Category: Journal

Doubt…at some time or another it hits us all. Doubt in our abilities, doubt in the meaning and value of our endeavors. People who work creatively often wrestle with this, and it doesn’t necessarily end with “success.” These negative thoughts can really get you down and lead to a serious loss of productivity.

How should you deal with it? Know that it is only temporary. Think about those times when your confidence soars. And have faith that what your doing is meaningful. Have faith in yourself and your work. Change the subject in the negative conversation you are having with your inner voice. Lead that conversation back to making progress in your creative work. Finally, just get back to doing that work. The clarity of your purpose will return soon enough.

Jay Lake has written a very honest post looking at this issue head-on: Blind faith and the working writer.

Hearing a few friends discussing the latest Lost episode I made the joke that it sounded like it was the audience who was lost. However, I had to admit that it sounded like the kind of crazy story I would totally fall in love with. One of those friends recently lent me the 1st season on DVD and having totally fallen in love with the series I wanted to make a few observations.

My initial joke was in a sense not far from the truth. Lost employs a somewhat unique plot structure in which we know almost nothing about what is actually happening. The show presents a series of strange events and synchronicities. Everything becomes more and more interconnected, and because of this everything that happens begins to seem meaningful. It’s a wonderful effect that generates great discussion.

The characters in Lost are experiencing the same mystery and lack of concrete information as we are, which leads Locke to conclude that “everything happens for a reason,” evoking a sense of destiny and meaningfulness to their predicament. This is in sharp contrast to the seemingly arbitrary demise of various characters. The schoolteacher being blown up by dynamite is a great dramatic example, and of course all the people who didn’t survive the crash. And it is this that drives the counterpoint in which Jack declares that he doesn’t believe in destiny.

Because we do not fully comprehend the events themselves, the show becomes about how the characters deal with the mystery. It asks the question, how do we deal with mystery in life? Few people claim to fully understand the meaning of life, but there are hints everywhere that there is some greater meaning, some great mystery. I think this is why it is so easy to relate to the characters in Lost, even though they are in an extraordinary circumstance. In a way, we are all in an extraordinary circumstance, and there is mystery all around us.

I’ve found it an intriguing idea to think that in some metaphorical way I am on that island, that I am lost. Think about it. How would you respond? What type of character would you be? What stories would your flashbacks tell?

The June 12, 2007 Scientific American Reports: Special Edition on Astrophysics has an article on “Information in the Holographic Universe” by Jacob D. Bekenstein that suggests that the universe could be likened to a giant hologram.

Research on black holes indicates that the absolute limits of information content depends not on volume as would seem logical, but on surface area. This in turn suggests the holographic principle which “proposes that another physical theory defined only on the 2-D boundary of the region completely describes the 3-D physics.” In other words, if the universe were a three dimensional sphere, the entire information content of the universe would be wrought on the two dimensional surface area of the sphere, and the three dimensional volume would represent merely a kind of holographic projection of those two dimensions.

The magazine also contains another article titled “The Illusion of Gravity” by Juan Maldacena which also deals with holographic theory. All this reminds me a book I read a number of years ago called The Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot, which uses a holographic model for explaining all kinds of phenomena from how memories are stored, to miracles, to esp. I remember this book having a pretty profound impact on my thinking and now it seems I’m being led back to these ideas.

What does all this have to do with creativity? Well aside from the wondrously creative aspects of describing the universe, the idea of a holographic universe lends new weight to anybody who works in two dimensions. The potential of your medium is far greater than you ever imagined.

In storytelling, three is a magical number. How many time have you heard that somebody must collect three things, or complete three tasks, or is asked a question three times, or choose between three objects, or make three wishes? The list of examples are numerous. For some reason or other three is a number that lends itself well to storytelling. There is a kind of balance to the number three in which two seems too few and four too many.

Things in threes are most readily noticeable in fairy tale stories, and it is still a beautiful device for telling such tales. But the power of the number isn’t limited to fairy tales and using it needn’t be a cliche, or even very obvious. I’ve found it popping up in my own work quite naturally. In “A Thing Worth Dying For,” the protagonist endures three days of events that test his resolve to do the right thing. Also, “Chiburi” features three flashbacks that serve as a kind of psychoanalysis of the protagonist, taking him further back in his life to the source of his suffering.

Look closely. You’ll see that a lot of things come in threes, and it can be a useful way of seeing things when working out the structure of a story.

For a number of years I have played around with color, trying to develop a painting/drawing technique that used color in a way that I was satisfied with. I’ve also tried to develop some technique with ink. With both I’ve had varying levels of success and satisfaction, but have never felt completely happy or at ease with what I had achieved.

Recently, I decided to go back to doing pencil drawings. This was how I started with drawing, when I was young, using a pencil to copy pictures from The Savage Sword of Conan. Now, to go back to that and forget about everything but a pencil felt so liberating. Suddenly a pencil seemed so natural and easy to work with. And the drawings I was doing seemed so satisfying.

Similarly, when I started writing fiction, I began with contemporary general fiction. Eventually I came to realize I wanted to be writing the kinds of stories I fell in love with as a child, fantasy and science fiction stories. When I started down that path it was like a great fire had lit up inside me.

These experiences have reminded me how important it is when developing your creative skill to go back to the basics, and to go back to what you fell in love with. Somehow, that love and enchantment, be it with a pencil, or with words, or with paint, or with a particular subject, is the source of your creativity. Embrace it!

Filmmaker Guillermo del Toro talks about a technique of visual echoing in his DVD Commentary for Pan’s Labyrinth. The film portrays two distinct worlds, a real world and a fantasy world that merge throughout the picture. At various points in film, del Toro uses very specific images so that each world mirrors or echoes the other in some way. Gradually the worlds merge.

If you watch all of del Toro’s films, you can even see how images echo across different films as well. Although perhaps less deliberate on some levels, many of the films contain images of a fetus, a labyrinth, winged creatures, clockwork devices, and so on.

This, of course, is a something that can be seen and used in a variety of art forms from painting to music to literature. The elements repeated can be images, colors, sounds, relationships, metaphors, whatever. This echoing effect, whether consciously perceived or not, creates a texture rich in meaning.

Take a look at what you’re reading, or watching, and listen for the echoes.

Jay Lake, author of the new clockpunk novel Mainspring, talks about “Plot dynamics 101” in his blog. His main point relates to balancing the tension between “giving the reader enough information that the ending will ring true, and not giving them so much information that the ending will be all too obvious in advance”

He mainly talks about science fiction and mystery short stories, but on a basic level I think it’s possible to think about any type of story in these terms. One solution he says is to set up a “slightly more obvious false ending, so when the true reveal occurs” the ending seems both novel and rational.

I like the idea of a “reveal.” It’s like a sleight of hand magic trick. It works through misdirection. You make the audience think the coin is in one hand, when it’s really somewhere else. Now you can make it disappear, and if you like, reveal it coming from somewhere unexpected. When done well, the effect is always entertaining.

Giving yourself permission to write badly can be very liberating, and often because of that, you find what you wrote is a whole lot better than you expected. When it comes to quality, there is such a thing as trying too hard and caring too much.

I subscribe to a principle of bad first drafts. Whenever I reach a difficult progress point in a story, usually when the reality hits me that my grand ideas are slowly becoming concrete for better or worse, I sometimes lose confidence. At a time like this, it’s important not to be too critical of what you’re doing, so I give myself permission to write a bad, lousy story. Who cares? Just plow ahead. Have fun with it. You can fix it up later. Usually I get to the end and find out I’m very happy with the story, sometimes even blown away by good it is, but giving it permission to be bad frees up the creative mind to do its work unhindered.

And if your bad first draft turns out to really be bad…well, now you can get to work improving it. And if it can’t be fixed…know that you have learned through the process of writing it and recognizing what’s wrong with it. Your next bad first draft will be better.

Blogsite Errant Epiphanies takes this a step further with a writing exercise to deliberatly “Be bad–be very very bad!“

Today I finished writing the ending of a short story I’ve been working on for the last couple weeks. There’s a kind of rush that comes at the finish, a wonderful feeling of having created something complete.

As I begin to write toward the end of a story I tend to slow down a little as if drawing in strength. There’s also a sense of not wanting the story to end, and of processing how it’s all going to play out. Then, as I get closer, sometimes I build up a furious momentum that won’t let up until I write the last sentence in a kind of triumphant frenzy of excitement, totally caught up in the events of the story, brought to tears even.

Writing is generally a slow process done in solitude, but there are times when it becomes like a beautiful, energetic performance. Your hand works as if it has a will of its own, caught up in the moment, the words flowing into your mind and then onto the page without hesitation or reflection. Until at last you write that last sentence, your hand can barely keep up now, like the final dramatic flourish of a grand symphony.

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Gordon House is a modest, beautiful example of Wright’s Usonion Design. The home struck me as utopian in the best sense of the word.

On the tour it was pointed out that Wright thought of the box as a fascist symbol. So he designed things like corner doors and windows, and incorporated various space liberating features and lines that broke the traditional box-shape of dwelling spaces. He created a unity and harmony between the interior and exterior.

A box alone might evoke limitation, containment or excessive control, so I can see his point. But are Wright’s designs a symbol of democracy, of liberty? This was an architect who didn’t want you to put your own furniture in the house he designed for you, or to change the wall color. You’ll get used to it, he said.

Ironically, I’ve always thought some of Wright’s architecture looked like artfully arranged collections of the most beautiful boxes in the world.