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Showing posts from December, 2012

Forced Marchen

In a recent chat with my friend Fantasia she asked how to write about something that doesn’t really catch your interest.  That’s a head-scratcher.  It seems to me that many young writers face having assignments that don’t flow because they are someone else’s idea. Ideas are seldom in short supply.  At any one time I have three or four potential writing repositories on my person, ready to capture any thought that I can cage.  Still, the ideas—often the ones that feel like the best—come when writing or even recording is not an option.  In heavy traffic.  In the shower.  In the dentist’s chair.  At a faculty meeting.  Just before sleep hits in earnest.  (The last two may occur simultaneously.) Life is too full of ideas to have to cater to some instructor’s whims.  Nevertheless, I had to admit to Fantasia that writing what you don’t want to is good exercise.  All writing is good.  That’s not to say that it is all good writing, but it is good for the writer.  And like exercise, so

Stimulate your Passion

The Passion of the Titans is a sexy book.  Quite apart from the expected libido of a rock star, Medusa is, in a word, hot.  A young goddess in a world literally full of Adonises and Apollos.  What is a girl to do? Studies have shown that priming yourself can deepen creativity.  It’s probably just evolution in action, but thinking about sex makes you more creative.  It may seem sexist, but the old saw about the hapless writer working away with the picture of a naked (fill in the gender) in from of him/her (select one) is accurate.  Blame it on your hormones. No one knows whence creativity emerges.  Ornaments and flourishes hardly seem necessary in the hard business of living life.  Some of us would rather die at our writing desks than give it up.  Our nature compels us to create, to be gods. Creativity, like libido, ebbs and flows and surges and gushes.  Some days you might as well be in the Atacama Desert, not even a cactus in sight.  Other days you’re writing secret mes