Inkabout L. Darby Gibbs

Science Fiction & Fantasy author

creative writing

Creativity: reading, thinking, and occasionally sunflowers are components of the process

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 Since I am often inundated with numerous obligations I cannot put off because they are important aspects of my income-producing job, I need a few tricks to galvanize creativity.  I have already written about several of them, but my most trusted approach to getting off the pot and onto the page is very simple.  I read what I have already written and/or read other writers’ work and think.

This post is a definite example of that.  I post every Wednesday pretty reliably (unless life interferes with unreasonable demands I must give in to).  But I don’t often come to the page with an idea ready to zoom from my finger tips.

Today I started by diddle daddling around reading my old posts, posts that landed in my mailbox, posts I came across on Twitter, and posts I know my friends have written recently.

Somewhere along my diddling about, I dropped in on a blog or two by other writers (Jane Friedman for one, on ironically “What should authors blog about?”  Seemed rather apropos.)

Reading makes me ask questions.  It also makes me stop and think, and thinking leads me to wandering and wondering, which can on occasion produce a thought worth writing about. 

Of course, this approach does have its downfalls.  I may be planning to write a post and I get curious about sunflowers and then think about My Antonia by Willa Cather. In the book was a long description of the sunflowers which often stretched far into the distance on hills and along road sides in that part of Nebraska. Thinking about this image, will remind me of a neighbor I had in Oregon who grew sunflowers along one side of her house. From across the street and several houses down, I could see those enormous orange/yellow bobbing heads.  They stood in a long narrow line along the garage wall like tall garish soldiers.

They made me want to grow sunflowers one day. Years later when my daughter was about eight years old and wanted to grow a garden, we bought sunflower seeds and planted them along a fence line just the other side of our neighbor’s garden. I imagined them leaning over our fence and gazing with smiling sunny faces at his squash and pumpkins and benefiting from his soil preparations.  We had one of the wettest seasons that year and my daughter’s foot-tall sunflowers were leaf deep in runoff.  We made numerous attempts at building up berms to hold back the encroaching flow, and dug channels to move the sitting water. But it just kept raining and raining.

We finally moved them to higher ground while rain ran down our necks, and the pooling water spilled over our low boot tops.  Either they never quite recovered or the seeds were only distant cousins to the spritely blooms my neighbor had grown.  We had a rather sickly crop of lean seeds to harvest.

That’s the thing about creativity, it’s like an unexpected rainy season when you’re trying to grow sunflowers: one thing leads to another and you just have to go with the flow.

What flows have you had to ride along that guided you to a writing moment?

#creativity
#sunflowers
#thinking

Creativity: one drop, one twist away from completion

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My mind is full of words, but none of them are clinging to each other and the few that bump and hold together, however briefly, are whispering, and I can barely hear them over the din of all the phrases sloshing against each other in garbled conversation.

It is not a creative day, not even one to press into a chain gang of little efforts: organize, sort, and summarize.  My thoughts are lethargic and oddly cantankerous when shuffled about in search of meaning.

I am resolved to putting one word in front of the other, simply letting whatever rises to the surface for a spot of air be sacrificed to expression, going down on the page. So be it.

Yes, one of those days.

I don’t have them often, maybe once a year. But here one is, planted firmly in my available writing moment.

A stagnant field under a swelling of greasy water.

I try to imagine the kind of flooding river that relieves a serious drought, but my inspiration is not buying it. This is swamp, this is bog, this is puddle, and I did not remember to wear my boots, not even the ones of brilliant pink broken up with splashes of yellow ducks.  My feet are cold.

luck and the trick play equal part

Look at my hands. On one index finger is a puzzle ring.  Such rings are lovely metaphors for writing.  Characterization, description, setting, conflict — puzzle pieces that when brought together create a story.  Today I slip the ring off and gently separate the four circles of fitted silver shapes, but I don’t allow them to drop away fully from the others.

I know how to put it back together.  It will take me anywhere from two minutes to two hours.  Luck and the trick play equal part in the creation of a whole ring.  I have not mastered the trick enough to rely entirely on it. Much like writing, I am still twisting and turning, thinking it through, watching for the sudden drop into place, ease into fitting as if I was in control of the results. 

Does any book, short story, poem, essay, article ever slip into place no longer tricky, just trick.  I hope not. Part of the joy comes in the struggle. This is writing, sifting through the slough, the remnants of both memory and meandering, the slithering together of parts and a bright, shiny unexpected whole that whether seen from the beginning or cobbled together reaches completion.

Do you have such days? Are they in the end successful?

#creativity
#writing

Creativity: generating with What If? and Why?

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What if she was real a moment ago?

It is the What Ifs that writers bring into reality. What if kids had to fight  to the death to earn a position in society? What if everybody was altered to fit into one of five personality types?  Questions and possibilities are what we build our stories on.

Questions make us search for answers, for back stories, for the first domino to fall and the last. And that search creates stories. This is nothing a writer does not know. But it is another way to dive into the creative moment.

  1. Who is the woman who lives in a cave in the earth caring for mushroom gardens and why is she there?
  2. Beneath the fallen roof which leaned precariously against crumbling rock walls, lay a child, clean, unmarked, sleeping peacefully. Who put him there, for whom does he wait, and why does he rest so well, so safely?
  3. When the man crouched down to look into the toddler’s eyes, he backed up recklessly and lost his footing, yet still he scrambled away from her, his gaze never leaving her face. Why?
  4. A snuff box lid, engraved with delicate swirls about a blue cabochon, is canted against a plain, smooth gold container. Who does the box belong to?  Why is it here, open, empty?
  5. The house slumps in the dark shadows of a long night. Occasionally, a ghostly glow moves behind the windows as though someone is using their cell phone for a light. What do they search for and why the lack of electricity?
  6. Over there, among the autumn-pruned rose bushes, something glints like a butterfly’s wings. Only it is a brightness almost too glaring for one’s eyes to stay focused on. What is it?
  7. The mud reveals the outline of footprints, pressed to impart only the front portion of the foot.  Whoever stood here wore heavily shod shoes with a deep tread as if they were cut from tires and reshaped to be the sole of some large man’s shoe. Who stepped here uninvited, unwelcome, on tiptoe?
  8. What if a teacup arrived in the mail without any indication who sent it. Who could it be from?
  9. What if over night every single person found that when they closed their eyes, they could still see what was before them.
  10. Today the phone rang and when it was answered the person on the other end said, “Finally. I have been trying for an hour to reach you.  I must talk to you about the absolute worst day I have ever had.  Sit down and just let me talk. You don’t have to say a word. I just want you to listen.” The voice is unfamiliar.
  11. Dr. Who’s tardis showed up in your kitchen blocking the doorway to any other part of your house.
  12. The young woman reached for her water bottle and took a sip. Not water. She sipped again just to be sure. It made her think of pineapples. 
  13.  

Alright, those are mine. You come up with the last one and write about it.

Creativity: where does it reside in the brain?

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Creativity: Uses your whole brain.
In the past the right brain was established as “conceptual, holistic, intuitive, imaginative and non-verbal” according to the Scientific American article “Is it true that creativity resides in the right hemisphere of the brain?”  It was later replaced by the whole-brain theory which is covered by Ned Herrmann who wrote the article. Basically, according to Herrmann, our brain is balanced.  It must use all parts to create, analyze and implement an idea.  So creativity is a holistic condition, not really a specific site in the brain.  
How can this relate to creativity pursued by writers?  I see it as recognizing the need to both explore through writing (write without reserve or even intention) and followup by demanding that we put our writing through a rigorous testing phase.  I follow my unreserved outflow of words with a more analytical, testing mind to review the work. And then off goes the non-restricted creative process again with new parameters. 
Every time I stop and reread my last thousand words, I am examining them for quality, usefulness, relatability, and connectivity. I adjust, develop, contrast and redesign my writing as I consider how it all makes a whole.  Essentially, I move back and forth between what reaches for anything and what reaches for the specific, and I parley between these two brain activities until I am content with the result.
Better storage
Back on creativity and where it resides in the brain. I suppose it resides everywhere or perhaps where it is most needed in order to solve the problem it is facing.  While researching where in the brain one finds the part marked “reserved for creative thought,” I came across an article  questioning whether creativity is a bi-product of intelligence or a quality in and of itself essential to the evolutionary progress.

Certainly, I have heard in a long ago history class that society does not have time for culture until it has dealt with the needs of survival and is able to store enough food stuffs and necessary items to carry it through seasons of low availability.  I suppose one could use that point to argue that creativity is just bi-product and creativity is not a separate necessary aspect of survival. For only after all needs are met can the people of a village find time to decorate the necessities of life with engravings, fabrics and color.  However, it seems to me and others that those abilities don’t just suddenly arrive unfostered out of the air.

Just coming up with the idea that increases production of necessary foodstuffs counters that theory.  For the idea of how to store product long enough to gain excess time to give over to less essential activities is proof of creativity.  Painting, carving, decorative weaving and embroidery are extensions of already necessary skills which means that creativity and its various supporting brain characteristics come part and parcel with all other thinking demands. 
creativity: lovely and necessary
The point of all this questioning over the location of creativity in the brain is to focus on the fact that we need all that our minds encompass to be strengthened.  Read, argue, examine, consider, connect, research, reach, etc.; do all brainy things that challenge and develop our thinking.  Creativity doesn’t recline among the brain cells eating chocolates; it searches, gathers and prances about.

Another study deals with the location and quantity of dopamine which apparently is the key chemical ingredient of creativity according to a variety of scientists.  But there are so many approaches to examining this key chemical and its interaction with the brain.  A study in Sweden linked dopamine D2 filtering in the thalamus to creativity based on the degree of filtering. Two groups have this feature (a greater number of unusual/unfiltered ideas could slide through): “highly creative healthy adults” and adults suffering from schizophrenia.  (The actual paper on this study is located at this site.)  I love the statement that this lower filtering could be described as “Thinking outside a less intact box.”  I had this image of my ideas looking out of a mesh at the active real world beyond (slightly ironic as we are talking about writing in the creative form, not reality), waiting in line to slip through and become part of a story, poem, etc. The assumption is that “highly creative healthy adults” know the difference between reality and a created world.


More studies: Yet a second study linked high concentrations of dopamine as a sign of high creativity.  They were tracking what parts of the brain have high concentrations.  Presumably creative people tended to have more areas of greater concentration.  Also a theory presented in Alice Flaherty’s study supports the idea that creativity occurred along these “dopamine pathways.” I suppose when combined with the previous study, one could say high concentrations encourage more “divergent” ideas which then were lightly filtered, providing more creativity to the individual.

Creativity does not have to worry about being a wall flower in the scientific study party.  I found numerous papers discussing all sorts of research on how it works, where it is and how to get it to be more active.  So I am stopping here on the various articles I read.  But if you wish, Google “dopamine and increasing creativity” or check out this link on a study of the writing mind.

So what are you doing to channel your creativity? How do you incorporate your whole brain?
Extra credit value: Herrmann also said that male and female brains go
about idea generating differently, so it is necessary that research groups have
both sexes present.  Hmm, so writers, here is yet another argument you
can use to encourage your spouse to participate in your writing as both
muse and criticizer.  
#creativity
#whole-brain
#writing

Creativity: inspiration thru anticipation

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Overwhelmed by stuff, use anticipation to inspire.

Creativity is best when the appetite is wet.

I have already said that teaching encroaches on my writing time.  Remember the movie The Thing? That is the life of the English teacher: pursued by an engulfing pile of stuff.  The teaching thing just eats everything up.  So I need every trick in the book to take advantage of my writing opportunities.  My most often used technique is anticipation.

  •  Work taking over  your life and it’s been more than a month and you haven’t written creatively in weeks? What do I do?  I start with little self talks.  “Thanksgiving is just a few more weeks away.  Keep your grading up to date. Don’t overload the kids ’cause that just comes back and bites off another chunk of your time.  Keep it steady and high quality, but keep it under control so Thanksgiving, Christmas, Spring Break, SUMMER! will all be yours.”
  • Weekly overload? I grade everything I can Friday night, having promised that Saturday will supply a slice of time for writing.  Then I am back on the grading, planning, prepping mode come Sunday, ready for Monday. Plug in any huge “thing” you want into the spot labeled “grade.”
  • It’s getting worse instead of better? When it is an especially hard year, which the last two have been due to changes in education objectives and focus, I can go nearly an entire school year without more than ten hours of personal writing time in ten months.  So those days of summer become a mantra of anticipatory excitement. 
  • Use all non-work time that can’t be given to writing time to brainstorm time. I use the moments when I can feasibly say I can’t grade, teach, plan, prep or do anything house related or family related to brainstorm and review scenes.  That means showers, the fifteen minutes before I fall asleep, putting on makeup and doing my hair, running on the treadmill, vacuuming, etc., are for thinking about what I am going to write when I get the chance. The idea is you have everything ready to go when the time to write finally comes.  You’re excited about writing because you know exactly what you are going to do. It will practically type itself.
  • Carry the image/scene/dialogue everywhere you go. Sure this may mean you never talk in the car when your partner is driving. They get over it. My husband has. I am quiet in the car whether its twenty minutes or two hours, but my mind is not. I am revolving the scene over and over looking for telling details, foreshadowing that can be slid in, characterization, and what else can be carried by the scene other than the original idea that set it off.

Next week: how to make multitasking your creativity work for you.

So how do you deal with the overwhelming activities you do to pay your bills and such to make room for writing?  Writers who write for a living are not allowed to respond.  You may smirk off in a  corner somewhere, quietly.

#creativity
#anticipation
#writing

Creativity: get it in capture mode

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Be ready to pounce on the writing moment.

So last week I blogged about how creativity can be dependent upon routine.  I do use this to a degree during the summer months, but I am just as likely to use the capture mode.

This is when you sit down to do one thing and inspiration hits.  It stops everything: “I have to write now” time. This happens to me fairly regularly. It is not that I have the kind of life that I can put things off any time I want to sit down and write. I don’t, far from it. But I have learned that when I feel the need to write, I better look around and see if I can arrange it without delay.

I teach English, probably one of the most planned, graded and time-consuming subjects to teach. I happen to enjoy teaching it, but it is a life eater. So if there is a moment free, the first thing I do is sit a quite moment and see if anything has been waiting to bubble up. There will be a rise of excitement in my chest, much like when I know there are only three more days before I am heading out on a long-awaited trip. I listen for a stream of dialogue running through my mind, look for an image rising out of the silence and words playing bumper cars between my ears.  Time to sit down and write.

This is capture mode. Grab it while the grabbing has a chance at nipping at the heels of a plot, post, character sketch, etc. I once stopped my husband mid-drive to a bicycle race to buy me a notebook and pencil. I needed to write that moment and had potentially hours of quiet writing time ahead of me between driving to the race and back over the mountains to and from Eugene’s Tandem Classic (the Burley Classic, I believe now defunct, and before you ask, this is before the invention of the laptop).  When the urge is there, take advantage of a ready mind.

This is writing on the run and has the likelihood of being intensely productive because the time could disappear at any moment, so there is no room for sharpening a row of pencils, finding the perfectly flat piece of paper or the cozy niche no one is likely to stumble into. You may have to sit in the stiff- backed wooden chair with the tippy corner; ignore the seat belt, blasting radio and kid kicking the back of your seat; lean against the wall, hair whipping in your face, paper leaping up where your fingers can’t stretch to hold it down while you write. Yup, you don’t even have time to hunt; just pounce and land on the scittering, scattering words, grab with straining claws, pull them to your chest, and start laying out one word at a time (though if any one knows of a way to simultaneous set out words in lumps I want to hear about it).

So that’s capture mode. What examples of capture mode have you experienced?  I’m sure you’ve had a few wild writing stories you could tell, so share them here.

Next creative post: building desire to write.

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#creativity
#writing
#inspiration