Tag Archives: vision

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.

Star Gazer

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I sit on my front step,

staring up at the sky,

and I see her face before mine.

The light of the waning moon

mingles with strands of her hair of pitch

and shines off the lock o’er her brow.

 

Her smiling eyes stare back at me

and myriad stars twinkle

in the moist dark pools.

I dive into this ocean,

the universe of my destiny,

to swim among creatures fantastical.

 

The warmth of her body

in the cool evening air

waves across me with its welcoming tide;

and the sweet aroma of her tropical breath

is a nectar upon which I feed;

A breath of life and love,

rejuvenating my soul.

 

The air is disturbed

by the rise and fall of her chest,

and scarf slides from her shoulder.

The colours of her garment

flicker briefly in the moon,

as its light passes through thin matter,

and the silence is broken

by the light shuffle of silk

against her satin flesh.

 

I grow drunk on her perfume;

I’m lightened by the joy of her smile,

and all the concerns of the day

melt with her touch.

She is my universe

and I shall never want.

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(Blue moon over Chilliwack, BC.)

 

Across the universe – a mental travelogue

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(This post is inspired by something I saw earlier today on another blogger’s site. So thanks, storiesbyfrances.)

Whether writing or doing photography, one of my personal goals is to look beyond what is right in front of me, to see objects at levels beyond their macro existence (how metaphysical is that). Given time and attention, patterns form, images present themselves, thoughts meander, reality becomes flexible.

Below, I’ve posted photos taken while traveling through British Columbia last year. I was going to tell you what I saw, but instead have decided to ask you what you see in the images, if anything. For the sake of the wondrous places I visited, however, I will tell you where the photos were taken.

(Botanical Beach, Vancouver Island)

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(Botanical Beach, Vancouver Island)

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(China Beach, Vancouver Island)Image

(Port Renfrew, Vancouver Island)

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(Tofino, Vancouver Island)

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Don’t forget to let me know what you see.

I don’t care if we agree; in fact, if you see something I didn’t, then my universe becomes that much larger.

Shoot where the goalie isn’t

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I’ve spent a lot of time in ice rinks watching beer-league and kids hockey and one thing that has amazed me is how often players will shoot the puck into the goalie’s chest. We all know that the object of the game is to get the puck past the goalie, but for whatever reason, our shot is drawn to the goalie rather than to the net. It is as though the goalie secretly inserted a small metal bar in the puck before the game and is now wearing a strong magnet under his or her pads.

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(American Hockey League; Toronto Marlies vs. Hamilton Bulldogs)

I’ve also decided that on a typical office trash can, the rim of the can generates a gravitational well. I say this because, no matter how often I throw a wad of paper into the can, from whatever angle or distance, I am more likely to hit the rim of the can than I am to sink the shot or miss completely. Something must bend space because if you look at the volume of the universe taken up by the rim and compare that to the rest of the frickin’ universe, it doesn’t make sense that I would hit the rim so often.

Of course, another explanation for both of these phenomena is that humans have an instinctive fetish for what we can see; that we are unconsciously drawn to the tangible to the detriment of the intangible.

The reason I wax on about this is because I believe what is true for trash cans and hockey games is also true for creativity.

After rehearsals for a sketch comedy show for which I write, I was drinking with some of the actors and one of them asked me how I came up the ideas for my sketches. How did I take a relatively mundane scenario and find just the right moment and way to skew it to elicit humour?

For me, I said, it’s about perspective and being able to ignore the hard edges of reality to see relationships no one else has bothered to see.

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(Photo taken in Barbados)

Too many of us get hung up on what we see, what sits before us in all its light-reflecting, retina-stimulating glory. We see reality and get stuck on that being simply what is. Reality just is. There’s nothing else other than it.

Sitting across from her, I described the wide-eyed reality I saw.

In the foreground was sugar packets, salt and pepper shakers, the table, my beer glass, her beer glass. Slightly behind that was her, the barely restrained frenzy of her hair, her facial expression, the curve of her neck, shoulders and arms, her clothes. Behind her, a table of four animated people sharing a night out (won’t go into details) and behind them, a window onto a busy Toronto street; sidewalks, pedestrians, traffic, storefronts.

I then squinted my eyes and all those hard edges faded away to be replaced with a visual melange. I could not tell where my friend ended and the woman behind her started. Vague shapes of pedestrians blebbed out of her head, like animated thoughts or alter-egos escaping into the night.

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(Photo of a fountain on Toronto’s Canadian National Exhibition grounds)

My perspective had changed, so my reality had changed. I no longer saw a goalie blocking my shot or a trash can rim siphoning wads of paper from the vaster universe.

However it is accomplished, I think this is what separates open creatives from the rest of humanity, and by creatives, I mean not just artists (writers, painters, photographers, etc) but also entrepreneurs and technology innovators. They understand the lowercase nature of realities rather than Reality.

The altered perspectives are there for anyone to see—and everyone’s perspectives are going to be different—but it is the creatives who choose to look for them. We can see where the goalie isn’t and choose to shoot there.

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(The Toronto Marlies beat the Hamilton Bulldogs at Toronto’s Air Canada Centre)