Teaching Materials for Writers Ink: Unblocking Creativity

Sometimes in our lives we embark on journeys that are incredible. Sometimes they completely terrify us. I recently began a journey that does both to me. I began a writing organization on my campus at Weber State University. You might ask why would I do that? It mostly has to do with the fact that I recognize that our teachers shouldn't be solely responsible for helping us to develop our skills as writers. The following is the contents of a small booklet I made for a class I taught on Creativity today. It is my hope that the ideas expressed here will help other writers to learn craft or discover resources that can help them become better writers. Enjoy!

Unblocking Creativity

What is Creativity?

According to the Oxford Dictionary creativity means: relating to or involving the imagination or original ideas, especially in the production of an artistic work. Hopefully you asked after reading that: So what? I know I did. Creativity means something different to each one of us. This personal meaning is what drives us to create and what one of the goals of Writers Ink will be to teach you to protect. But that is a different lesson.

I define creativity as the playground of the mind. We take materials and we create music in words, build worlds in imagination, learn what it means to touch a star, and some few of us will use creativity to cure cancer. Hopefully our creativity will allow us to change our world with as much impact as that team of scientists will.

What gets in the way of our creativity?

Make a list. Really make a list. Some of the things you will see on mine is: Fear of rejection keeps me from creating; I believe that being creative is a luxury I can’t afford right now; and I’m so tired of this project I’m working on that I’m done with it. I don’t know if these sound familiar to you, but I know that there tends to be a pattern with most of our reasons for not creating. That pattern is our self. We are the force that gets in the way of our creativity. So in order to embrace our creativity & develop creative confidence we have to stop getting in our own way. I’m not saying that our reasons for not creating aren’t valid, but it is our responsibility to learn how to work around them.

Tools of our Trade

As writers we must recognize that we are developing skills to enable us to build cohesive arguments, create resonating phrases, and open minds. Among the first skill we must develop is how to create ideas.

Again, make a list. Find out what you already use. Following are some of my tools:

1. A Commonplace book: A place to hold all my good and bad ideas
2. Research on my subject matter
3. My memories, your memories, fictional memories, & dreams
4. Brainstorming (Alone and with trusted friends)
5. Quotations, Art, Driving, and Showers (Places of inspiration)
6. Writing Prompts or Focused Practice

Your list of tools may be longer or look entirely different than this. And that’s okay. Now go share your list with another writer and increase their tool box.

Expressing Creativity

Of course you came to this to learn how to keep your creative flow. I like to think of creativity as a well. A well must be nurtured and taken care of if it is going to give us water throughout our lives. One of the dangers of allowing ourselves to get in the way of our creativity is that we can dry up our well. Thankfully if we tend to ourselves again we can refill our creative wells. Following are four ways we can help keep our wells full of creativity.

1. Pay attention to and explore the world around you. Have you ever seen a picture or quote on Facebook that you thought was awesome? You see things like that when you are paying attention. Take the time to collect quotes and pictures or anything else that inspires you. These put water into the creativity well.

2. Open up, be vulnerable, recognize emotion as a source of energy. This is hard. Sometimes we experience feelings that we don’t want to. We can even create experiences of emotion using music, smells, and watching memorable films. When we as artists are authentic about what we feel it can fill our well.

3. Creativity isn’t an event it is a lifestyle. I have found that the muse only regularly visits the consistent. Remember to keep writing. This is most difficult when you feel blocked. That’s okay keep writing. Having more than one creative project at a time helps with this process. The waters of creativity flow best when we live in such a way that we consistently are working on creating new projects.

4. We must embrace loss and develop creative confidence. Of all the steps this is the most difficult. Artists must endure rejection and loss throughout their lives. Does it hurt? Yes. In my opinion it always should, because we have become numb to inspiration when it ceases to hurt. Embrace the pain. Develop your skills so well that you can have confidence even in rejection. This will help you be resilient enough to keep putting your work out there to make the world a better place.

Creativity as a Journey

Now that we are finished with this class you know everything there is to know about creativity and you are ready to create worlds without end, right? Perhaps. Hopefully this has simply whetted your appetite with some tools to develop your creativity and habits to help you develop the lifestyle. Below you can find resources to help you as you continue on the journey to discover greater creativity. Including the resources I used to create this booklet. May the muse visit you often.

Resources for Creativity

The Artists Way written by Julia Cameron 
The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp 
Kick-Ass Creativity by Mary Beth Maziarz 
The 3 A.M. Epiphany by Brian Kiteley 
The Gift by Lewis Hyde 
Drawing out the Dragons by James A. Owen
David Kelley’s TED talk: How to build your creative confidence 
Julie Burstein’s TED talk: Four lessons in creativity

The Celebration of the Death of DOMA

Taken from George Takei's Facebook Page

The caption to the left is similar to how I looked when I turned on my computer yesterday morning to see some of the best news I have seen in years. The Defense of Marriage Act or DOMA had been put down by the Supreme Court of the United States as unconstitutional. For those of you who are unfamiliar with DOMA, as I once was, it is a law that was signed by President Clinton. Simply it mandated that if a same sex couple got a civil marriage or a civil union that other states did not need to recognize that. Such as a same sex couple that got married in Massachusetts moved to New York the state of New York would not have to recognize that relationship as legal. Not only did DOMA make it difficult for same sex couples to be able to move where they pleased, it made it difficult for them to travel and retain their rights. Such as if a same sex couple would be on vacation in Florida and they were in a car accident the family of the injured party would have rights to visitation of the injured, but the spouse may not have rights of visitation and could even be asked by the family and the hospital to leave. These are the kinds of situations that make the end of DOMA worth celebrating.

However not everyone in the Union will see this as a matter worth celebration. Many people in California donated thousands of dollars to make certain that Proposition Eight passed. And when it did lawmakers were faced with a group of people who proposed that it may be unconstitutional. This is what made DOMA and Proposition Eight so controversial: the fact that people said they wanted X and the Bill of Rights said people should get Y. This is what the Supreme Court among others has been trying to sort out for years since all this began back in 2008. Now that it has been declared unconstitutional there are groups of people who are upset because the Supreme Court did not vote in favor of the people. Instead they elected to give the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender community their rights. This is why I celebrate.

However I need to make a confession to you. I am a Mormon. Mormons did much of the funding for Proposition Eight in California. I do not agree with their choice despite some of my beliefs being the same as theirs. I believe that religious marriage is meant to be between a man and a woman. The purpose of that marriage is to have a relationship that lasts longer than our lifetime here on earth and into the eternities before God. None of the doctrine I have read has ever led me to believe that God offers that same opportunity for those of the LGBT community. That is the primary reason why I am against religious marriage for the LGBT community. However civil marriage which is the legal form of the union which is recognized by the state and federal government I believe is crucial to the livelihood of this nation if we want to continue to brand our nation as the land of the free.

The United States of America was established to offer religious freedom to the puritans over two hundred years ago. During that time we have had to redefine freedom multiple times. First we had to figure out what it meant to give the natives freedom. We hurt them as individual nations by taking their lands, corrupting their culture, and expecting them to peacefully respond to our demands. I do not need to describe to you that this went poorly. Next we had to deal with the issue of slavery. This issue lasted much longer because of the belief that blacks were less than human at one point. With the Emancipation Proclamation we purchased a peaceless surrender of the slaves. Over the freedom of slaves we started a civil war, we instituted the Jim Crow Laws, and we oppressed blacks for another hundred years after they were granted their “freedom.” Today we face the issue of Gay Rights and we are responding to it in much the same way we did with same grace and sensitivity that we have with these other issues. We as a people are undereducated about it, fearful of it, and unwilling to recognize in what ways we may be wrong about how we are treating our fellow human beings. Same Sex Marriage is only one of a multitude of rights that the LGBT community is fighting for.

In my celebration of the Death of DOMA I am committing to becoming more educated on how to help support the rights of the LGBT community because I do not want to repeat the mistakes of our past. As a young black man, I still see discrimination towards me and I’ve seen it towards the LGBT community as well. And personally I hurt, because I know they hurt. Civil Rights isn’t about protecting the definition of a word that doesn’t need protection. The definition of marriage changed in the Oxford Dictionary already. And marriage in the context of what the LGBT community is working towards has everything to do with legal rights and nothing to do with trying to take the domestic comfort of the families of heterosexual couples. This is about making us as a people living according to the values that we state in our Constitution to stand by. If we are seeking the Life, Liberty, and Happiness of all the people in our nation then we by definition need to give to our people the same rights that they can be with those they love, take care of their families, and build our nation into the beacon of freedom that it claims to be.

I end this blog with one of my favorite songs. It is by Mackelmore and Lewis and it is called Same Love. I believe if we raise the rising generation to hate themselves, fear the judgment of others, and polarize themselves and others on the issues we face in our world we will fail them. We owe it to ourselves, and our children to educate ourselves that we may be full of love one for another and live in real freedom.

Mistakes, Vulnerability, and Critiques

It has been almost five months since I last posted to this blog. I feel guilty about that. I started out about a year and a half ago with high hopes of being able to create content for this to share with you, my audience, and I was doing a good job – up until I returned to school last year. It sucked my time and my energy to blog away from me and I found that regardless of my desires, I had to re-prioritize  my life to put family, school, and personal writing first before I could return to blogging. It was a hard decision and counting the cost was more challenging than I expected it to be. However I recently published an article with the Evolllution, an online newspaper on adult education (you can find that article here), and I discovered in my bio that they linked back to my blog. A blog that hadn’t been given any new content in a long time. So I return to blogging at a pace I believe I can handle. One post per week. We’ll see how that goes.

My mother and I on Graduation Day.

This mistake of judgment is one of many I’ve made in my life. I’ve often over burdened myself because I’ve thought that I need to be perfect and that a perfect person could juggle 20 different hats in their life successfully. Some of my role models can do this, but that doesn’t mean that is a standard for me to attempt to live up to. Every time I have tried I have found myself dropping priorities and attempting to clean up the mess later. I’ve been doing that for the past eight years as I have been working towards graduating from Weber State University. I recently received my Associates of Science and it began a period of reflection for me on all that I have gone through to get there. Mistakes that were necessary for me to come to know the person that I am.

I have a tendency to overburden myself in seeking my own standard of perfection. I am very expressive in person, but I tend to blunt my feelings when I speak with others about them. I have a need to remain busy all of the time. I take all the bad things that happen in my life and use them to make lemonade which I tell people I like because I enjoy lemonade, only they can’t see I didn’t make the juice with lemons but rather with my heart. You see I’m afraid to be vulnerable. It terrifies me. So instead of allowing myself to be human and feel and express emotion, I numb myself.

Growing up this was an unintentional theme in my home.

I numb myself to get rid of the messages that run inside my head like the ones to the left. Doubts plague me about being smart enough, good enough, strong enough, stable enough. Though there is one place in my life I don't suffer thoughts like these that I suspect other writers do. And that is in the world of critiques. Anyone who wants to have their work read by others and valued has to learn how to have their work critiqued by others. At first this may not sound terribly difficult, but for myself and I believe a great many other writers the act of writing is expressing one's own identity in words. You expose yourself more fully than you can in any other medium, because you don't express just what you believe, or what you like, but the very nature of the thoughts you have. And someone else is going to tell you what they think of your thoughts. Kinda scary, yes? But it doesn't have to be. Here are three tips about how to receive a critique with grace.

One: Critique often hurts.

I know a writer who it doesn't seem to matter what is said to them, they just won't change anything about their story. It didn't make much sense until one day I heard through the grapevine in our class they only got one good piece of advice for their story. This was after having spent hours on their work trying to find things to help them. And it was a workshop class of roughly twenty students and our professor. I've puzzled for months over why they couldn't accept what was said. And it boils down to the fact that they were not willing to be vulnerable about their writing. And if a writer cannot be vulnerable they cannot grow nor can anyone help them to grow.

Anyone who spends weeks or months on a writing project, dreaming up things to make their fiction or poetry thought provoking, laugh worthy, or emotional has every right to be vulnerable about what they wrote. Personally I look at it like this, the more red that a critiquer can put on my story and still be invested in the world and learning more about it, the better of a job I've done. All the markings can be symbolic of the work I've put into my story. And by allowing another to invest in your world they can point out the things that you can't see while you are inside it. It may hurt like exercise does, but once you allow yourself to get used to it your writing will get stronger just like your body would.

Two: The critiquer doesn't know all you know.

This is how I felt that day, but less elegant.

Story time. So I had my critique group over one day and we were going over one of our members stories. I opened with the critique on this specific story. And I just tore into it, I saw so many things on the story level that just didn't make sense to me. Like why would a fortune teller allow someone close enough to have somebody watch what they were telling someone. Or why would a girl allow a guy to take her to an abandoned building to have sex. And it was strange because this was a person who I typically enjoy their writing. I just went at them honestly about how I felt about the work. At the end of my rant my group decided to inform me that the story wasn't fiction. It was nonfiction about the author. I wanted to crawl under the table and then out of the room. At that point all of my critique held no water. My points may have had validity for a different story, but not for that one.

Remember the critiquer doesn't know all you know about your story. If what they say resonates with you and points you towards crafting a better story note it. If it doesn't resonate with what you are trying to write or causes you to feel less excited about your story, it probably isn't right. And if what they say makes you angry note it especially, because often these are the things you need to sleep on to find out if they resonate or not.

Three: Listen and ask questions.

Critique is a unique time in the telling of a story. It is based on it that you are going to develop your next story. Listen for everything that you can. For this purpose some people only critique in person and they actually read the entire piece aloud. You get to hear peoples first hand reactions to reading your work then. That information is crucial to you crafting the story you want to tell.

Don't be afraid to ask your critiquer to get specific about what things they are having trouble understanding. If they say they can see a problem somewhere ask them why they feel that way. Require them to express their emotions about what they are feeling when you are writing. This allows you to know what you are guiding people towards emotionally. Writing fiction is all about what the reader feels as they read and if you don't know what they are feeling you can't create the emotional experience. Your vulnerability in writing is what creates their experience.

I'm at a place in my life where I have tried to stop numbing, but it is hard. It frightens me often and I try to open up to my wife and my friends what I am feeling. Often they help me to identify what is really going on inside of me and that is what I attempt to put into my writing. Having people you can trust with your vulnerability is a precious thing and shouldn't be taken lightly. This journey we call writing can take us through the storms of our own vulnerability and teach us that strength is not found in the numbing, but rather in opening up and allowing others in. But only if we let it.

Goals for the New Year

I think Mr. Einstein was on to something when he said that. I can recall that many of the greatest experiences of my life have been those related to having a goal. I've won NaNoWriMo twice now. I'm a year off from graduating from college. I've gotten married. I've gotten help for my addiction. And on and on goes the list of goals that I've set and been able to achieve. And I think I want to actually reach for things that are terrifying now. Because when our goals scare us, the joy we get from their achievement is multiplied.

You can do anything, when you set
your mind to it.

This year I plan on going to Clarion West Writers Workshop. It is a workshop that is based entirely upon the submission of a work of fiction. The story that I wrote during this last NaNoWriMo "The Blood Malediction" is the story that I'll be sending to the judges. It is based in the same world of "Crimes of the Umbramancer." And writing it already has developed that world far more than I would have thought it would. I've finished the first draft of the story at 10,672 words. I'm now in the process of rewriting it. My rewrite and edits have to be done by the end of January for me to send it in to the judges of the workshop (not because the deadline is then, but because I don't want to send it to the judges once they are burning out).

The food my demon prefers: Eyeballs.

I can't tell you how much this scares me. I'm competing on a national level with my writing and hoping that others like it enough to get me to a place that I can take it to the next level. I find myself wondering if I'm good enough. Wondering if I will belong if I make it. Wondering if I haven't wasted all this time working towards this dream that can't come true. I know that it is the inner demon critic within trying to tear me down. That knowledge is the only reason I refuse to allow myself to wonder in those avenues.

My internal editor is much
like my wife. Supportive
& willing to push me.

Instead I go to the productive places. Like tonight I was writing a scene that I had watched multiple classmates attempt and get wrong, and I found myself making the same mistakes. I fought with myself to figure out why this scene had relevance and found what made the scene meaningful. That struggle made me really think about what I want to say with my writing, and it got me to the place where I understood my characters and their motivations much better than if I had simply allowed myself to make the same mistakes they did. This is the work of my friend, my internal editor. I am grateful for him, because he encourages me to work.

I am determined to actually move somewhere with my writing this year. So I joined up with Write 1 Sub 1 this year. I will be finishing "Crimes of the Umbramancer" before I leave for Clarion this summer, but in the meantime I will be writing at the very least one poem per month. This month for the project I'll finish this short story, but while I'm working on the novel I'll do poetry. It is a good way to learn how to compress meaning into small works.

So listing them out in order goals for this year:

1. Get accepted to and attend Clarion West Writers Workshop.
     A. Finish "The Blood Malediction" by the 31st of January.
     B. Send story and application for scholarship to Clarion February 1st.
     C. Await letter of acceptance in the mail (This isn't so much a goal, as a projection of what I want to have happen.)
     D. Attend Clarion West starting June 23rd, 2013.

2. Write one short story or poem each month for 2013.
    A. Finish "The Blood Malediction" by the 31st of January.
    B. Write one poem per month while finishing the drafts of "Crimes of the Umbramancer."

3. Finish complete second draft of "Crimes of the Umbramancer" by June 22nd.

Concerning my writing those are the only goals I have at this time. I thought about attaching a wordcount goal to them, but it doesn't feel right. I need to base this year on finishing projects, not on wordcount. Perhaps when I get to work on NaNoWriMo next November, I'll focus on that again, but right now I need to be elsewhere. Particularly on the commitment I've made to you. Yeah, by writing these goals down like this and committing to them publicly I need to achieve them. Kinda like when I was doing NaNo and I had to finish because I had announced on live television that I would finish.

So wish me joy this year friends, because I'm going to places that I never thought I would have the opportunity or skills to go. Share in the comments what goals that you have for this year. Maybe we can support each other. ;) Peace, y'all.

Moving up by a NaNo-meter #1

Howdy folks!

I am currently at a 9530 words as I write this.  I'm pretty excited to be at this point keeping a steady pace of writing.  This year has been so much more difficult than last year was, but rewarding in new ways also.  Perhaps because last year all I had to worry about was writing during my time off for the most part.  But now I'm home and all the responsibilities of being home are cutting into writing time.  This killed me during both Camp NaNoWriMo events earlier this year, but something about the main event is different.  It is simply that I've chosen to find a way to make this a lifestyle here, not just a flash in the pan event this time.

Writing as a lifestyle has been the dream I've been chasing for some time now.  And during events like NaNo you have the support and community to help you develop it.  I'm hoping that I'll be able to develop a habit of writing these first twenty seven days.  So far I have been able to anticipate when I might miss a day, and I've written four out of these first five days.  No small task, let me tell you.

Because this month is really all about learning how to write more frequently and reach deeper for the stories within us, I figured that I would share some of the things that help me to reach my wordcount goals for NaNo and what I've learned over these past five days.

1) Don't be afraid to rewrite a scene if it doesn't feel right.

Sometimes when we are drafting we write a scene and just try hard to get it to fit what we want to have happen in the story.  During NaNo they often tell us to not bother doing any revisions to our work.  And I have to say, that's silly.  Keep the words, they are important, but rewrite the scene.  Don't let yourself get into a place with what you are writing that you no longer like it because you are writing so fast that you aren't invested in your story.  Remember that you are writing to become the best writer you can be.  Rewriting is a part of that process.  You might say that there are other writers who haven't needed to do that.  Guess what, likely your not going to be one of them.  And in reality they could have given us better writing if they did revisions.  That's just the nature of the beast.

For me this has resulted in some great things already.  The first scene I tried writing just didn't feel right at the end.  So I decided to rewrite it.  Funny thing is I discovered during the rewrite the voice of the story.  With the voice I began to understand the main character better and found myself wondering new questions about him.  Particularly what made him give up his faith.  I'm hoping to discover that this month as I write him.

2) Don't be afraid to write things that don't have anything to do with the story you are working on.

This sounds like advice that is weird doesn't it?  But we all need a break from some kinds of writing.  I use blogging as a break from writing fiction.  Oddly enough this break gives my mind a rest from the challenges that fiction forces me to face, and I am able to remember for a little bit, why I began this journey.  It isn't because writing fiction is easy.  It is because I enjoy it, in every moment of its difficulty.

This NaNo I am attempting to write several short stories.  But the longer I'm working on it, I realize that I'm not going to get to more than the one short story I'm working on.  Much of this has to do with the fact that I'm going to write about this character's childhood to inform myself about it.  I'm going to take the time to really get comfortable with this character, not just on the superficial level, but I want to know him as well as I know myself.  Because a character that well developed has power to drive a story on their own.  And because he is a major character in my novel it will just work to inform that also as I write.

3) Butt in Chair Hands on Keyboard everyday.

Last year during NaNo I didn't write everyday.  I would slack off because I thought my brain needed time off.  And during those times I underwent a period of just feeling disoriented, not because I didn't need time off, but because I wasn't approaching it in a balanced way.  We usually make time to talk to friends everyday, our spouse, pray, or read.  What makes writing different?  The fact that it uses up so much brain space?  Or perhaps because it is hard.  The other things we do everyday aren't hard. But the reason they aren't hard is because we do them everyday.  By doing them everyday we reduce their difficulty and increase our skill in doing them.  Thus the only way to make writing a lifetime habit is to BiC-HaK everyday.

4) Believe in yourself.

Nobody else can really believe in you until you do.  NaNoWriMo has such great energy because literally people from all over the world come together to belief that they can write a draft of a novel in a month.  Each person comes with a different idea of success, willing to work hard to achieve that.  Do you understand what kind of power is found in that?  And that power isn't bound to just NaNoWriMo season.  It lives within your fingertips each and everyday.  It takes hard work, time, and consistency to develop that power into a future.  It doesn't matter whether you are a neurosurgeon, a musician, a homemaker, or a businessman it takes those ingredients to find success. I want to apply these ingredients to make myself a writer. You can too.

You probably got to the end of this post saying, "OG, we knew all that already. We heard that in our writing class, or on Writing Excuses, or at the last Writing Conference we went to."  That's cool.  I'm just another voice telling you the same kinds of things you already knew and needed to hear again.  Honestly I'm just trying to egg you on for the adventure ahead.  I find myself to be the very happiest in my life when I am writing.  It just makes the rest of it all make sense.  I just hope I'm not the only one who feels that way (and even if I am, I'm not going to stop).

Thanks for reading if you're just trying to support me this month, and if you are a fellow NaNoer, take some of this advice to heart and move in the directions of your dreams.  It might take us a year, two, or even ten, but writing is less about the words and entirely about the ideas we can grapple with and trying to make our writing as perfect as our ideas.

A video on how to make our words as awesome as our ideas.

This is the OG, finishing the day at a grand total of 10652 words. Peace!

P.S. Due to Blogger being a pain, there will be a revision of picture and video sizes later.