Sometimes imagination pounces; mostly it sleeps soundly in the corner, purring.
~Leslie Grimutter
So when your imagination isn’t conjured up by tooth brushing, what do you do to get the creative juices flowing?
I hate it when a creative idea is tickling my brain. You know the one…at first you think you are nailing down the right word or phrase, a title perhaps…and in the next moment you’ve seen you’re work flash before you start to finish and wish you could write fast enough to complete a novel in 45 seconds instead of 45 days or months, before you lose one grain of throught.
It can seem very overwhelming and I have years of crimes to solve and children’s adventures to recount. Am I afraid of waking the lion?
“I am imagination. I can see what the eyes cannot see. I can hear what the ears cannot hear. I can feel what the heart cannot feel.”
Peter Nivio Zarlenga
American Businessman, Founder of Blockbuster Videos
Do you think we can claim that? Can we be imagination? Do you think you see what others cannot see and hear what others cannot hear?
Being that person of imagination is nothing if we then do not create and share. While we are feeling what other hearts have not felt, can we make their heart feel as ours? Do you recognize this as a creative call?
So often I have found myself in one of those creative positions…the place without a pen and paper. I’m usually doing one of the following…resting, brushing my teeth, taking a shower or driving. Now sure they make all kinds of gadgets to help with this problem. It doesn’t matter; I may already own them all. But I still find that when I’m creative, I’m the most unprepared and have to get out of bed or consciously repeat my thought with a mouth full of toothpaste until I write it down or it is gone.
We are aware of our responsibility to create. We do hear a calling and we know it is not for ourselves alone.
Is there a call? When are you most creative? Do you always have a pen and paper…or a toothbrush?
So I had to come back from vacation. I’m thrilled to be back and like I said before I left, I didn’t over pack and I’m glad I didn’t since I only got through a few chapters of my creative book.
I did very little recreational writing…that is what freelancers do instead of drugs, I mean when they are not writing for other people. The words were fluid but constantly interrupted by having to get up and catch a two year-old before she wandered off from the watchful eye of the older eleven year-old.
Would I consider it a creative vacation? Did I keep up my end of the bargain? You bet. I figure out of the two or three chapters I read and the two or three pages I actually wrote that I did more than I had accomplished in the past. It is something to celebrate about if I think about it. I actually wrote for myself, not a blog, not a keyword rich article, but for myself. Okay I did jot down some notes for you and Writely Applied. We are in this together.
Another great YouTube. I have to say I did have a lot of fun selecting these before vacation. I was very disappointed that I had some posting issues and will continue sharing…even though I’m itching to do some other topics. I’m honoring the creativity inspired by China, in China and for China…anything Chinese, until the close of the Olympics. I will be referring to these posts in other topics so we must share them.
Again I have to say, wish I had time to get involved in creativity like this. The closest I may get is Donna Dewberry. What is the closest you get to other creative endeavors outside of writing?
This is a result of a YouTube poster visualizing a poem. On some days I wish I could create art like this but words are easier. On visualizing a poem I think I could do that. I know as an author of poems it is easy to visualize ones I write. I enjoy reading and visualizing the works of others as well.
One of my favorites is Eugene Field’s Poems of Childhood. Maybe because even if the references in his poems are dated it brings me back to childhood. My mom read the poems to me and I was so happy when she gave me her special edition copy. Another favorite is Edgar Allen Poe. It would be great fun to take one of his poems and create a work like the following.
Enjoy!
All the birds have flown up and gone
A lonely cloud floats leisurely by.
We never tire of looking at each other
Only the mountain and I.
I searched for some Chinese poetry. I love the phrases used, different from our own. Sometimes it is hard to know if it was an ingenious placement of words or if it was coincidence from translation. Either way, in many instances the outcome is breathtaking or thought provoking. Sometimes it is something that you just wish you thought of first.
Like fortunes from fortune cookies I sometimes collect beautiful quotes. If I’m so lucky to write down the right words of a fleeting thought I collect them too. When I’m not lucky…lying in bed in the middle of the night without a pen or paper, I wake up and they are gone.
In tribute to all the thoughts that have floated away at night, here is to the mountain that we will leave behind.
While I was away I decided to share a week of inspirational items from China or wherever. Some technical difficulties ensued and I’m back but I’d still like to share.
I enjoy creativity from around the globe and was surprised at the items I could find to share China with you while the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games are being played.
From the opening ceremonies to the sports being played, there are sure to be many inspiring stories that people will tell. I wanted to take a quiet look at China, as if we are walking through a museum this week…or dreaming on some clouds.
Think about some of the places that have inspired you this week. Meanwhile, my love of birds shows here as we look at one person’s lucky find of a rare bird preening. I found this by accident and I think it has nothing to do with China but I can’t resist a bird preening. I find it relaxing. She took it through a telescope with a digital camera for fear if she got too close that the bird would fly away. To me it looks like watercolors behind the bird.
Here is some inspiration. Setting aside cultural differences and a government we don’t see eye to eye with, when you break something down to the most basic things in life, the people and the land; it is hard not to be inspired.
Early this summer I fell in love with China working on a tea project. I think it is one of the most incredibly beautiful places on the face of the earth. There are so many tea regions producing a variety of tea, picked by generations of Chinese people.
I could feel the morning air as I read about the mornings that the tea pickers climbed the mountainsides to collect certain teas and just the right time. I could smell them preparing the teas at various stages. I could feel China in so many photos I viewed.
Where are you when you write? Are you at a desk in front of a PC? Or are you living your words.
This is the start of my vacation. My intent is to make it a creative one. I won’t over pack because over packing tends to lead me to indecision over what to do. So I’ll bring a book, Marlow’s paper, a notebook and many pens, since I seem to lose many pens constantly.
I’m considering bringing my children stories that I have hard copies of to type into our laptop but it may require too much work to find them. So I guess if I write everyday that will be something anyway.
Will you write each and every day? Do you have one of my pens?
While setting myself up at LiveJournal, I also took the opportunity to set up a Writely Applied community there. That would be after I actually figured out how to post there, and figured out where my posts were going. I’m still a bit confused but will continue to work on the progress since it seems like a productive place when you get the hang of it. I love the way you can read everybody’s post one after the other as if it were one big blog.
I’ll try to post updates between there and Gather so that anyone using either of these resources can feel free to start a creative activity, post a story, give an update on your creativity status…whatever your hearts desire.
I’ll be honest and say I really wasn’t into all this social networking until recently for other projects. I’ve changed my whole outlook on the process and have to confess that I’m enjoying meeting all the people I meet. You know the people that otherwise would not like to meet you in a café because more than likely both of you would have children hanging off of you while you were trying to get work done, or they don’t want to change out of their pajamas for the afternoon. Problem solved. I don’t care what you wear while writing…just don’t share.
Meanwhile, we’ve been accepted at BlogCatalog and are ready to roll. I need friends in the neighborhood people….pick me! Pick me!
Well, we’ll all get the hang of it. I figure now’s a good time before vacation to get these things in order so after vacation my worries will be minimal…writing posts that keep you all happy, etc.
So what are your favorite places? Where will we be seeing each other when we leave Writely Applied? Does all this social networking seem like a second job sometime? With all that being said, does becoming an author published in print sound all that hard now?
