Monthly Archives: April 2013

Gotta let it out

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Do you ever feel like there is an idea inside you just waiting to burst forth? Like you can’t control the energy that is welling up?

It is there, just below the surface, and no matter how much you try to suppress it–it’s not ready; I’ll embarrass myself; what will others think–you really have no choice but to show it to anyone who passes by.

Congratulations, you’re an artist. Welcome to the club. Oh, and you might want to stand back…someone else is ready to explode.

(Photos taken at Geyser, Iceland.)

You might be a writer

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(Inspired by a post on The Writing Corp blog and of course, Mr. Jeff Foxworthy)

If you’ve ever freaked out because your partner loaned your pen to someone and neglected to get it back…

If you own 17 notebooks and still have a house littered with random pieces of paper containing ideas…

If your friends won’t tell you anything anymore for fear it’ll end up in your next novel, screenplay or comedy sketch…

If you’ve heard voices in your head and your first thought was grab something to write with…

If you go on a tropical vacation and only the back of your neck gets sunburned…

If you’ve developed the skill to write coherent notes to yourself without removing your eyes from the person sitting across from you…

If every jacket you own and every room in your house contains a writing pad of one size or another…

If you instinctively know what inks will smear and which pens write upside down…

If you’ve ever found yourself looking forward to a long bus or train ride…

If reaching a crisis is as satisfying as achieving a climax…

(Personally, I’m still working on the writing while looking someone in the eye, otherwise, I’m good.)

The Devil’s in the detales

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Attention to detail is craftsmanship.

Fixation on detail is neurosis.

It’s important to be diligent when working on a project, but not so diligent that the project is dead before it starts.

Relax. Let your natural skills and energies flow through you as you explore your art.

It is those little quirks that make the piece yours and not the same as every other piece ever produced.

The ceiling of the trophy room of the Hockey Hall of Fame, which used to be a bank. (Toronto)

The ceiling of the trophy room of the Hockey Hall of Fame, which used to be a bank. (Toronto)

Go fly a kite

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Have you ever taken your camera out for a stroll and accidentally come upon a party? Well, it happened to me while wandering The Mall in Washington, DC, approaching the Washington Monument.

What started as a couple of kites fluttering through the sky on a sunny, windy day quickly degenerated into a morass of people all trying to get kites into the air, lines crossing and wrapping around tree limbs. Kids practically being lifted off the ground by kites much too large.

It was as though a rainbow had exploded and rained down on the people below. Chaotic, but definitely spirit-lifting.

Waterfalls…but only when pushed

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Considering my fear of heights (I can’t even watch a film of a cliff face), my fascination with waterfalls intrigues me. There is something about the descent of all that water that just amazes me.

Maybe it’s the power. Maybe it’s the freedom. I know there’s a thrill.

The following photos were taken in a variety of locations, including British Columbia, Costa Rica and Las Vegas.

Writer’s Block-ed – Part Two

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In Part One, I discussed the idea that the only difference between creatives and non-creatives or people who are blocked is a psyche filter that has become clogged; a filter that sits between thoughts generated deep within and expression of those thoughts to the outside world.

Below, I offer some thoughts on what I have found effective in unclogging that filter.

Step over it or go around it. Nowhere is it written that you must solve this problem right now. Depending on the nature of the project in which you find yourself stuck, is there an opportunity to simply mark a placeholder for where you’re stuck and move to the next part? Personally, in any creative endeavour, forward momentum is key and once lost is hard to regain. It’s easier to push a car that is already rolling than to get one rolling. A number of my manuscripts contain notes to myself along the lines of [something exciting happens here].

Likewise, for a written work, don’t feel like you have to solve all of the plot details early on. I had one screenplay that required my protagonist be in disguise. I had no idea how to do this logically, but proceeded as though it would come to me later…and it did. If you’re in a good space, the spirits will guide you and you will find your answers. But you have to be open to those answers.

Walk away. For most of us, these are very personal projects the only deadlines for which we hold internally. So, screw the deadline. Walk away from the project for a bit. Go see a movie. Read a book. Listen to music. Go for a run.

The longer you focus on the problem, the more inflamed it becomes until it becomes a creative cancer. Let it rest. Give the rest of your brain something to do. Let it do the heavy lifting for a bit. You may just find that the rest of the brain has ideas your creative centre wasn’t able to deal with and those ideas may just sneak past the filter (so have a notebook in your pocket, just in case).

Move to another project. I think a mistake a lot of new writers make is only having one project, as that blows the importance of the project way out of proportion. At any given moment, I have at least a dozen different creative projects on the go, at various levels of completion. That way, the minute I see the first signs of boredom or frustration with a project, I can move to another one to maintain my personal forward momentum. Perhaps the one thing that clogs a filter quickest is creative fallowness as lack of movement breeds insecurity.

The nice thing about working on multiple projects is that the creative act on one project often stimulates the creative response on another. You may have your answer to project one; you may not just be able to see it until you work on project two. Which leads me to…

Try another creative activity. Creativity breeds creativity. For me, photography stimulates writing (I suspect it works the other way, too). When I’m taking pictures, I am focused on the task at hand, the object on the other side of my lens, but because I am a storyteller, part of my brain is applying context to that image. You may have seen examples of this in some of my other blog posts. It allows me to visually tap into other emotions and contexts not previously obvious in my mind and those may inform my writing dilemma.

The key is to actively engage your brain. If you want to do something more passive like reading a book, as suggested earlier, try reading it aloud. Forcing yourself to actually engage with the written material will stimulate different parts of your brain, including your auditory centres. Responding to the movie screen, however, will likely get you thrown out of the theatre.

Hang with other creatives. First off, I don’t think there is anything inherently wrong with a pity party. It can be good to commiserate and share war stories from the trenches. It helps us to understand that we are not alone and that there is another side to the current blockage. And who better to help you with that than fellow members of the society.

Likewise, simply sharing your dilemma opens the floor to multiple brains with filters at various stages of clogging. Hopefully, around the table, there is enough creative force to blow the walls of those filter pores and clear things out. Yes, it’s your project, but you don’t have to do it alone.

If you think screaming at the gods will help break your writer's block, give it a go! (Photo taken in Hope, BC, ironically enough)

If you think screaming at the gods will help break your writer’s block, give it a go! (Photo taken in Hope, BC, ironically enough)

Writer’s Block-ed – Part One

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Anyone who has stared at a blank page or screen and been incapable of adding words to it understands the living nightmare that is writer’s block. The whiteness of the sheets or the blinking of the cursor mocks you as you struggle before it, desirous of wondrous expression but incapacitated and mute. You feel incapable, devoid of ideas, and worry that your creative ju-ju will never return.

But are we correct in feeling this way? What is writer’s block?

To my mind, the only difference between creatives and non-creatives is a willingness to create. We all have it within us; it is just that some of us move unbridled to the fore while others linger back. It is as though there is a psyche membrane or filter that separates us, or perhaps, to be more granular, it separates thought from expression.

Think of any filter in your house. The air filter in your car, for example. The filter keeps particulate matter—dust, dirt, debris—from damaging your engine while still allowing air to reach the combustion cylinders that convert fuel to power. When that filter gets clogged, however, less air can reach the cylinders and therefore the car underperforms or does not run at all.

I think the psyche filter works similarly but with a twist. In creatives (and likely in children), the filter is clear and wide open, allowing thoughts generated deep within to pass through freely and find expression in the outside world.

In non-creatives and people experiencing writer’s block, it is less that the pores of the filter have become clogged, so much as the pores have shrunk to microscopic size—a self-clogging filter, if you will. This prevents almost all of the generated thought from reaching the surface to be expressed.

You are generating ideas, but for whatever reason, your filter is keeping you from letting them free.

Alternatively, the filter works more like the car filter in that your psyche requires stimulating input to convert brain energy to creative power. In creatives, the filter lets in everything (or a large part of everything), whereas in non-creatives, again, the pores are too small to let anything more than the rudimentary information needed for survival enter and so the creative engine stalls.

In either case, the capacity to generate thought and to express those thoughts is the same in both groups of people. It is the nature of the filter that distinguishes us.

I wish I could present you with the secret answer for unblocking that filter when it becomes troublesome, but the working mechanisms of each filter are unique, yours attuned to your psyche.

In Part Two, I’ll offer some thoughts on what I have found effective in dealing with a clogged filter. They don’t always work, but by having multiple outlets, I hedge my bets that something will work.

The following gallery explores colour at one of my favourite buildings in Montreal, the Palais des Congres.

Seascape

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I sit on a rocky promontory,

Gazing over the waters of the sea.

Waves splash below me, sending a spray of water

From a sea, ill-tempered and intemperate.

Somewhere in the distance, a boat has passed

And the waves have reached the shore,

The waters angered by the disturbance.

The water reaches across the rocks

Forming pools in crevices created at an earlier time;

Eroding a little more stone to become

The sand of some far off beach.

In an endless rhythm, the waves strive

For the beach and are mercilessly drawn back.

A twig is caught in the ebb and flow

Never certain when it will get thrown

Too far up the sands or finally drawn

Into deeper waters to voyage somewhere else.

 

Caught in pools, between the larger rocks,

A microcosm has formed of predator and prey,

A world of colour and beauty, life and death.

The flowery anemone, waving in the eddies,

Await their prey with numbing venom.

A small crab picks through the sand,

Scavenging for carrion from other meals past,

Crawling aside to move around a sea star.

Urchins, moving ever so slowly across the rocks,

Their spiny coverings a defence against attack.

Small fish, trapped with the last tide,

Eating plant and animal, their escape

Hours away, at the mercy of the moon.

Vertebrate and invertebrate, together,

Calling this home; for now or forever.

 

The sea is the beginning

And, ultimately, the end.

Great distances

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I sat down recently to come up with some of the great distances in the known universe and think I have discovered the one that trumps them all.

Riding the elevator on Toronto’s CN Tower? Like falling off a log.

Leaping the chasm of the Grand Canyon? Pfft, nothing!

Swimming the Pacific Ocean? Like taking a bath.

Visiting the Oort Cloud at the edge of our solar system? A walk on a foggy day.

No, my friends, none of these is even close to the Greatest Distance in the Universe. That title goes to the space between the nib of a pen and the paper beneath it. I know this, because I have spent hours of my life watching people who cannot traverse this great gap.

The pen sits poised. Ink tantalizingly and agonizingly close to realizing its dream of spreading through the fibres of the paper. You can practically hear the Siren call of the note pad, seducing the ink to come join it in creative matrimony.

And yet, nothing.

The muscles of the hands tighten. The forearm presses harder into the table. The blood accelerates through the capillaries. Neurons in the brain fire in all directions. The spirit wails in unfulfilled lust.

And yet, nothing.

The gap is too large. The rewards uncertain. The risks too high.

Like a supportive father-to-be, I want to scream “Push!” and remind them to breathe.

Like a bicycle-training parent, I just want to nudge their hand to the paper and trail alongside it as it wends its way across the page, releasing just as it seems they have the hang of it.

Like a police psychologist, I just want to talk them down, let them know it will be okay.

But I am powerless in this process. This is something they have to do for themselves, much as I did for myself. When they are ready, they will write.

Until then, as a friend, I will stand with them at the edge of the abyss and imagine what is on the other side, awaiting them.

Any journey is an individual one, no matter how many people come along. (View from Mt. Baker in Washington State)

Any journey is an individual one, no matter how many people come along. (View from Mt. Baker in Washington State)

Have you herd?

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The ground is covered with the crisp snow of January,

The wind howls its plaintive cries of winter.

The herd mill about in tight formation

Trying to stave off the cold.

Most lift their feet one at a time

As if to get brief respite from the icy tendrils;

Their flesh quivering to make blood rise

And warm their souls in the early morning darkness.

There is little communication between the members

As thought is too difficult on this cold winter’s day.

The breath of the herd forms an icy cloud above their heads,

That is quickly blown away to fall as snow in some far off land.

Their minds wander to that time so long ago,

When the sun shone brightly and the grass was green;

A time of plenty when they were warm and active.

 

The wind blows one icy blast, masking out all sound

Even that of their own heart beats.

With ice forming on their coats,

The herd huddles even closer,

More oblivious than ever to the world around them.

Suddenly, one of the herd lifts its head.

A whisper is faintly heard fighting against the breeze.

In response, more to their mate than to any sound,

The herd begins to waken.

The herd jostles as the sound changes

From a whisper to a call to a roar.

The herd becomes a living organism,

Changing from its dormant state to one of vitality.

As the sun peeks over the horizon, and life returns,

A clear call is heard by all:

“VIA train, eastbound for Toronto,

Now arriving on Track 2.”

Another workday begins for the people of Oakville.