Tag: creativity

Occupy: Do Not Go Gentle Into That New Year

Posted on by bryon

As we bid 2011 good riddance, let’s take a few moments to gird for the battles ahead in 2012:

* It’s an election year: the president, a third of the Senate, and the whole House, plus various state governors and legislators and others. Meantime, a vocal minority is still holding our national government hostage to its revolutionary cant and its pledges to everyone but the American people.

* The assclowns who wrecked our economy are still in their high towers, still looking down on the 99%, still snapping their fingers for their pet government officials.

* The militarization of our municipal police departments proceeds apace.

* The wars on drugs, terror, immigrants, gays, women, workers, and free speech continue unabated.

I hold increasingly little hope for the American experiment our forebears set in motion, but I tend toward pessimism. We are not, in fact, preparing for a civil war, and many of our problems are perennial or even cyclical. And as one of the great book editors of our era, Marco Palmieri, tells us, “Pessimism is a misuse of imagination.”

So let’s be imaginative as we look ahead.

John Lennon said, “As soon as you react with violence, they know exactly what to do with you. Using humor and creativity in protest are the only things the establishment are not prepared to deal with.”

The establishment has gotten pretty good about using pepper spray to deal with peaceful, creative people. But we can still out-think them and bring them to heel.

Norman Lear urges us to use our creativity and our patriotism and our sense of right and wrong to stand up for the Constitution and for human decency. The country we save may be our own.

Pen to Paper: Potpourri

Posted on by bryon

I know this looks awfully lazy, but there have been a number of interesting things I’ve found in the past couple of weeks that I want to share with you. Thus, a links post. Enjoy.

* The five most stolen books.

* Ambrose Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary turns 100.

* The New York Times’s Bill Keller says, “Let’s Ban Books, Or at Least Stop Writing Them.”

* Kurt Vonnegut explains drama. I’m guessing he was qualified to do so.

* Everything you need to know about undressing a Victorian woman.

* Interview with Ira Glass. He talks about his career, creativity, and being wrong.

* Steve Pavlina tells us how to make brown rice. It has nothing to do with writing, but it’s foolproof (so sworn because it works for me). As for what he does once the rice is cooked, I have no comment.

Pen to Paper: Fan Fiction

Posted on by bryon

The first story I wrote was Star Trek fan fiction. It ran about two-thirds of a page long and was about the Enterprise blasting the heck out of a Klingon ship. I proudly handed it to my third-grade teacher for review. She neither mentioned it nor returned it. I apologize to my biographers for not being more diligent on their behalf when I was 8 years old.

Continue reading “Pen to Paper: Fan Fiction” →

Pen to Paper: Two More Soap Bubbles Burst

Posted on by bryon

There was a brief time in my earlier life when I watched soap operas. That’s what my mom was watching and I was then of the opinion that if the TV was on, it should be watched. (And if the TV wasn’t on, why did we buy one? I long ago overcame this notion.) The plots were faintly silly, but not as silly as other soaps got later. Still, they were engaging.

But soap operas are gradually becoming the stuff of TV history books. ABC has cancelled two more: All My Children and One Life to Live.

Continue reading “Pen to Paper: Two More Soap Bubbles Burst” →

Pen to Paper: Depression and Creativity

Posted on by bryon

Today’s topic comes from Greg’s second comment on last week’s topic.

Is there, in fact, a link between the depressive personality and the creative one? Do they inhabit the same skin? The answer is a definite maybe. It all depends on the latest study done, which may say the opposite of the study before that. There are some interesting parallels, however, between the manic phase of bipolar disorder and the creative process.

Some research suggests that it is not depression but rather the coming out of depression which engenders a burst of creativity. This seems reasonable; if you’ve been seeing through a glass darkly and daylight begins to break, isn’t that cause for a psalm of joy? Or perhaps an epic tragedy?

The belief that depression is a necessary component of creativity may be a cultural orientation: “In the West many people believe that creativity comes from torment, while in the East there is more of a tradition of great art coming from balance and realization.”

Author, psychologist and creativity coach Eric Maisel is quoted as saying, “Creators are not necessarily afflicted with some biological disease or physiological disorder… They experience depression simply because they are caught up in a struggle to make life seem meaningful to them.”

If you’re a happy and creative person, don’t hunt for reasons to be unhappy on the theory that you’re not down in the trenches with the rest of us. And for those who are depressed, perhaps it will help to believe that although “weeping may endure for the night, joy comes in the morning” (Psalm 30:5, speaking of psalms), and your creative cup will runneth over once more.

UPDATE, 12/16: Health.com has made a list of 10 Careers with High Rates of Depression. “Artist, entertainer, writer” is listed at number six. Right before “teacher.”

Pen to Paper: Harry Potter and the Creativity Conundrum

Posted on by bryon

With the upcoming release of the final Harry Potter movie, our favorite boy wizard is almost everywhere you look.

Once the Potter books became successful, various writers and other folk started crying, “That’s not original! I wrote that first!” Or “J.K. Rowling took this and this and this from this other book.” Envy is an ugly thing. Charlie Jane Anders and Michael Ann Dobbs have written an article posted at io9 that looks at all the claims and sorts fact from fiction.

It is interesting to see that what we think is purely original really isn’t. Rowling has acknowledged her debts to other creative minds. We see the same sorts of stories being told and retold. Writers today, after millennia of humans telling stories, aren’t in much position to bring something wholly new into the world. That doesn’t mean we can’t tell wonderful stories; we must recognize that we type on the shoulders of all who have told stories before us. Jill Harness, over at Neatorama, shows us how Rowling has made mythical creatures from stories of the past live in the world she created.

Finally, let me share with you an excellent piece by Cheryl Klein: A Few Things Writers can Learn from Harry Potter. (Spoilers abound if you haven’t read all the books.) This is something I come back to occasionally to refresh my memory and my imagination.

Pen to Paper: Coping through Art

Posted on by bryon

This is about writing in the sense that writing is an art, and being an artist of whatever sort can help carry you through difficult times.

The link is to a beautiful, bittersweet National Public Radio piece about a Smithsonian art exhibition titled The Art of Gaman.

“Gaman means to bear the seemingly unbearable with patience and dignity,” says Delphine Hirasuna. She is a third-generation Japanese-American and was imprisoned with her family in one of the rude internment camps during the fearful days after Pearl Harbor. The exhibition is of art created in the camps by American citizens who were deprived of their livelihoods and their liberties because they looked like the enemy. (N.B.: Neither German-Americans nor Italian-Americans suffered similarly.)

The story and the exhibition remind us that art can, in some ways, triumph over the darkness. It can keep us sane and even something resembling happy when happiness is but a distant memory. And out of the darkness can come beauty.