, I probably wasn’t thinking, “Oh, this is character building and I can use it in a novel someday, which will make it worthwhile in end.”  I was probably just enjoying my happy moment.

No, it’s the repurposing of the bad stuff that is the real benefit.  I find it oddly comforting that when life throws something unpleasant my way, it might come in handy later for some character or plotline.  Of course, we’ve all heard the phrase “stranger than fiction”; one has to be careful not to stay too true to the actual facts for fear it will sound unbelievable (or be offensive to the involved parties) — I’ve personally had a story slip into the implausible from mirroring reality too closely, from which I learned that writing in too autobiographical a fashion can be a mistake.  But the feelings, those are a rich mine to draw upon, as are the general categories of experience.

Write what you know is the kind of writing advice that is misleadingly simple.  If writers literally only wrote what they knew, there would be precious few fantasy novels and no science fiction novels whatsoever.  Instead there would be a lot of boring novels in which nothing much happens and a lot of time is spent sleeping and doing chores and working in tiny increments towards the exciting goal.  I’ve never known anybody who was murdered, for example – does that mean I can’t write a murder mystery?  Plus, even when I do write what I know, sometimes I can’t remember all the details, at which point I’m still back to relying on Google to fill in the gaps.

But I think write what you know hides a deeper truth.   Maybe we should say instead: write what you feel.  Write what you believe in.  Write what matters to you.  Look deep inside and see what all that life stuff, good and bad, has left you with, and write about that.  Don’t shy away from the stuff that’s dark or scary or sad, because some of that will give your work the lasting resonance you’re looking for.  But don’t feel you have to look away from your streak of idealism or optimism, either.  It’s all material.

So I write a lot about death and mortality and family relationships.  At some point I’ll add in a dash of chronic pain and difficulty walking.  I also write about romantic relationships – usually in which something goes crashingly wrong (the story’s got to have a secondary conflict, after all), but once in awhile in which it goes wonderfully right … at least for awhile.  If I didn’t feel these things myself at some point in my life, I wouldn’t be half as convincing when writing about them.

And the stories that it kills me the most to write are the ones without happy endings.  Because fundamentally, I believe in the happy ending the most.  Or at least the silver lining ending.  Just as in life, in my narratives, I’m always searching for that silver lining that will make even the bad stuff worthwhile.

Ask yourself: what material has your life given to you?

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The Pre-Professional Writer

Posted in Arts, Writing, tagged , on September 28, 2010| 15 Comments »

I was all ready to write a riveting post on urban fantasy (really, this was going to be world-class stuff) when I read this interview with Paolo Bacigalupi this morning.  And I realized I had to write about it instead.

For those of you not in the know, Paolo won about a bazillion awards for his debut science fiction novel The Windup Girl; in addition he received strong reviews for his first YA novel Shipbreaker.  The entire interview is interesting, but what I want to respond to is what Paolo says at the end:

I realized I’d actually been carrying a lot of baggage from people who would make offhand comments like, ‘well, it’s not like you’re working.’

I was still accumulating some sort of psychic pain over it. You know, that all these people really did think I was a loser, and slacking around and doing nothing, basically. And when you’re writing your fifth book, and four of them have already failed, you’re obviously a joke, right?

Yes, this.  Exactly this.

As many of you know, I closed my successful business (in the arts!  how did that happen?) at the end of May to pursue writing full force.  And the kind of psychic pain Paolo is talking about here is my current reality.

It’s an insidious kind of discomfort, comprising of little pauses, supportive assumptions, and politeness.  No one comes right out and says, “But what about your real job?”  A few people have delicately inquired how my husband feels about it (I would hope the answer would be self apparent, but perhaps not.)  People get frustrated when they can’t reach me by telephone when they’re calling during business hours because it’s not like I have other commitments.  (I do.  They’re called writing.)

It doesn’t help that so much of writing does look exactly like slacking off.  I do some of my best work in the shower, or walking the dog, or sitting there staring out the window.  When I’m planning a project, I can fuss around the house for weeks trying to figure it all out.  And without a word of manuscript to show for it.  (Although maybe my reams of notes count?)

And then there’s the entire publication question.  I am at the stage in my career that is known as pre-professional.  This is the nice way of saying I have no writing credits, no agent, and no deals in the works.  I like to think of it as my apprentice stage, a necessary stepping stone if I’m ever to achieve more.  People in the arts understand this.  Other people, well … some of them understand it.  Others are baffled.

In the end, I’ll embrace this psychic pain; it’s the cost of getting to do what I love all day every day, and well worth paying.

But it sure feels good to see another writer with similar feelings getting the last laugh.

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E-books and the Apocalypse

Posted in Life, Society, Writing, tagged , on September 14, 2010| 8 Comments »

I am the semi-satisfied owner of a Kindle (semi-satisfied because the DRM still creeps me out) and in general, I’m a fan of electronic books.  I’m also a fan of hardbacks, mass paperbacks, trade paperbacks, super deluxe special editions… basically I’m an all-around kind of book fan.

But I do have one worry about electronic books that no one ever seems to talk about: what possible disastrous effect will electronic books have on the store of human knowledge, art, and entertainment in the event of an apocalypse?

I know this is illogical.  I know that books printed on paper are vulnerable to all kinds of destruction: fire, flood, crumbling to pieces due to old age, complete inaccessibility due to building collapse, toxic waste, control of written material by a tyrannical minority, etc.  So electronic books don’t have the monopoly on tragic loss.  But still, think of the possibilities.

First, on a personal level.  If you were living through a Lost scenario (plane crash onto isolated island, no rescue in sight), your e-reader would die within … a couple weeks, maybe?  If you were lucky and it didn’t suffer unfixable damage.  Wouldn’t you rather have a few paperbacks that would last your entire exile?  Not only could you read those books again and again (and out loud to your fellow strandees as well), if you had a pen, you could write *new* stories in the margins and end pages, thereby giving you more reading material.

Or what if the power was off in your house for a week or more?  (This actually happens in real life even without an apocalypse.)  And let’s say you’ve been lazy about keeping your e-reader up to full power (this also actually happens in real life).  So once it gets dark, you decide to read with your flashlight, since you can’t watch movies or TV, you can’t play piano because it’s too hard to read the sheet music in the dark, you can’t call anyone because your cell phone is running out of charge and you’re preserving it for an emergency.  But then you can’t read either because your Kindle is dead!  Meaning you’ll have to find a coffee shop that allows you to mooch off power (or hope the power isn’t off at your office as well, if you are fortunate enough to have one of those).  Or you’ll be stuck whispering ghost stories in the dark.

Or what if, twenty years from now, Amazon goes out of business?  And what if there are problems, possibly due to the stupid DRM, with porting your library, now possibly numbering in the thousands of titles (definitely at least hundreds), over to whatever alternate e-reader is dominant at the time?  (If there is an alternate and Amazon doesn’t go under in a general economic collapse.)  You may scoff and say how unlikely this is, but having just read Ted Chiang’s The Lifecycle of Software Objects (which I highly recommend even if I think it should have been a novel instead of a novella), you never know.  (Note: this is especially true if you are the kind of person who daydreams about apocalypses.)  After all, what good do all those old 5.25 floppy disk backups do me today?  I can’t look at any of my old papers or stories for reference anymore unless I happen to locate a hard copy.

Now, expand out to a societal level.  My favorite apocalypses to ponder these days are generally related to global warming and/or running out of oil and/or some political excitement.

 

A retreating glacier

(Sorry, I don’t do zombies.)  Now, if I’m feeling optimistic about these scenarios, I can hope that by the time trouble strikes, solar power has become more widespread (or wind, or water) or some other practical energy source has been developed.  But will the infrastructure be in place so there isn’t even a blip when switching over the electricity grid?  Will there be enough electricity all the time so people can spare the amount it takes to charge an e-reader instead of, say, run lab or farming equipment or a water heater or power a hospital?  Now if you owned physical books, on the other hand, your only problem would be lack of time in daylight to read them, and if you could figure out how to make candles, well then, problem solved.  (Now an e-book with built in solar energy panels could be cool, but what if the panels break?  Would spare parts be available?  Would I have or be able to purchase the expertise to use said spare parts?)

Whenever I plan my ideal supplies for surviving post-apocalypse, I always include as many reference books as possible (unless, of course, I have to be mobile in said apocalypse world, which severely limits the books you can carry).  There are so many basic things that modern life has left me unprepared to face: making candles is a great example.  Making soap, medical and first aid techniques, mechanical crash courses for as many devices as possible, farming and gardening, how to gut a fish or deal with a live chicken if I want to eat it.  The knowledge I don’t have that would be necessary for survival goes on and on.  Maybe I’ll be lucky and live in a community with experts on various of these topics, but what if I don’t?  I’ll have to rely on the reference books.

And I’m not even getting into the dream of preserving human knowledge and art (Shakespeare, anyone?) for future generations.

What this all boils down to is that I’m unlikely to give up my physical library any time soon.  Call me old-fashioned in ten years or twenty, and I’ll probably cheerfully agree with you.  But if the apocalypse comes, I’ll have the last laugh.

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My Pep Talk to Myself

Posted in Arts, Life, Writing, tagged , on August 16, 2010| 10 Comments »

When I decided I was going to write a novel, I was really scared.  I was also really irritated to be scared.  I mean, how many big projects had I completed with no problems?  How many times had I gotten up in front of an audience and sung in a foreign language I don’t even speak?  (Sometimes even when I knew I couldn’t sing the song in question very well at all.)  And yet sitting in front of a computer alone in my study with a blank screen in front of me was somehow terrifying?

To push myself to go through with my decision, I wrote a note to myself on a yellow post-it and placed it on the bottom right of my screen.  Here’s what my note says: “Writing isn’t so hard, it won’t take long, and I’m sure I can learn while I’m doing it.  No one else will judge me and my work because they are already so busy with their own problems.”

I wrote what I needed to hear, and I read that note a hundred times over the course of writing that novel.

Unfortunately, the note didn’t work quite as well when I was sending my novel out to agents and my short stories out to editors and getting form rejections.  It sure felt like the world was judging my work.  So I wrote a new post-it and put it beside the first one.  This one reads: “Concentrate on doing the very best you can.  This is what is important.”  This helped me focus on doing my own personal best instead of spending so much time obsessing on everything I wasn’t good enough at yet.

Over the last year, I’ve collected a few more helpful quotations on a white piece of paper taped up on my bookshelf, right next to my screen.  Happily these are all up and shareable via the powers of the Internet.

First I have The Happy Stop on the Writer Train, by Dorothy Winsor.  This helps me remember to focus on the part of writing I love; namely, the writing.

Then I have Neil Gaiman’s great take on rejection slips.  (The last paragraph is the one on my paper.)

Last week, I added Seth Godin’s Exploration and the risk of failure.  This reminds me of which category I am in (the second) and the source of a lot of my anxiety (the pull I feel towards the first).  It also reminds me that failure is a good thing.  (I know, what crazy talk is that?  Any other perfectionists out there?)

I love my collection of pieces of paper.  I don’t even have to read what’s written any longer to feel a sense of reassurance.  And have I ever needed reassurance this summer.  Transitioning away from my business has been, in many ways, very wrenching.  My brain is still muddled from my Taos Toolbox experience to the point where I second guess much of what reaches the page – which means that right now, the part of writing that I love is not writing after all.  I’ve been in a fair amount of physical pain, which distracts me like crazy, and I’ve received a few rejections that have cut to the bone more than usual.

Why am I telling you this?  Because I think all of us go through this kind of time, particularly during transitions.  And when you are going through your rough transition, or get that especially disappointing rejection note, or start going down the dark and dangerous road of comparing yourself to others, or can’t write well because your brain is buzzing or you have a headache or your ankles hurt so much you’re contemplating chopping them off and good riddance, well, maybe you’ll remember this entry and realize you’re not alone.  Maybe you’ll look at your own reassuring notes and be comforted.  (Maybe you’ll even add some of mine to yours.)

Maybe you’ll do what I’m going to do today: grit my teeth (although I don’t recommend this for dental health reasons), hold my chin up, and keep going in whatever way I can.  I’ll write some bad words, I’ll submit a few stories, and I won’t give up.  At least not today.

And tomorrow I’ll do it all over again.

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Quantity vs. Quality

Posted in Life, Music, Writing, tagged , , , on August 5, 2010| 7 Comments »

Dichotomies are popular partly because they’re catchy and partly because they’re so easy on the brain.  Black vs. white, capitalism vs. socialism, introversion vs. extroversion, right vs. wrong.  Sometimes I wish things were actually this simple, but most of the time I don’t because these comparisons don’t allow any wiggle room or tolerance for difference or adjustment.

So when we talk about quantity vs. quality, both of these attributes contribute to overall well being and success (I’ll save defining “success” for another time).  Is one more important than the other?  I would argue that for many people, one is weaker than the other, and therefore we need to expend more effort and awareness on whichever side is more personally difficult.  Let’s look at some definitions.

Quantity:

  1. Music: number of hours spent practicing and learning new music.  Also preparing music for a performance or audition deadline.
  2. Writing: butt in chair principle; number of hours spent writing and revising, or a daily word count goal.  Also would include having a submission goal of how many markets you submit to per period of time.
  3. Interpersonal: amount of time spent both thinking about what your relationship (and loved one) needs and implementing that, whether by spending more time talking, doing activities, writing emails, cleaning the house, or what-have-you.
  4. Running a business: amount of time spent both on finding and implementing strategies in advertising, marketing, getting your name out there, as well as time spent providing your core service or product and planning special events.  Focused on goals either financial or quantity-based.

These are all great goals, concrete goals, measurable goals.  They require self discipline and commitment to achieve on a regular basis.  Unfortunately, sometimes quantity is not enough.  Standing in the practice room day after day for sixty minute practice sessions that go exactly the same way every time is not usually going to lead to improvement or make a great singer.  Being so obsessed with word count that you can’t afford the time to stop and think how you can use your words more effectively does not make a better writer.  Trying really hard to be a better spouse without being willing to take some personal risks isn’t always effective.

But what happens if we don’t focus on quantity?  Our brilliance is often derailed by lack of organization or dedication.  Projects don’t get finished or maybe don’t even get started.  Businesses fail due to lack of exposure or avoidance of hard financial numbers.  The people we love may feel neglected or friends might characterize you as a flake.  We might sound great when singing but our inability to learn music on time and behave professionally holds us back.

Quality:

  1. Music: choosing one or more technical suggestions to work through during that day’s practice session.  Being willing to try new things even if they feel weird and don’t work right away.  Working on what your teacher brought up during your last lesson and then giving her feedback as to how it’s going in practice.
  2. Writing: choosing subjects/stories that are close to your heart and therefore dangerous.  Taking the time to revise as much as a story needs.  Doing the necessary preparation work (whether that be research, outlining, note taking, character profiles, etc.) that you personally need to write your best story.  Focusing on a particular aspect of craft while writing, even if it slows the work down.
  3. Interpersonal: prioritizing by finding out what makes the most difference to the other person in the relationship.  Getting to the root of any issues between you.  Attempting to see that person without your usual bias and love them unconditionally.  Being honest and open about hard things as well as good ones.
  4. Running a business: Providing individualized service to your clients.  Prioritizing the goal of improving your product or your abilities.  Remembering the people factor in business.  Not cutting every single corner for cost reasons if the quality detriment is high enough.  Focusing on goals of service and satisfied customers.

What happens if we don’t focus on quality?  We work hard for many years and get “stuck” in the same spot, like we’re running in place.  We crank out large volumes of work lacking the spark that will lead to publishing that novel or winning that part during auditions.  Our relationships coast along but don’t necessarily deepen.   The business tends to get a higher than average turnover of clients or customers.  We rush to complete a task without thinking of the meaning behind the task and making sure we do it to their best of our abilities.

Now for me, quality is a lot harder than quantity.  Quantity is easy for somebody like me who has determination, self discipline, and organizational skills in spades.  Quality, on the other hand, is a bit more mystical because it depends on stuff you can’t measure in numbers.  It depends on taking risks.  It doesn’t always conform to plan.  It could end in spectacular failure instead of middling mediocrity.  So for me, I need to put a lot more focus on quality to get myself in balance.

What about you?  What do you need to focus on, quantity or quality?

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Art as Alarm Clock (please don’t hit snooze!)

Posted in Arts, Life, Writing, tagged , on August 3, 2010| 8 Comments »

I’ve just returned home from the LA SCBWI conference with a head swarming with information about writing.  What has stuck to the forefront of my thoughts are two talks by M.T. Anderson, author of such novels as Feed and the two Octavian Nothing novels, among others.

MT had a lot of interesting stuff to say, but what caught my attention the most was what he said about literature, and perhaps by extension, all art.  In a nutshell, he posited that the purpose of literature is to help the reader see the familiar in a different way.  (For those curious about reading more, this is a theory espoused by the Russian formalist school of literary criticism.)  By estranging the reader (for example, through use of language or various literary devices), the author causes the reader to experience the world differently and restores a sense of the unknown to what was before a habitual reaction.

I know how easy it is for me to something for granted and stop seeing what’s right in front of me.  It’s this sort of closed mind that makes it difficult to see from another person’s perspective, to fail to notice what’s going wrong (or right) in our everyday routines, relationships, and desires, to become cemented in attitudes, beliefs, or knowledge that might be inaccurate.  In much the same way as spending time in a foreign culture can shock the system and dislodge rusty thought patterns, so can experiencing art, whether that be through literature, theater, visual art, music, etc.

Following this train of thought, literature can act to help us see the world afresh like children do.  In general, children are a lot more flexible and adaptable than many adults, and they are constantly having brand new experiences.  Assumptions are harder to make without a few decades of experience and collected data to draw upon.  While reading a novel that’s using estrangement to wake us up, we can regain our childlike perspective on the world, both as a place full of wonder and weirdness and as a terrifying mystery in which many things remain unexplained or beyond our understanding.  The curtain of adult security and certainty that gives us the illusion of being safe in a world of rational order is drawn aside to expose the truth: that life is always uncertain, whether you’re two years old or eighty, and that any object, person, or event has several layers of reality beyond the surface.

While this ability to see beyond the surface is certainly useful for artists of all types, I would argue that it is invaluable to anyone who wishes to fully appreciate the human experience.  Art forces us to take notice and stop moving through our daily lives on automatic pilot.  It reminds us of what it was like to be fourteen, or helps us imagine an entire collection of possible lives we might have led (or might still lead).  It shows us the world through someone else’s eyes, someone inherently other because they are not us.  Whether we look at a Dadaist painting that skews common objects and reminds us of universal themes such as the passing of time or read a novel in which language describes a commonplace object in terms we would never have applied, the jolt tickles our brains.  Remember, it says, to really *look* instead of merely knowing.  Remember to breathe in an experience instead of getting too caught in our own heads to notice.  Remember to listen and delve deep.  Live what it is like to be a child, when the world lies before you, scary and stunning and exquisite.

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Creativity can be Learned

Posted in Arts, Life, Music, Writing, tagged , on July 21, 2010| 2 Comments »

Another reason I really like the Newsweek article on creativity is that it explodes the myth of creativity has some kind of magical, inherent talent that someone either has or doesn’t have.  No, creativity can be learned, creativity can be taught, and creativity can be practiced.

When decoupled from its traditional fused relationship with artistic pursuits, this assertion makes perfect sense.  Thinking creatively is just another way of processing information, and if the human mind can be trained to memorize (and believe me, my brain was resistant to this one), it follows that it could also be trained to work creatively, that is, to combine divergent and convergent thinking into a coherent and well-practiced process.

Artists know this about creativity already, at least subconsciously.  It is why we obsessively practice.  Not only are we practicing our craft and our discipline, but we are also practicing creativity.  I’ll give myself up as an example.  I wanted to write a musical for several years before I sat down to do so.  Why did I wait so long?  Partly because I had no idea what to write about.  I couldn’t think of a single idea that I felt had enough merit to pursue.  I eventually had an idea, sat down, and wrote my musical in 2006-2007.  After a short-ish break, I wrote my first novel in 2008.  It was still hard for me to think of ideas, and I’m not just talking about that one break-out idea that is the best thing I ever thought of.  I had trouble coming up with any ideas, but at least it wasn’t as difficult as thinking up the idea for the musical.  During this time period, if I had a truly good idea, I felt like I had to hoard it, save it away until my writing skills improved enough to do it justice.  I certainly didn’t want to waste a good idea, after all.

It’s been two years since I started writing that first novel, and now I have lists of ideas.  There are so many of them that I’m sloppy and sometimes don’t write them down.  It feels as if there is a never-ending FLOOD of IDEAS pouring from my brain that I will never have time to explore.  I can sit in the bath and come up with two or three ideas that I believe have merit in twenty minutes.  No kidding, I did that last week.  Granted, coming up with novel ideas is still more fraught than thinking up ideas for short stories, because writing a novel is a much bigger investment of time and effort, so I want to be sure I’ve picked an idea that will still appeal to me in three months, or six months, or however long.  But it doesn’t seem to be the insurmountable task that it did only two or three years ago.

Why the radical change?  I think it’s because I’ve been practicing coming up with ideas to the point where it’s not a huge deal anymore.  Ideas don’t seem like rare precious things to hide away; the more I play with them, the more of them are born.  This may also be why there’s this huge disconnect between readers, who always ask where ideas come from, and writers, who get so sick of what seems like an obvious question that they sometimes lapse into snide remarks.  Writers have trained themselves to come up with endless ideas.  Readers who don’t also write have not, so to them it remains a mysterious process.

I don’t want to get into a big brouhaha about the current educational system in the United States, and how it’s not training creativity much at all.  Feel free to rant in the comments if it makes you feel better, but I’m just going to take lack of creativity nurturing in the public schools as a given at present.  Until this can be changed, the onus of teaching children how to think creatively lands squarely on the shoulders of parents.  I don’t have kids so perhaps I’m not the best suited to speak on this topic, but I have spent many years teaching kids, so I’ll have a go anyway.

Creativity Training for Kids:

  1. Avoid over scheduling. I’m serious.  Even if it’s all artistic classes, having constant structure even when at play is not going to foster kids’ opportunities to role-play, play make-believe, make up elaborate fictional worlds, or even develop the ability to entertain themselves.
  2. If a child shows a passion for a certain artistic or creative pursuit, encourage it. If he shows an interest in music, see if you can get him music lessons.  If she shows an interest in building complex buildings with Legos, see if you can provide the materials necessary for really innovative construction ideas.
  3. But don’t force a passion that doesn’t exist. As a long-suffering piano teacher, I can attest that forcing a child to play an instrument they hate is probably not going to encourage them to think creatively, unless they get elaborate in coming up with reasons why they can’t practice.  Instead, the child will develop negative associations with an activity typically associated with creativity, and therefore might ultimately devalue creativity itself.
  4. Allow a child to reason out the answer to her own question. Help her out if she needs it, but let her be an active participant in the process.  Also let the child hear you going through creative problem solving processes out loud, and if he wants to , even let him join in.
  5. Limit time with more passive, less creativity-motivating media. Yes, like TV.  I’m not saying no TV, but spending less time watching TV will give a child more time to do other activities that will engage their creativity.
  6. Read read read. Yeah, I know this one is obvious, but I couldn’t resist.  Read to your child, encourage your child to read to herself, ask your child questions about what he has read and what he thinks happened after the story ended.

Let me know if you have other ideas for how to help kids think creatively.  Also feel free to throw out your ideas of how you stimulate your own creativity.  (If you have no ideas about the latter, check out the blog post I linked to yesterday for a starting point.)

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Link: on thinking creatively

Posted in Arts, Society, Writing, tagged on July 20, 2010| 1 Comment »

Lo and behold, I announce a themed week about creativity, and one of my favorite bloggers, Justine Musk, comes out with a post all about thinking creatively today.  Ask and ye shall receive?  Go check it out!

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Getting Men

Posted in Science fiction and fantasy, Writing, tagged , , , on July 14, 2010| 25 Comments »

Mark Charan Newton recently wrote a blog post entitled “Getting Women”.  His provocative title caused me to click through and read what he had to say.  He talks about having awareness while writing female characters in fantasy, and how he improved at avoiding stereotypes and portraying more realistic female characters in his latest novel.  Having not read this novel, however, I am left without concrete examples of *how* he succeeded.  Hence my own post with a similarly eye-catching title.

I’m going to talk about a recent example from my writing life.  For one of my latest stories, I chose to write it in a first person male POV.  This is, in fact, the first time I’ve attempted such a thing in my writing.  I adore first person, but up until now, I have always chosen a female voice.  Part of this was because I felt more confident that I could get a female voice correct, and part of it, I’ll admit, was my desire to read more stories in the adult science fiction/fantasy genre told from the POV of a woman.  Write what you want to read, and all that.  (Interesting side note: At Taos Toolbox this year, we had six women students and eight male students.  For our first week submissions, we had ten mainly male POV stories/chapters and four female POVs.  All four female POVs were written by female students.  Food for thought, that.)

But for this particular story, I really wanted a male POV, and it had to be in first person.  I was somewhat apprehensive about giving it a try.  I decided, in order to avoid complete creative blockage, to not obsess too much about the “maleness” on my first draft.  I would do as I usually do and try to inhabit my character’s mind (similar to Method acting), but beyond that, I’d fix any voice problems in a later draft and rely on my writing group to catch the things I couldn’t catch myself.

My writing group critiqued the story last Friday, and I was surprised at how few issues of male vs. female voice they brought up.  There were a few, notably a mention of a “champagne pink silk dress” (apparently, men aren’t aware of the color champagne pink.  Who knew?)  But overall, only a few changes of that nature needed to be made.  So apparently my technique of trying to get into the head of my specific character, as opposed to thinking “what would a man say” every five words, worked out mostly okay this time.

Of course, I think what Mark might have been talking about in his blog post is the prevalence of female stereotypes in fantasy.  Fantasy readers get to see several cardboard classes of female character: bad-ass in leather, damsel in distress, someone’s wife/mother/daughter/sister who only exists to be angelic and pure or bad and slutty, or be rescued or to show our hero isn’t completely socially maladjusted.  The list goes on and on.

Here’s my question: can you think of any stereotyped male character types in fantasy that you find equally boring and/or offensive?  Comment below and let me know!

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