23 posts tagged “creativity”
I was with my mum in Amsterdam, starting our four-day rock 'n' roll tour of that great city. Read it here.
Photos of the day include:
And my watercolor box...
I should warn you that Mum and I are planning a trip driving down the California seacoast, along Highway 1, next spring... It will be another crazy wild time!
Pearl
One of my favorite websites is 3191 Miles Apart, a website shared by Steph and Mav, two friends living 3,191 miles apart (see?) who share photo moments online. They don't include comments or comment--much--on their photos, but the photos provide quiet, lovely images or, actually, moment of life.
They have published two books, one of monrings and one of evenings, and a poster set as well.
I find their blog inspirational, both in its object and in the pictures they share. Their photography gives me a ot of pleasure while it challenges me to look differently at my own taking of pictures.
Pearl
Yay! After missing Julie's yoga practice from Paris so much, it looks as if I have finally found a once-a-week class that is exactly the style and pace I need and want. I went this morning for the first time and the class was great!
The class did have a sub teacher, but I am confident that this Saturday morning wake-up & stretch class will still be great once I meet the regular teacher.
But... dee-lightful.
The class is located in the meditation center of a nearby restaurant. It is an organic, vegetarian restaurant and the smells of Saturday's meals wafted upstairs during class. So many good things.
I know you're all excited for me.
Pearl
I think I'm going to get back to using Wednesdays to blog about writing and creativity. Keeps my teaching fresh and keeps me inspired.
Preparation.
Or in other words, the work you do before writing to prepare you for the creative act. Most of my students discount this. They embrace the Romantic notion of jumping in, letting inspiration fuel and push you without limits or guidelines or boundaries. Or even a well-thought-out idea.
Jumping in can be very liberating, especially if you feel that as a writer or artist you are in a rut and need to get out. Or if you have a really, really great idea that does give you that igniting spark that makes you write through the night and potentially complete a play, story, novel, or painting in one sitting.
Unfortunately, this kind of spark is rare... and, ironically, truly fueled by the preparation and practice the artist has engaged in over time prior to the sparking.
What are some of the different kinds of preparation I advocate you engage in?
Ritual. Establish some repetitive, inspirational rituals for yourself. For example, at the beginning of every project I begin on a serious basis, once I know this is a play I want to focus on, I spend time finding visual images and music. The visual images get posted over my at-home writing space: I have bulletin boards near by desk at home, but last semester I used the white walls of my Paris studio for my inspiration board. The music gets copied (now) onto my iPod and my hard drive as the soundtrack for this play, titled the same. I add pieces as I think of them, and play it over and over as I write. By the time I am done with the piece, I cannot listen to that music for a while... but like the images the music has inspired my work.
The ritual could also be that, since I write in early morning, I establish a ritual of waking at a certain time. I shower and dress in work clothes, come downstairs, feed the cat, and pour myelf coffee from a coffemaker that was pre-programmed the night before. Then I sit down and write, not getting up except for coffee, for an hour. Then I go a second hour on days I do not have classes.
Usually, I build in a little editing for the beginning of my work session, so that I can warm up my muscles. I edit 5-10 pages, then slide into new ones. Sometimes I set myself a page limit instead of a time limit, again if I have the extra time.
When I was writing my monograph, I had very clear rituals. Certain music from the period I was writing about, a particular type of incense I bought in Paris (never have found it anywhere else) that reminded me of my '99 sabbatical, and always started by editing five pages. I always write in my apartment, not anywhere else, which is something I work against when writing a play.
Find the rituals that inspire you. The point is to wake yourself up, to ready your muscles, to establish a boundary between "regular time" and creative time, and to create a familiar and welcoming aura for your creative self to enter.
Research. This means different things on different projects. Perhaps you need to do some historical research because you're writing about a period or a location you don't know a lot about. Perhaps this simply means reading material: you want to write a farce but you're not certain how to do so. Okay: read a lot of farces. You want to write a verse play: read plays in verse.
Sometimes research is just paying attention and observing.
Writing about love? Watch couples in love. Real couples, in supermarkets or movie theatres, on line in banks and to return bad gifts. Research by observing. Read love letters by famous people or unknown people. Look at paintings and movies and snapshots of couples in love. Read biological and psychological analyses of what happens to your body and brain when you fall in love: pheromones and endorphins and enzymes and blood pressure...
Whatever you're going to write about, I guarantee it will be better of you research it. Even if you think you know all about it: find something new, unfamiliar to you, surprising and puzzling to include. If you know it all, how can you surprise yourself or your audience?
Identify. Write down what makes you passionate about this project.
Write down your goals: to write a farce, to write a tragedy, to explore loss through death, to write a play using only female characters, to write a play where every character is cross-gender-cast. Write it down, in your journal or on a 3x5 card... and put it away.
Identify the spine of your piece: what holds it together? "A Jewish family survives the Depression." "A woman relives her seductive, childhood relationship with her uncle." "A couple struggles through their first year of marriage in a cold-water New York City apartment." Find the verbs and state them: survives, relives, struggles.
Usually, things in our projects change... but not the spine, not our goals, and not what made us passionate about them in the beginning.
Sometimes my students say, all this defining limits me. It limits my project because now all the decisions are made and I'm just filling in the blanks. There's no opportunity for imagination any more.
Really? After defining these few things you have nothing else new to add? Wow. Did you want this to be a play longer than two minutes? Because you've not said anything, really, except the heart of it all. There are no events, no actions, and no defined characters yet. Nada. Those things, all the fun of it, are still to come.
Scenarios. I assign my students to write scenarios, which are a kind of outline of their writing project. If you spend a lot of time on your scenario, it is a rough (very rough) first draft. At the least, it is an outline. It is a lot of work, but it forces the writer to make a series of decisions; out of those initial decisions, come changes and the first edited version, which is a first complete draft. Again, rough (all drafts are rough until the fourth or fifth: it's only then you actually know what the story is about and where you are going).
The scenario asks you to spend time fleshing out the characters, the conflict, the action beats, the spine, the setting (time and place), and answer questions like "Why now? Why is this happening today and not yesterday or tomorrow?", a question that is integral to drama.
Typically, a scenario for a one-act play (usually written in 30-60 pages) is 7-15 pages in length. For a full-length (75-100 pages) it should be about 20 pages. Again, it is an outline, but a good scenario will enable the writer to make changes in story, character, and structure before/while writing the complete draft. It will also point out problem areas: a weak middle, lack of real conflict, a protagonist without desire, a mushy end.
The scenario is a flexible document, a blueprint for an organic document, the playscript. Plays will change and morph and shift throughout the writing process: the scenario will help the writer do that with less frustration. It will actually allow you to get to the fun part--writing dialogue, character, and story--more quickly.
Fueling up. This might be part of research but I advocate all artists spend time feeding the brain/eyes/ears/imagination. Museums, movies, books, music, plays, opera, dance, parks, architecture, games, magazines, newspapers, and so on and so on... feeding/fueling your artistic hungers.
And with that, fuel up on what you love, but step outside the box and give yourself something new and different, too. Bollywood. Jazz. Rembrandt. BBC. Historic home tours.
If you do not feed this part of you, you will run out of inspiration and new ideas. Your work will get thin and pale, because you will keep using the same ideas, images, words, actions over and over... nothing new goes in, nothing new can come out.
In the same way, fuel yourself with the best. Sure, read all the horror novels you want to, but read Edgar Allen Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, Stephen King and Clive Barker, too. See how these masters structure stories, compel the reader's imagination, use words to paint a picture and evoke an emotion. Reading mysteries? Make certain you read Chandler, Hammett, Christie, and Grafton: they don't sell millions of books and win all the top awards because they're pretty. It is because they can tell a story, compel readers, etc. They know their genre, their tools, and their art: read and learn, young Jedi! Steal (like Shakespeare and Moliere) and become great!
Tools. Get to know your tools like a master craftsman. Whatever they are. Words, pen, paper. Nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs. Conflict, structure, climax.
Don't kid yourself: it takes years to master your craft, but mastering your tools is the only direct route.
Preparation makes inspiration sweeter: don't waste your time by jumping over this step. You are not only preparing this single project, but preparing your craft/art for a lifetime of artistic comitment.
Pearl
This week, in my intermediate writing class, the students and I have begun discussing THE CREATIVE HABIT by Twyla Tharp. This is my new favorite book (for about two years now) on creativity and the process of creating.
"In order to be creative you have to know how to prepare to be creative."
Tharp's book is about the process and rituals of doing creative work (I want to focus on creativity as an active event, nto a passive state: creativity is not passive), and since I've been in a creativity slump, I'm getting a double benefit out of the discussion since it is kicking my butt about my own work. I like Tharp's viewpoint that "creativity should be a habit" and that "everything that happens in my day is a transaction between the external world and my internal world... Everything feeds into my creativity."
I've already written here about my feelings on process vs. product, and Tharp confirms my own notions (nice for me!). Her book is not about how to write or paint or dance, but how to create a process, a set of rituals, a "doing" of your chosen art. She sees art as a job and vocation, not a romantic appointment. Her focus is on process, not outcome.
It is clear when watching the dances she has made that Tharp understands her tools: rhythm, lighting, space, and the human body. Here is a very short video clip to give you a taste (how can we talk about dance without seeing it?).
It is also clear that Tharp consistently grows her skills and challenges herself: moving from contemporary to classical music to Sinatra ballads, working in modern dance, ballet companies, and on Broadway, choosing artists like Gregory Hines and Mikhail Barishnikov to partner with, etc.
A funny thing happened in class. We started talking about one of her exercises, "Give me one week without..." Tharp identified mirrors, clocks, newspapers, and speaking as potential clutter and distractions that keep us from doing our work, things that take our time and spend it frivolously--and in a recession we hear about every day! I could make a long list of distractions for myself: this blog, TV, books, cooking, eating, the phone, the cat, shopping, on-line shopping... and lots more.
In our discussion, my students resisted the exercise I proposed: stop one thing for one week. They named Facebook, cellphones, computers, friends, boyfriends, and other things as possible distractions... but refused to choose even one to give up for a week. When I suggested that we set the task as viewing emails only 3 times daily at regular intervals and answering emails at the time one picked them up, they squawked in protest: "What?!?"
Their reaction reinforced for me how many distractions I have between myself and my work. So here I go: for the next week, I'm going to answer my email 3 times daily--only--and answer each one as I get it. Same goes for cellphone and home phone voice mail.
I am also going to reinforce my morning practice of waking up, feeding the cat, showering, and writing for 60-120 minutes... by not answering email until after I complete the task. Let's see how it goes.
Pearl
I realized yesterday that I am lagging behind in my creative work. Since returning to the US, I haven't been inspired to write or paint, and have done too little photography. Although my cooking has improved--I can say I have been inspired in this area.
I regularly visit Creative Every Day and Musings from the Moonroom for inspiration, and they've been great sources of information, as usual.
But...
Day to day, back to work: I'm still adjusting.
Working to someone else's schedule: still adjusting.
Getting my home workspace up and functioning smoothly: in process.
Finding my focus: in process.
Part of this may be a change in schedule (I'm back on the clock at My U, meaning teaching three classes and doing regular admin meetings and advising) while trying to keep balance in my life (not letting it get absorbed by an all-work/no-play philosophy that has taken ove rin the past), and part of it may be suddenly returning to a life full of people: friends, co-workers, students, family, and cat, all in close proximity... rather than email distance across an ocean.
Part of it is simply not getting to it. The reality is that in order to have a creative life, I have to schedule creative time. That time has to be sacred: off-limits to other aspects. I'm not doing that... yet. Then I have to sit down and focus on the goal I set for that specific time, whether it is writing, cooking, or painting a new watercolor (desperately trying to improve my technique!).
Today is Tuesday: my goal for the rest of the week is two-fold. First, spend 90 minutes every day working on making my study a clean, calm, uncluttered place for writing, and, second, spend 90 minutes every day writing. I'll reassess on Sunday, which is my creative day off. Sounds good, right?
Send good thoughts.
Pearl
Right now in my own new play, I am working on making the setting matter.
I pinned this picture at the center of my inspiration board:
Besides that picture--which struck me the minute I saw it--I'm using this one:
The view of a city's rooftops.
In writing plays, the setting is your final character. It is the "where" and "when" of the story, and in production, will be the most valuable visual assets besides the actors themselves. It is the environment in which your story can happen--it enables your story. All plays happen in the "here and now"--and your setting is that, the here and now.
Your story couldn't happen anywhere else.
Your story couldn't happen any other time.
It starts today, in this place you show the audience on the stage.
In Our Town, the "here and now" is the theatre itself and the time of performance; the audience travels from there to Grover's Corners, but everything happens in the theatre during these two hours... Wilder reminds you of that again and again. The action of Hamlet happens in Elsinore, in and around the palace, in public and private spaces connected to the characters. True West happens in the house of Austin and Lee's mother, while she is away and her sons are forced to spend time alone there... relating.
It is tempting to make the setting "anywhere" and the time "anytime": that leaves you free to make anything happen, right? You won't be stuck with boring kitchen-sink realism or familiar living room couches... instead you can make your imagination run riot, baby!
First, some kitchen sink/living room couch plays that are far from boring or familiar:
- True West by Sam Shepard
- Crimes of the Heart by Beth Henley
- Sticks and Bones by David Rabe (one of my personal favorites)
- A Doll House by Henrik Ibsen
- Look Back in Anger by John Osborne
- Topdog/Underdog by Suzan Lori Parks
- Noises Off by Michael Frayn
- Trifles by Susan Glaspell
- Long Day's Journey Into Night by Eugene O'Neill
- Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams
- The Odd Couple by Neil Simon
- Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee
- Fefu & Her Friends by Maria Irene Fornes
That should keep you busy. I could add more, but these are excellent examples of how a dramatist uses a specific "here and now" to spark and drive the action of his or her narrative.
If the action can only happen here, if it can only happen now, the writer has to know why. This means--unlike leaving it completely open--that you as a writer have to actively decide the conditions of the action. For example: my play takes place in an artist's studio, in a loft building, where she can actively see out these windows to the city beyond, at a slight distance. She is attached by an invisible umbilical chord to that city, but she has to be at a distance from it, to watch it but not be in it, at sidewalk level. The windows are between here and the city. It is in her studio because that is the place she controls, which is necessary for her. She works here, she lives here, the people she has in her life come here to her. They live there (the city) but they come here (to the studio) to connect with her. Either by phone or email or in person. It is a play that is contempoary, first because it is an urban play, which sets it in the last 400 years or so, and 150 in America, which is where she is. Second because she is a successful woman artist, living by her work: last... century maybe? Third, because it is a loft building reconditioned for artists... last 50 years? Fourth, because she can bring the entire world into her studio via email and phone delivery: last decade.
See? Couldn't happen in 1715. 1825. 1900. 1973. 1990.
Playwrights are, more and more, turning to a kind of film sampling of settings as well, which in turn means short, clipped scenes that feel more like edited films than live plays. More or less gone are the kinds of 60-minute acts in a single setting/"real time" structure used by O'Neill, Ibsen, and Chekhov. Spectators just aren't so used to them any more (no such thing in TV, film, or video games) and maybe don't have the attention span for it (thanks to music videos, Tivo, and the pause button).
Seriously: when is the last time you were at a movie that someone didn't get up in the middle of the action and go out... for popcorn, the bathroom, or whatever. In a 90-minute movie. Our cultural attention span is now at the 12-minute interval between commercials, or less, given (again) the pause button.
Scenes flip by with little relevance to the specifics beyond public or private, indoor or outdoor. Maybe that is just a testament to how generic our homes and public spaces have become, thanks to global chains like McDonalds, Ikea, and Border's. Maybe they're trying to suggest how generic our cultural lives have become... No.
Making your play "any time" or "any place" and thinking that the environment doesn't matter is either lazy or ignorant.
Questions to ask yourself:
- Control: who controls or owns this space? Who owns it nominally (like by deed or lease) and who owns it by action? How does this character demonstrate his/her ownership of the space?
- Public, private, or both: What can happen in your setting? Who can walk in freely... or not? Who can walk out? Is it as private as a bedroom, or as public as a front yard? What are the expectations of privacy built into this space, and how to the characters respect or disrupt that?
- Contents: what is in this space? Nothing? a working kitchen? 15 pieces of furniture? A porch swing? A see-saw? A circle of chairs facing in? facing out? A hanging curtain than reaches all the way to the floor and is completely opaque?
- Texture, color, and light: black and white? warm colors? cool colors? all Pepto-Bismol pink? all slick, shiny black leather? all soft and white? dirt and gravel strewn across the floor? fuzzy cordoroy beanbag shapes? a pool of water?
- Open or closed: Walls? Doors? Windows? Shutters, screen, curtains?
- Style: realistic? abstract? backdrop-painted? oversized, undersized, monochromatic?
Why do these questions matter? Let's see, what could happen in a space in the house of your favorite crazy aunt, her fancy drawing room, which is decorated in full Louis XV antiques and thick carpets... all of which comes in fully touchable black leather, black brocade, and black velvet, including the big curtain that hangs over a huge gilt-framed mirror, and where there are four elegant doors, each with a chain lock, deadbolt, and lock-and-big gold key? And she lives in Berlin in 1937...
Or: a summer's evening in 1968, on a Midwestern civic playground, and the only thing present onstage this evening is a see-saw, painted a nice cheerful primary red originally but now, used by kids for many years, nicked and dented with rust, dirt, and age. Slight squeak with use. In a open park where all the other playground equipment is some space away... about 9 pm at night, dusk, in late August.
Or: an empty space, now, lit by hanging industrial fluorescent lights. With a straight line on the floor painted bright yellow stretching from one wingspace to the other. That is marked every 10 feet by a matching yellow arrow head pointed stage left. And a solid-frame door on either end of the line, in front of each wing space, closed.
What could happen in any of these spaces? What could NOT happen?
Like imagining characters the more details you allow about your setting, subject always to later change, the better and tighter the action will be. The action MUST happen here and MUST happen now. Not yesterday, somewhere else. Not tomorrow, down the street or in Tokyo.
Setting is the neglected character in most plays, but it can be one of the biggest assets you bring to your plot.
Pearl
Since I read Annie LaMott's post on Salon about her in-Box to God, I have been thinking about what a good idea that is. First, because I admire Annie Lamott as a writer writing about writing, and second, because letting go is not something I do well. And maybe third, because I love boxes of all types: it's another obsession, like coffee, Bruce Springsteen, and paper goods. Not dangerous, just sometimes inconvenient.
At any rate, last week at the Musée Guimet I finally found a box I felt worthy of the job.
It is round (a shape I like, instinctively), and the outside is origami paper. There were multiple pattens, and I picked this one because it will go well with an African wire basket I already have at home on my desk. I use the basket--made from copper wire wrapped with brightly colored plastic coating--to hold my Post-it pads.
Once I opened it, I was really hooked.
There's a second lid inside, and the box is aluminum, I think. Very light in weight.
The box is small overall, holding only 110 grams. The outside paper is so beautifully put on that I can match the lid and body pictures perfectly. And the circle on the top nearly matches the sides... due to the pattern, it cannot match exactly. The handwork here is gorgeous and meticulous, so whoever made it (and it seems to be a combination of hand- and machine-made) took a lot of care with this box.
That kind of care is important with everything you make, and it pleases me to own something that the maker cared this much about. William Morris said, "Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful." These are good words to start a week with.
I have added a few books I think are excellent about creativity and writing to my library. Here is the link to LaMott's post on Salon.
Pearl
For Halloween and "just because."
The print version: "Instructions"
Or...
This poem sends chills down my spine... has since the first time I read it. His reading makes it even better.
Pearl
It's Wednesday, so I'm posting again about creativity and writing.
Action. In a medium based on conflict, dramatic writers must know the difference between writing action and writing activity. Action moves the plot forward and demonstrates character. Action defines the series of interactions from inciting incident to climax. Action raises the stakes in the scene, adding energy and value to the interaction.
Action = doing.
In live theatre, where there are no car chases, no gun fights, no jujitsu/kick-boxing matches, no explosions, and no transformers--action is most usually achieved through talking. In a play, characters talk to get something--always. It may be something tangible (a sandwich) or it may be something intangible (love), or it may be both. Usually it is both.
So "talk" (dialogue) is never idle chit-chat, although it may appear to be.
Dialogue = action = doing.
When well crafted.
Activity. Static and circular. This is the difference between writing conflict and writing bickering. In bickering, there's pushing and shoving, there's yelling and name-calling, there's accusation and a lot of hand-wringing emotion, but it's circular. There's no gain. There's no heat. You can feel the difference, as a writer or a spectator. As a writer, you have to feel the difference or your scenes will end in what I call the eddy: a tiny whirlpool of sucking energy that won't let the boat move downstream. It just goes round and round... and round and round and round and-- ok, you get it.
At the end of the scene or event, if the bodies onstage are at exactly the same place in the plot that they were before the encounter, no one has won or lost anything, nothing new has been introduced, no stakes were raised--you've got activity. Static. Passive. Seriously, you can feel it.
Activity can also revolve around props, wrongly used. Popular "activities" involving props include smoking, drinking, serving or eating a meal, sex, talking on the phone, writing in a diary, and emailing or typing on a computer.
Oh, the time wasted in contemporary drama on computer typing and talking on cell phones! These are not "actions," they are filler. They are voids used by writers who are too lazy or too blocked to write the complicated and difficult dialogue that would make the scene better.
The hard part: crafting dialogue to make it action. Here's the trick: your characters have to want something and want it a lot. They have to work to get it, all the time. Whether it is a sandwich or world peace, they have to constantly be trying new tactics to get what they want. To overcome the obstacles of other people, fate, the world's forces, and their own inner issues, they must pursue this goal.
This exercise will take 30-60 minutes. Take a scene you've written that you know has no juice or energy, but don't know why.
- read the scene carefully, then write down what each character wants in that scene (forget the whole play). And keep it simple: one or two words should suffice. If you find yourself writing an explanation, justification, or essay: STOP!
- having id'd what each character in the scene wants, examine each dialogue block. Does the character speaking try to get his/her desire, either directly or indirectly? No? Mark that speech in red
- if you can state that the character goes after her/his desire, how strongly? does she/he get it? How strongly mis she/he blocked? (note: hopefully, by the other character going after his/her desires. No? Then what is the obstacle?) If the answer is, half-heartedly, yes, not much... mark that in black
- do this throughout the scene; you should get a sense of failed/successful tactics and increasing obstacles
- who wins the scene? How hard is it for that character to win?
- what new information gets introduced throughout the scene? Mark that in blue as it appears
- go back to the red dialogue blocks. Cut them... or rewrite them to make them demonstrate the character's desire and tactics
- go to the black markings: you need to increase desire. Think BIG: How much does Hamlet want revenge for his father's death? How much does Blanche Dubois want to find a safe haven? How much does Jack want to marry Gwendolyn? How much does your character want that sandwich? Unless he/she wants it A LOT, nothing very interesting will happen.
- go back to the blue markings. They need to be spread throughout the scene, adding tension and surprise as they emerge. Spread it out. If there are only one or two pieces of new information, find three more.
- Note: this will feel mechanical and forced. Let it. You are consciously making decisions about a scene that isn't working, that you already know must change. Work consciously on your craft: forget "inspiration" and perfection. They are not helpful to you here. Stick with the technical stuff and continue to the end of the scene.
- assess: what is better now? Hopefully, you've cut activity (literally) and added desire/stakes. If not, re-do.
Have fun!
Pearl
