Archive for the ‘creativity’ Category

On Richness

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Lately, I’ve been try­ing to iden­tify where my writ­ing really dif­fers from the stuff that’s great, great writ­ing. There are a hell of a lot of places, but I’ve fix­ated for a while now on this con­cept of richness.

The sto­ries that *really* blow me away exude infor­ma­tion and con­fi­dence. They are full of a rich­ness of detail that is bog­gling. Telling details show up in nearly every sen­tence. The entire story works to con­vince you of this place, these char­ac­ters, these events.

A great exam­ple of a story with amaz­ing rich­ness was David Moles’ “Finnisterra.” I think China Mieville’s nov­els demon­strate it pretty well too. I see it in many of the sto­ries I have read by Gord Sellar as well. Basically, I see rich­ness as one of the defin­ing qual­i­ties of award-​​winning writing.

The rich telling details are rarely fab­ri­cated whole cloth. They’re believ­able because they draw from some real world knowl­edge. David uses mul­ti­ple lan­guages and cul­tures effort­lessly because he knows them inti­mately. China writes about cities because he dwells in them com­pletely. London is not so dif­fer­ent from his fan­tas­ti­cal cities. And Gord is so immersed in Korean cul­ture it can’t help but ooze onto the page in a totally engag­ing way.

I strug­gle with rich­ness in par­tic­u­lar because I’m not sure there’s any way to learn rich­ness other than to immerse your­self in a sub­ject like they do. I think the rea­son many new writ­ers work fall flat for me is because the only thing they are immers­ing them­selves in is writ­ing and SF/​F. The mark of some­one who really wants to get out there seems to be some­one who takes pas­sion for some­thing else and really dri­ves that home in a story.

There may be veins of rich­ness to tap into from my life, but I’m not sure. It leaves me wish­ing I could pack up and do some for­eign travel for six months all while read­ing trav­el­ogues and his­tory books. I feel like I just don’t have enough packed into my brain that isn’t about com­put­ers and web design that can be used to enrich my work.

So that’s the next big thing I’m work­ing on in improv­ing my writ­ing. What’s yours?

Keeping an Ideas File

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

When I first started writ­ing seri­ously, I kept a lit­tle text file on my desk­top where I would rapidly jot down ideas for the premises of sto­ries. Eventually, this turned into a note­book that I tried and failed to carry around. Then it turned into a col­lec­tion of ran­dom doc­u­ments on Google Docs. It’s cur­rent incar­na­tion is a folder on my EverNote account.

With ever­note, I can record voice notes, type ideas in on the com­puter or my phone, include pho­tos, and more. Pretty much any­thing I want to remem­ber and have acces­si­ble from any­where, I throw into Evernote these days, and that includes story ideas.

But I wanted to talk about the impor­tance of cap­tur­ing more than just the premise for sto­ries. I’ve started try­ing to cap­ture any kind of fas­ci­nat­ing tid­bit that I think might be use­ful at some point. When I see a per­son with a trait that I think would make an inter­est­ing con­cept for a char­ac­ter, I put it in. Collect every­thing, because I am find­ing that when inspi­ra­tion is run­ning a lit­tle low, these notes can be the ker­nel of cre­ative energy I need to steam­roll through a project.

I also carry around a flexible-​​cover Moleskine note­book, and I do jot down story ideas in here, but I also use that for web­site thumb­nail sketches, doo­dles, and more. Because I do all my writ­ing on a com­puter, it works very well for me to have this cen­tral, search­able tool for my ran­dom bits of ideas.

Somtimes, writ­ing a story is like play­ing Katamari Damacy. You just keep rolling the sticky ball of your brain around until it accu­mu­lates enough junk to let you go to the next level.

Don’t Damage Your Brand as a Marketing Twhore

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Twitter is fast becom­ing a pim­ple on the back­side of my social net­work­ing life. It’s always been an odd thing, under attack by spam­mers of the tra­di­tional sort as well as non­tra­di­tional. I block social media experts, SEO experts, and porn stars on a daily basis. They don’t care what I have to say, they just want to sell me stuff. Twitter’s a great way to share things, but straight-​​up prod­uct pitch­ing has been really get­ting on my nerves.

But in the past month, I’ve noticed an even more unset­tling trend on Twitter. I am not going to be polite about how I describe this. I’m call­ing this twhor­ing. A lot of other activ­ity on twit­ter has been assigned this term, but this is a bet­ter sub­ject for that descriptor.

What is Twhoring and Twimping?

Twhoring is hap­pily advertising/​spamming prod­uct names as hash tags to your entire fol­low­ers list for the off-​​chance that you might win some piece of tech. Twhoring ranks lower than actu­ally adver­tis­ing or pros­ti­tu­tion because adver­tis­ers and pros­ti­tutes actu­ally get paid for what they do. Twhores tweet away with a slim chance of get­ting any­thing for their pub­lic­ity efforts.

The same sort of peo­ple who will com­plain about ads on a web­site or on a TV show seem to lose their senses when pre­sented with an easy oppor­tu­nity to “win” a Apple prod­uct. You might think you’re clever and start tag­ging the hash­tag to every one of your tweets. This is what the twimps like Boxyspace and Moonballz want you to do. Strut their stuff, spread their brand­ing far and wide. Maybe if you’re lucky they’ll give you a snack cake. A Twinkie perhaps?

It doesn’t help that I loathe both com­pa­nies involved in twimp­ing out their prod­ucts with twhores. “Build your own web­site” com­pa­nies gen­er­ally offer shoddy prod­ucts and com­pete with pro­fes­sional designer/​developers such as myself. No drag and drop sys­tem is going to build you a bet­ter web­site than some­one who has done it for years. And if it does, then you’re prob­a­bly a designer your­self and you didn’t need their soft­ware any­way. But that’s beside the point.

You may think that tag­ging your posts once and a while doesn’t do any harm, but when every­one on Twitter is doing it, it becomes old real quick. There for a while this week, I’d say 30% of the tweets I saw had MoonBallz attached to it. It’s like a twitterly-​​transmitted dis­ease. It spreads rapidly, and it makes you ooze mar­ket­ing pus.

Disinfect your­self, my friends. Stop being a twhore and start hold­ing out for some­thing of real value, at the very least. This isn’t a con­test you’re par­tic­i­pat­ing in, it’s a unnat­ural viral mar­ket­ing cam­paign that makes the par­tic­i­pants look gullible.

Too many peo­ple I respect have fallen prey to this. You are giv­ing it away, folks. Value your brand. It’s worth more than a laptop.

Write a Complimentary Note to a Writer or Editor Day

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I am declar­ing today one of those non-​​holiday hol­i­day days.  You must all put this day in your cal­en­dar, and spread the word far and wide.

We all con­sume a tremen­dous amount of media these days, whether it be books, tv, mag­a­zines, or blogs.  But how often do we really express our grat­i­tude and appre­ci­a­tion to the cre­ators of these things?

I’ve long tried to make a point of writ­ing notes to writ­ers in my own field when I read a piece of work that I really enjoy.  I know how great it feels to receive such notes.  When you don’t make a lot of money in your cre­ative pur­suits, the appre­ci­a­tion from other human beings can really make it all worthwhile.

So, I declare today “Write a Complimentary Note to a Writer or Editor” Day.  Has some­one done a won­der­ful job with a story, or putting together an issue of a zine?  Tell them.  You’ll feel good, they will feel good, and a lit­tle more hap­pi­ness in these dark times can only be a good thing.

So how often should “Write a Complimentary Note to a Writer or Editor” day come about?  I’m think­ing weekly…  Hey, it’s not like Administrative Assistant Appreciation Day where you have to buy gifts.  This is just a few min­utes of your time to dig up an e-​​mail address and send a mes­sage to it.

The peo­ples of the inter­nets are so quick to say when we don’t like some­thing.  Let’s try to bal­ance that out a lit­tle bit.  Who’s with me?

Music for Renee:My aunt needs help

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Hi all.  This is another post in which I ask for money, but not on behalf of myself.   If such posts bother you, please go on about your busi­ness. I’ve gone back and forth on whether or not I should post this, ask­ing you all to help a com­plete stranger. But ulti­mately, I decided that it would be let­ting down my fam­ily if I didn’t say some­thing about it.  So here goes.

I’m ask­ing on behalf of a fam­ily mem­ber, my Aunt Renee, who recently lost a leg due com­pli­ca­tions from dia­betes.  She and her hus­band both live very much on a fixed income , and are now fac­ing very dif­fi­cult expenses not for the hos­pi­tal­iza­tion, but for the equip­ment and home adap­ta­tion costs so that she can do very sim­ple things like make it from her car to her front door.  The fam­ily has approached many orga­ni­za­tions for aid with the costs, but none have any fund­ing due to the economy.

I’ve helped my fam­ily set up a web­site to sell $1.99 down­loads of a song my mother wrote and recorded along with mus­cians around the world.  The site also has a dona­tion but­ton you can use if you’d rather just give a cou­ple of bucks and aren’t inter­ested in the music.    We’re not ask­ing for hand-​​outs.  But whether or not you lis­ten to the song is up to you I guess.  We’re try­ing to offer some­thing in return.

Anyway.  I appre­ci­ate, and the fam­ily appre­ci­ates, any help you can pro­vide.  You’ll have my grat­i­tude especially.

Visit Music for Renee

The Evolutionary Basis for Creative Depression

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Last week, The Economist ran a really fas­ci­nat­ing arti­cle on recent research into the evo­lu­tion­ary ben­e­fits of depres­sion.  Why do we get depressed?  Why did such a trait come to be, and if it’s so detri­men­tal to our health, why hasn’t it been selected against in the population?

Dr Nesse’s hypoth­e­sis is that, as pain stops you doing dam­ag­ing phys­i­cal things, so low mood stops you doing dam­ag­ing men­tal ones—in par­tic­u­lar, pur­su­ing unreach­able goals. Pursuing such goals is a waste of energy and resources. Therefore, he argues, there is likely to be an evolved mech­a­nism that iden­ti­fies cer­tain goals as unat­tain­able and inhibits their pursuit—and he believes that low mood is at least part of that mechanism.

Unobtainable or unre­al­is­tic goals?   Like, say, beat­ing the odds and sell­ing a story to the New Yorker?  Or sell­ing a screen­play to Hollywood for 6 fig­ures?  Or how about win­ning a Hugo award before you turn 30?  Could this explain why an unusu­ally high num­ber of artists and cre­ative types suf­fer from depression?

Creativity is often all about unre­al­is­tic goals.  The prob­lem is, with­out them, we would not strive to achieve the things we do finally achieve.  Aim for the stars, shoot for the moon, as they say.  So, depres­sion is tied directly to our ambi­tion and stick-​​to-​​it-​​iveness?  From the article:

Dr Nesse believes that per­sis­tence is a rea­son for the excep­tional level of clin­i­cal depres­sion in America—the coun­try that has the high­est depres­sion rate in the world. “Persistence is part of the American way of life,” he says. “People here are often dri­ven to pur­sue overly ambi­tious goals, which then can lead to depres­sion.” He admits that this is still an unproven hypoth­e­sis, but it is one worth con­sid­er­ing. Depression may turn out to be an inevitable price of liv­ing in a dynamic society.

Depression, an inevitabil­ity of a dynamic soci­ety and a cre­ative lifestyle?  What do you think?  Is it pos­si­ble that those of us who suf­fer so much “cre­ative” anguish would be much hap­pier with our lives if we aimed lower?  But would that just be giv­ing up, and just as bad as being depressed?  Which is worse, a lack of ambi­tion or being depressed?

On Writing Motivation

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Quaero_​verum asks:

You’ve prob­a­bly already writ­ten about 1,000 posts on it already, but moti­va­tion is my sore spot at the moment. As in, “sit thy butt down and just write!”

Also, when I do write, I sit and stare at the blank white screen for a lonnnng time. I am find­ing it hard to even churn out “free-​​writes”.…

My advice to you is sim­ple. Don’t force it. If you’re going through a period of low moti­va­tion, you may need to recharge your cre­ative bat­ter­ies. This is some­thing that I’ve had to learn the hard way.

Creative energy is a very poorly under­stood topic in my expe­ri­ence. Some man­age it very well and are able to be con­sis­tently, highly pro­duc­tive. See Jay Lake write a novel in a hand­ful of weeks. Others strug­gle for a decade. The prod­uct isn’t nec­es­sar­ily bet­ter in either case.

It’s very impor­tant to give your self oppor­tu­nity to write. But if you don’t write, it’s not nec­es­sar­ily because you’re lazy. Your energy could be low. You might not have any­thing to say right now. Maybe you’d rather draw, or take a pho­to­graph to express what you’re feel­ing. Who knows. The impor­tant thing is not to beat your­self up.

Lastly, I’d like you to go watch this pre­sen­ta­tion by Amy Tan from the TED Talks recently. She talks about how we per­cieve cre­ativ­ity, and she makes some very inter­est­ing points.

Watch the Amy Tan talk here.

Do any of you have any fur­ther advice on the sub­ject? I’m really curi­ous to hear what oth­ers think about cre­ative energy. It’s a topic that I’m only just start­ing to develop some the­o­ries about, espe­cially as it per­tains to my own work.

Reader Question Week

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I’m run­ning a lit­tle low on inspi­ra­tion for blog posts, so I thought I would ask you all– what do you want me to address? Any topic you like, please post it in the com­ments.  Be sure to look through the posts from the last Reader Question week (about a month ago)  to make sure your ques­tion hasn’t already been answered.

The Dancing Guy Stands For All That We Do

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

There’s a video mak­ing the rounds.  It’s not shot very well, and it might even make you a lit­tle motion sick, but if you can make it through it, I think it’s really worth it.   Try to get at least halfway through.  Here’s the video.  More after you watch it.

Here’s my expe­ri­ence of watch­ing this in a nut shell:

For me at least, the guy looked like a fool!  What a crazy way of danc­ing, and danc­ing all by your­self like that?  How embarass­ing!  I could never do tha–oh wow, some­one joined in. Hey,  here comes another.  Holy Shit.

I felt a shiver run down my spine when I real­ized what I was watch­ing.  Then I started to grin.  And I’m still grin­ning about it.  This is one of the more uplift­ing things I have seen in a long time.  I’ve been pon­der­ing why that is.

It feels like a metaphor for every cre­ative endeav­our.   Writing espe­cially, or blog­ging.  You’re on your own at first.  Dancing all by your­self in front of an indif­fer­ent crowd.   It’s harder than hell to get over the feel­ing that what you’re doing could be just a lit­tle ridicu­lous.  You keep doing it though, because it feels good.

Then some­one starts pay­ing atten­tion.  Your friends, maybe.  Then their friends.  You accrete fans, or fol­low­ers, or read­ers, what­ever.  The next thing you know, you’ve started that.  It’s a brave damned thing to do, and it’s never struck me until watch­ing this just now.

I hope this moti­vates you like it has me.  Keep danc­ing.  Just keep danc­ing,  no mat­ter what.

Expedition Update

Wow, I have some amaz­ing friends.  We’ve raised $160 towards my pho­to­graphic expe­di­tion to Yellowstone.  Proving that I am the AntiChrist or some­thing, I now only need to raise $666.   Please con­sider throw­ing a few bucks in the pot. The pic­tures are SO going to be worth it.

Kristine Kathryn Rusch on Staying Positive

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I need to take a short break from writ­ing blog posts today so that I can fin­ish up my new busi­ness web­site and get things rolling on it.  Instead, today, I offer you this link from Rusch:

Remaining pos­i­tive sounds like such a minor thing. Yet it is the key to every­thing. Oddly enough, suc­cess­ful free­lancers are the most cyn­i­cal, hard-​​bitten opti­mists in the entire world.

We have to be. Who would believe in us if we didn’t believe in ourselves?

No one dis­cusses remain­ing pos­i­tive at a day job, unless it is a require­ment of that day job. When I worked as a wait­ress, I had to smile at the cus­tomers and be nice. It was in the job descrip­tion. The same rules applied, per­haps more strin­gently, at my very first retail job. We had to be so incred­i­bly nice at that store that we were required (again, as part of the job descrip­tion) to wish each and every cus­tomer a very nice day.

It’s a great post, and I highly rec­om­mend you head over and read it.