Fuel for Stories - redux

Welp, two weeks ago, I was busy moving house - so busy, apparently, that I completely spaced on posting. Sorry about that. And now I don't even have an original post for you, because even though I'm finally (more or less) unpacked, I'm about to go camping. Tomorrow. Sooo here instead is a post from a few years back about inspiration. Enjoy!

*****

I’m well-practiced at driving long distances. I’ve gone back and forth across country (alone) several times, and I’ve made the drive between Northern and Southern California a dozen times or more, driving and as a passenger. I cope through methods like coffee drinking, good music, podcasts, and creative corn nut consumption, to name a few.

But on the most recent drive, I found that I was missing the most important coping skill of all. You see, my imagination was malfunctioning.

It was very perplexing. When I tried to consider the stories I had in progress, my mind seemed only able to move within the bounds of existing scenes and plotlines. I couldn't even garner interest in my silly sci-fi/fantasy stories that I never intend to write down. It was hours and hours of pure torture. How do non-writers survive such long periods of boredom? 

Near the end of the drive, steel-gray clouds drifting over butter-yellow hills caught my fancy and re-fired my imagination. But that wasn't until hour seven of eight. My imagination seems to be back to normal now, but I do not want to tolerate this condition again on the eight hours back to San Diego.

And so, in this time of stuffing our bodies full of food, I decided to look up and share ways that we might feed our imagination. Not literally - that imagining food diet sounds kind of silly to me.

What works for inspiration for me? Beautiful images, unusual places, and nature walks. I listed some of my favorite triggers for stories in this post. Susan just blogged about the power of the what-if. 

To further fuel your imagination, here are some lovely images from Wikimedia Commons' Picture of the Year for 2011.

 http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lake_Bondhus_Norway_2862.jpg

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lanzarote_5_Luc_Viatour.jpg

This is my favorite, because it makes me think of a world frozen over:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Snowy_%C3%85reskutan_Ski_lift.jpg

And here are some quotes about enhancing your imagination:

From Seven Sentences:

One simple way of increasing your creativity is to use the law of opposites . When you come up with an idea of what to write, of how to play a character, or of what to paint on that canvas… STOP……ask yourself what is the opposite of that idea; now create something about that.  

 From W. I. B. Beveridge, quoted at Brainpickings.org

Many people will not tolerate a state of doubt, either because they will not endure the mental discomfort of it or because they regard it as evidence of inferiority.
To be genuinely thoughtful, we must be willing to sustain and protract that state of doubt which is the stimulus to thorough enquiry, so as not to accept an idea or make a positive assertion of a belief, until justifying reasons have been found.

And from Suzanna Stinnet:

Notice in Categories: Start by deciding what it is you want to notice today. Once I did this exercise by actively looking at noses. People's noses, dog's noses, noses on billboards and beaks on birds. Crowdwatching while only noticing noses is absolutely hysterical. You bring your focus to one thing and it compounds. You begin to notice many aspects, and suddenly you can't see anything but noses, noses, noses!! The laughter this induced is another great component to brain health, inducing circulation and releasing many natural chemicals related to brain stimulation. Now, while you are noticing and observing these noses, tell yourself about them. Engage the storytelling part of your brain by actively using descriptors. See the details. Make up new words to tell yourself about the noses everywhere in your environment.

And here are some of my favorite pictures from Wikimedia Commons' 2014 Picture of the Year contest!

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:View_from_a_ridge_between_Segla_and_Hesten,_Senja,_Norway,_2014_August.jpg

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Watch_tower_of_the_dam,_Embalse_de_los_Bermejales,_Andalusia,_Spain.jpg

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/68/Barnard_33.jpg

The Fuel of Stories

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! As was the case last year, I've come up to the San Francisco Bay Area to visit family. Because I wanted to avoid the chaos that is the airports at Thanksgiving, I drove. I felt better about my choice when my sister and I drove past the SF airport on Friday night and saw the massive line of cars waiting to get to the terminal.

I’m well-practiced at driving long distances. I’ve gone back and forth across country (alone) several times, and I’ve made the drive between Northern and Southern California a dozen times or more, driving and as a passenger. I cope through methods like coffee drinking, good music, podcasts, and creative corn nut consumption, to name a few.

But on the most recent drive, I found that I was missing the most important coping skill of all. You see, my imagination was malfunctioning.

It was very perplexing. When I tried to consider the stories I had in progress, my mind seemed only able to move within the bounds of existing scenes and plotlines. I couldn't even garner interest in my silly sci-fi/fantasy stories that I never intend to write down. It was hours and hours of pure torture. How do non-writers survive such long periods of boredom? 

Near the end of the drive, steel-gray clouds drifting over butter-yellow hills caught my fancy and re-fired my imagination. But that wasn't until hour seven of eight. My imagination seems to be back to normal now, but I do not want to tolerate this condition again on the eight hours back to San Diego.

And so, in this time of stuffing our bodies full of food, I decided to look up and share ways that we might feed our imagination. Not literally - that imagining food diet sounds kind of silly to me.

What works for inspiration for me? Beautiful images, unusual places, and nature walks. I listed some of my favorite triggers for stories in this post. Susan just blogged about the power of the what-if. 

To further fuel your imagination, here are some lovely images from Wikimedia Commons' Picture of the Year for 2011.

 http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lake_Bondhus_Norway_2862.jpg

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lanzarote_5_Luc_Viatour.jpg

This is my favorite, because it makes me think of a world frozen over:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Snowy_%C3%85reskutan_Ski_lift.jpg

And here are some quotes about enhancing your imagination:

From Seven Sentences:

One simple way of increasing your creativity is to use the law of opposites . When you come up with an idea of what to write, of how to play a character, or of what to paint on that canvas… STOP……ask yourself what is the opposite of that idea; now create something about that.  

 From W. I. B. Beveridge, quoted at Brainpickings.org

Many people will not tolerate a state of doubt, either because they will not endure the mental discomfort of it or because they regard it as evidence of inferiority.
To be genuinely thoughtful, we must be willing to sustain and protract that state of doubt which is the stimulus to thorough enquiry, so as not to accept an idea or make a positive assertion of a belief, until justifying reasons have been found.

And from Suzanna Stinnet:

Notice in Categories: Start by deciding what it is you want to notice today. Once I did this exercise by actively looking at noses. People's noses, dog's noses, noses on billboards and beaks on birds. Crowdwatching while only noticing noses is absolutely hysterical. You bring your focus to one thing and it compounds. You begin to notice many aspects, and suddenly you can't see anything but noses, noses, noses!! The laughter this induced is another great component to brain health, inducing circulation and releasing many natural chemicals related to brain stimulation. Now, while you are noticing and observing these noses, tell yourself about them. Engage the storytelling part of your brain by actively using descriptors. See the details. Make up new words to tell yourself about the noses everywhere in your environment.

So Happy Thanksgiving again to you all, and I hope you remember to nourish your mind as well as your body, and that there is no such thing as too much pie.

Bonus wikimedia picture: yaaaaaahhhhhhh!!!!

Happy Back to School Season!

He's a big boy, now!

My son started Kindergarten on Wednesday.  It was the first time for me, dropping a child off at elementary school.  He was in Pre-K last year, but for some reason, this was different.  My husband and I drove him to school.  We helped him line up out front with the other kids.  When it was time to shuffle into the building, we helped him find his backpack hook.  Inside, he gave me a quick hug and ran over to the carpet, ready for circle time.  And that was it.  Suddenly my little boy was a big kid.

No, I didn't cry.  I mean, I ran out to the hallway as fast as I could, and it took several long minutes of staring at the wall to convince myself I wasn't going to cry.  Afterwards, the Kindergarten parents went to the library for coffee and donuts.  We met the principal.  The moms talked and joked nervously, none of us really wanting to show how hard this process was for us.  Then it was time to drive home, sans children.

That night at dinner, my son talked for nearly half an hour about everything that happened at school.  Which was mostly sitting and listening to the rules, and playing on the playground.  It was harder than normal to get him to go to bed that night, because he still wanted to tell me about every little thing his new friends had done or said.  I let him, because I think he's got a little bit of storyteller in him, too.

All kids do, I think.  We all start out with this epic sense of adventure, even if our experiences are limited.  The bathtub is an ocean.  The backyard is a jungle.  A blanket thrown over the bunk bed is a fort.  As we grow older, some of us lose this.  Bathtubs are just one more thing to clean.  Yards need mowing.  Bunk beds are a pain in the neck to change sheets.  A few of us, the ones called writers, get to tiptoe along that line of fantasy and reality.  My tub really does need cleaned, but it can also be an ocean.  The dinner table at my house is a place to eat, but it's also the stage for all kinds of stories, some that I tell, but most my kids dream up.

I hope I never lose this sense of imagination.  When I take the dog for a walk and my son shouts, "Charge!" I hope I always see the invisible army he's battling.  I hope he sees it, too.  Imagination is one of the greatest gifts man possesses.

I'll share one last link that occasional guest Proser Stefan recently shared with me.  I'm linking to it so there's no issue with copyright infringement, but I hope you'll check it out.  It's called Scary Smash and it's written by a kid.  Very cute.

Have a great week everyone, and if you're dropping kids at school soon, I hope you have an easier time than I did!

Art project

First of all, guess what? It's my birthday! There are a lot of people out there who don't like to advertise the day, but I've been an attention hog since I was five (there is video proof of this, but thankfully it hasn't been digitized).

Sometimes, I write my posts, I have the desire to draw a diagram, of all the parts of writing you need to make an amazing story. I have about zero ability with visual art, but I envision this diagram as some sort of nebulous atom with electrons, or maybe a fractal. Like so, with tiny parts repeating to make a whole:

Or so:

(from http://singingblackbird.deviantart.com/)

Or maybe one of those cellular diagrams that they show you in upper division biology class. The nucleus is the heart of the story, the DNA is the theme, the RNA is the plot (you know, developing of the theme…)… and um, the characters are…. Well, that's about how much I can recall of cellular structure.

Maybe a fractal is most appropriate. I envision the larger diagram as the story, and as you zoom in, you see plot, character, pacing… and then once you zoom in on those, you see different aspects of character, like physical attributes, character growth, strengths and weaknesses. And so on. Each skill is necessary, though strengths can be used to compensate for weaknesses. The diagram would be opaque, of course, because at the center of any good story is heart, and soul, and no amount of tutorial can teach you that, as it's the most individual aspect of writing.

Once this diagram was complete, there could be a graphic of it, where it zooms in on the section a blog post would be talking about. The selected spot could light up, or sparkle, or do the hokey pokey, or something.

What would you envision as a master story diagram?