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Archive for the ‘creativity’ Category
iPad Garage Band Test
I love music, and while I am fairly multitalented, making music is certainly not among my talents. However, as I’m experimenting with creating my own iOS games, I realized I made have the need for some simple soundtracks to complete the experience.
I’ve played around with sound/music programs in the past–especially back in the early demo days, mid 90s or so. Back when this great techno and graphics show off programs were coming out of the demo scene in the Nordic countries. But it never really stuck with me–they seemed too difficult to get my head around. I can’t read musical notation and translate it into actual music notes at all, even though I took a bloody class on the subject in college. I learned a lot of rules, but I just can’t look at the markings and “hear” the stuff.
Enter Garage Band for the iPad.
I spent a nice amount of time playing around with Garage Band yesterday. I managed to compose the piece below in about an hour. The important thing here is not that I created something special or unique–it’s just that what I created, to my ear, is pretty nice in quality compared to what I would have expected to be able to make. Now, anybody can string a bunch of samples together into something resembling a song. Well, they can now thanks to the ease of Garage Band on the iPad. This is totally the killer app of the year as far as I am concerned. You really can’t understand how easy this tool is to play with until you put your hands on it. For $4.99, check it out (if you have an iPad). It’s a true joy, this kind of creative play.
The piece I made is just a little jazzy thing–inspired very much by the theme song of Cowboy Bebop (I love bebop-style jazz). They need more brass samples! But that’s about my only complaint so far.
Here’s the song if you want to have a listen.
This app should finally put to rest the naysayers that claim the iPad is good for nothing but consuming media.
On Depth vs Diversification and Commitmentphobia
At any given moment, your business/career is at a crossroads. There’s one really big decision that everyone must consider at some point.
Is it better to specialize further,deepening your market or niche commitments, or is it better to diversify your interests, keeping your eggs in multiple baskets. On the one hand, you develop your skills further and you can achieve a mastery of sorts. On the other hand, you protect yourself against crashes. Say, for instance, that you have made it a specialty in developing real estate websites. Then, in 2008, the real estate market crashes. There’s widespread agreement that you’re one of the best at what you do—but the need has dramatically dropped off. You can be very good at something that nobody needs done.
It’s that fear that leads to a certain kind of commitmentphobia, where one is unwilling or unable to specialize in one area only. Why only write copy when you could also work on a novel? Why only build websites for real estate agents when you could learn to develop iOS and mobile applications? If one fails, then perhaps the other will succeed.
Or to put it in writer terms, why spend months and months polishing a single short story when you could write a dozen and see which one sticks to the wall?
Specialists have an opportunity to rise to the top of a field or craft. Spending six months on that short story may make it more likely that it will win awards. But you’re less insulated against failing. If your field becomes obsolete, or the story fails to sell, you’re in more trouble than if you diversified your efforts. You may not climb to the top when you diversify, but you’ll be insulated against failure from any one individual project or market. So which is it to be? I think nearly everyone makes this crucial decision in some aspect of their life.
There’s no one true answer to this question. Both options are valid. That’s part of what makes the decision so hard to make. The worst choice you can make is not to choose—to waffle back and forth.
Our time is sadly finite. Every minute we spend is a minute we never get back. I wonder how differently we would treat ourselves and each other if we were constantly aware of it? I think we would be forced to realize the selfishness and the generosity of our actions more. I don’t think of it this way, but the hour or so I’ve been drafting this blog post is time I have gifted to you, in the hopes that my conundrum and my perspective on it provides some measure of insight to yours. Our time is a gift that can be given freely, or horded for ourselves.
There’s another conundrum with which we all have to struggle.
That Banksy-designed Simpsons Couch Gag
Here’s the intro in question and a good overview about the talk surrounding it.
I was thrilled to watch it when it aired, and I found it very provocative, which I imagine was part of the point. But do you think it did anything to shock the average Simpsons viewer? It’s not a realistic portrayal of the production of the show (at least, I doubt they use sad unicorns to punch holes in their DVDs) and as I understand it, the conditions their Korean animators work under are nothing like that. There are probably animation studios that are run like forced labor camps, I suspect.
Is it subversion for subversion’s sake, or is there a political message the audience was supposed to take away? Was it supposed to make me think or encourage me to act? What do you think?
I’m Back in the Game
This past week, I completed the first draft on not one but two short stories, each targeted at some upcoming anthologies. The second story was written over the weekend, and while it wasn’t written completely with my newer, more deliberate process, it’ still turned out pretty good for a first draft. Next, to polish the hell out of it until it blind astronauts in the ISS.
So much of the difficulty in writing for me lies in overcoming a basic inertia. Sure, sometimes I get stuck, but the problem more often than anything else is just getting started.
Taking a long break from writing is easily the worst thing I can do with my process. The more regularly I do it, the easier it is. So for the foreseeable future, I’ll be making time to write every single day. The ball is rolling now, and I don’t want it to slow down or stop. Starting blogging again played a not insignificant part in overcoming that inertia, so thank you very much for reading, commenting, and making it generally feel like it’s worth the effort. You are the best.
So that wraps up this week’s self-indulgent “me me me” post. Tomorrow, we’ll get back to the business of providing something useful to you. Do you have any good news to share with the rest of us?
On Types of Writers Block
When I first began writing in earnest, I didn’t believe in writer’s block. You know how it is. When you’re completely lacking in self-consciousness about your works, it’s much easier to get things done. Doubt hasn’t entered the picture then, nor a dozen other ever-present concerns, experience-driven instincts, and mild phobias that you develop with time. These things are internal-process barnacles that form as an outer crust on the hull of your creativity. They weigh you down a bit, but when the wind is right, you sail straight enough despite them. The sailing is smooth and easy at first without them, but you probably have no real destination in mind, and the sailing is so smooth that it’s downright boring to any passengers along for the ride.
Since my days of proto-writerhood, about 8 years ago, I’ve discovered that writer’s block is real enough, and not only that, it comes from a variety of causes. Because writing is a damned boring thing to talk about literally, I’m going to flog this naval metaphor as I explore the forms of block I have encountered in my years at sea. (The irony of me relying on this—me, the kid who didn’t see the ocean for the first time until he was 19—is not lost.)
No
wind
The most common block to my writing is a lack of wind in my sails. The driving force behind my work goes away, and leaves me in the Sargasso Sea of the blank page. Why does the wind abandon me? Why does the wind do anything? The factors are too complex to pick apart. The wind of my inspiration can come from a lot of different places, mostly deep internal aspects of my self that I don’t really feel comfortable examining too closely. It feels like fragile machinery that would be too easy to disturb when it’s working right, and when it’s not, I never want to risk tinkering for fear of breaking something completely.
When faced with a lack of inspiration, I shut down almost entirely as a writer. I sit in mySargasso Sea and pass the time as best I can. Read, watch TV. Sometimes, I draw.
When I’m clever, I remember the goddamned boat has oars, and I heave to as best I can.
Right now, I can’t even find where I put the oars, but that’s another story entirely.
Wrecked on the rocks
Oops, steered this one wrong. Now I’m stuck in the muck, marooned on the rocks. I write myself into a corner often, especially when I don’t have a clear idea of where I’m headed—when I’m writing for the fun of the journey and not the destination.
The best way for me to avoid this is to know where I’m going ahead of time. For a while there, after conceiving of a story, the very next thing I attempted to do was envision the point or the finale. What would it build to? With that in mind, I could set sail. And if I saw a better destination along the way, there was no reason I couldn’t change course! My plans or outlines are never set in stone. They’re there just to keep me from the rocks.
There’s a leak
Sometimes you set sail with a story made of little more than a vague idea and a half-sketched out character concept. And it isn’t until you’re in deep waters that you discover your initial concept is full of holes (made by the wormrot of the implausibilitus, inconsistentia, or been-there-done-that-allia species). Now you find yourself sinking, maybe bailing for your life with a little hand waving, but the boat’s taking on the waters of disbelief and some of your passengers aren’t going to see the journey to the end. “No thanks,” they say as they dive off and swim back to shore. “We’ll take the next one.”
I scuttle a lot of story boats this way deliberately. The initial rush of an idea, those hard fast winds that come early; too often, I would set sail immediately without any planning at all, buoyed by the excitement of the freshness of it in my mind. More often than not, when I discover the flaws in my half-assed idea, I would sink the whole thing and move on. I’ve probably abandoned five times as many story ideas as I’ve ever finished. I was a strong swimmer in those days, but now I would just as soon arrive in a leaky boat and start work on patching.
I try to never patch-edit while I’m working on the first draft. That’s a sure fire way to end up completely bogged down.
Listening to the Crew
When things aren’t going well, the crew, made up of internal-editors, voices of self-doubt, and so on, they tend to get rowdy. Sometimes, even when things are going well, they’re a noisy bunch, and it’s tempting to give in and listen to the nasty bunch of swine.
If I had my way, I’d make them all walk to plank at the start of a voyage, but they’re not completely worthless. Best to gag them, tie them up, and throw them into the hull until you’re done with your maiden voyage, I say.
NOT Listening to the 1st Mate
My friend Jay Lake calls his subconscious Bob, but I tend to call my subconcious “Potatohead,” because he’s really not too bright. Sure, he’s creative and all, but he doesn’t have any concept of the realities of being a human being. Impractical, is what I’m saying.
But when it comes to sailing, Commander Potatohead was born into a life at sea. He may not know how to balance a checkbook or even earn a decent living, but the bastard knows how to sail better than I ever will.
I don’t always give him his due. Me, Captain Ego, I want to be right all the time, want to be in charge. I don’t like listening to the seasoned advice of Mr. Potatohead who really knows these waters better than anyone. When you fail to listen, you often end up with a mutiny on your hands, marooned, or stuck in a Sargasso Sea. Again.
That’s not even taking into consideration the difficulty of communication! While I speak the Queen’s English, Commander Potatohead speaks some patois that I’ve never even heard of before. I’m pretty sure he originates from somewhere in Polynesia—some obscure island nobody has ever heard of. So we can’t really talk. We resort to drawing vague pictures, gesturing wildly in some ridiculous game of conscious/subconscious Charades. And worse, we don’t keep the same sleep schedules, so we have to leave messages for one another on scraps of paper, rope, whatever we can find.
Frankly, it’s amazing we have ever completed a voyage together at all.
* * *
But we have. And I’ll be damned if I am going to let any of these things get in my way to completing my journeys in the future. I don’t care if I make it to the other side leaking like a sieve, tied up and held hostage by the crew, being slowly inched over the edge by a Commander Potatohead wearing an eye-patch—I’m going to make it.
When I look at creative block in the abstract, it’s much more intimidating. Abstract concepts aren’t easily defeated, but when I concretize the idea into a giant tuber wearing an eye-patch, it suddenly seems so much easier to overcome.
Maybe that will work for you too. Yarr.
Writing is a Sail Boat, And I’m Stuck on the Reefs
Labeling Oneself as an Artist and Why I Have Avoided It
I’ve strongly resisted the label of artist for a long time, because I don’t feel worthy of it, on the one hand, and on the other hand, to avoid the negative connotations that are entwined with the label in my backwards, redneck brain.
Who is an artist? (the ingrained notions)
Here’s what I grew up thinking of artists–not actively thinking or deliberately deciding to believe, but just absorbing in Kansas/Midwestern culture.
Artists are people who do not have real jobs. They are as likely to spend their time drinking absinthe, doing drugs, and sleeping around as they are to do anything honest and deserving of compensation. Artists do not contribute to the growth and welfare of society in meaningful ways. They are probably not very smart, because if they were smart, they would have gone into a profession like engineering or medicine where they could actually do some good and make real money to support their families. Artists, above all else, are irresponsible, childish, and poor. POOR!
Conversely, artists are talented (even if that talent isn’t valued very highly). They can draw anything they can imagine effortlessly. Their imaginations are superior to almost anyone elses’s. They speak a secret language of color and form, and really, if you want to rearrange your living room and get some new curtains, an artist would not be a bad person to ask. They’ll probably help for beer money.
Why I am not an Artist (the rationalizations)
I’m creative, sure. I do a bit of writing, but writing isn’t art, because art is visual, and writing is language. And yes, I know how to operate a camera, but artwork should convey emotions, tell a story, and my photography doesn’t convey any such thing. Anyone can pick up a camera and point it at something. Anyone can take enough shots, throwing out the bad, to make themselves look like a moderately decent photographer.
I’m a web designer, but design is not art. Design is communication, and it has strict rules (rules that I struggle every day to learn and understand better). And anyway, I primarily excel at writing code and solving technical problems, less so than making things beautiful and artistic.
Despite my ingrained beliefs about artists as professionals, I grew up secretly wishing I could be some kind of science artist, but I wouldn’t ever really because I wanted to contribute and make money. And finally, for some reason, I cannot ever be an artist because I cannot draw anything that I picture in my head.
Why I am an Artist (the realization)
First of all, most of the bullshit I grew up believing about artists is just that–bullshit. Artists are as intelligent as anyone else, if not more so,as responsible, and they are no more likely to drink heavily and do drugs than anyone else. They contribute to society in less quantifiable ways than say, an engineer, but they act in a way as society’s conscience, as it’s outlet. As a means of self-reflection. Artists play a role, and while I don’t quite understand that role, I know they have one and it’s deeply important. Being an artist is a real job, and has all the baggage that jobs have. It’s also really, really hard to make a living at.
Being any good does not determine whether one is an artist or not. And art encompasses many more skills than just drawing. My photography may be something anyone can do, but every once and a while I make something nobody else but me could make. I’m actively trying to sell prints of my work actively, so I guess that right there makes me an artist in the same way that actively pursuing publication made me a writer.
Design may or may not be art, but I’m a working creative individual. Sometimes, what I create is art. Sometimes, it’s crap. Well, more often than not. But I share more in common with working illustrators and painters now than I do with my friends who spend their days slicing DNA in laboratories.
So, yeah. I am an artist. Whatever that means–I’m still learning. It’s not all that I am, but I’m done not calling myself that just because I can’t draw and I grew up believing some kind of dumb things about who writers are. My life is centered around creative acts of one form or another, so. There it is.
Have any of you ever resisted labeling yourself like that, for similar mixtures of reasons? I’m curious to know if this is difficult just for me, or if it is for others.
PS: I keep trying to fix that drawing thing. I’ve been stuck in the first couple of chapters of “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain” for a couple of years. Maybe this year will be the one that I finally get past the weird tracing stuff and start learning how to stop myself from drawing on the left side of the brain.
Announcing JT365
Today is my 32nd birthday.
I can’t say that I’m happy about it. But I’m coming to terms with it.
At this point in my life, birthdays for me are a reminder of my mortality. They ceased being about gifts when I was in my teens. For a while in my college years, I thought my birthday was bad luck due to a string of nasty events around my birthday, so I went out of my way to hide it from friends well into my late 20s. I’m past that nonsense, but I still grow melancholy.
I wanted to do so much more with my life than I have. It feels as if I have squandered the last ten years, even though I know this is not so. I have some wonderful things to show for my time. Nothing of serious consequence in the greater world, but… I am content with this.
It’s time that instead of doing things to impress other people and draw attention to myself out of some misguided sense that it would be a way of achieving a kind of immortality, I have instead determined that I will attempt to dedicate my remaining time towards living a life that I can look back on without regret. As my old boss used to say, each day is a gift, and it is up to us how we use them. I have long squandered them on things that I will not remember when my time comes to pass.
So today, in an attempt to live each day more fully, to connect more with the passage of time and develop more of a sense of being here in the now, I am launching my 365 day photography project. I am taking and selecting one photograph each day for the next year. There’s nothing original about it. Many people have done these before, but I have not. I At times, I will experiment with new techniques. Sometimes, I will probably not be able to get out of bed, and so I will be forced to find some interesting way of capturing the ceiling of my bedroom.
If you all, the audience, serves a purpose in this project, it is to keep me honest. I find that when you do something like this out in the open, you feel more dedicated to the task. I let myself down often enough, but it’s a motivator to avoid letting others down. Ultimately, however, this is a project I do for myself. You’re welcome to take pleasure from the project, and I hope you do. But I’m doing this for so many more reasons than usual.
The 365 project can be found here. You can follow it on twitter here.
So that’s my primary goal right now, on the road to turning 33. We’ll see how it goes.
Exit Funk, Stage Left
You might have noticed that I was in a bit of a funk last week. Thank you to everyone who made lovely comments on my last post. I was feeling a little ashamed about my whining there, so I haven’t thanked or replied to anyone individually. I appreciate you all being there for me when I get like this. Thank you for putting up with it.
I’m seeing things more clearly this week, and I feel some energy returning. Part of the problem I suspect was that I had a really nasty cold, combined with coming down from all the excitement of being back home to see folks.
I’m focusing all my energy right now on becoming the best web designer I can. I think the time for exploring other potential careers is not when you’re scraping by as a freelancer. I’ve been slow to commit to life as a freelancer, worried about any number of things associated with it, but I’m slowly conquering those fears and starting to treat my business like, well, a business, instead of just a guy working out of his office all day.
I have plans to rebuild this site from the ground up, as well as build a photo store to sell prints of my landscape photography. Stay tuned for more about all that in the future.
Thanks for hanging in there with me. I will hopefully start to have cool things to show and share again soon.
Delaying a Project and a Good Review
My “pays the rent” freelance project load is such that I’m going to have to hold off on my “pipe dreams of the video game industry” project right now. I’m going to shoot to start it up in November now (although I’ll be squeezing reading in anywhere I can). It’s embarrassing to have made that post on Monday and by Wednesday have to change my schedule and plans, but as always, my first priority is paying the rent. I always seem to think there’s more time in the day than there really is. I should probably be working more on my time management skills (which really aren’t bad) before I should be working on my game writing skills. Anyway, more to the point, I’m not seeing a lot of work coming down the pipe right now, so I need to hustle some up. If you’ve been thinking about hiring me to build a website, now’s a good time.
In writing-related news, my story in Interzone issue 224 (on newsstands and in bookstores now!), “Godfalls’s Chemsong,” received a very nice review from John DeNardo over at SF Signal. I’ll take 4 out of 5 stars any day. The story is an experiment of mine to create bizzare alien biology and society using mostly real Earth biology traits that exist in real creatures. I only improvised a little bit, and I’m pleased with the results. I really should write more stories like that, but they’re a bear to come up with. But I guess if it were easy, everybody would be doing it.
