Wrestling Psyches in the Gemini phase

I seem to have a dual personality.  Maybe it’s in the stars. After all I’m a Gemini.  Do the gods mock me with this internal striving of tastes and desire?.  I find that I go into a self-imposed exile and spend 7 months by myself to write and illustrate.  “Working on a new project.”  Making my own decisions, and staying out of contact.  But then the other personal nature wrestles me over and pins me so that my social nature can arise.

Being a creative spirit is a painful course of life.  You rarely find anything others who understand the gift.  You are living with others in isolation of soul.  There is this clawing and scratching to find a place of connection with other humans.  A place to ride the same vibe.

The closest I’ve gotten to this type of rapport is to play music with others, though that is not a true soulful connection.  But we all can catch the groove of a great song, and that seems to patch human spirits together, ever so transiently. We get great community connected through both music and food. Though you eat the same dishes and dance to the same beat, we really have trouble keeping the thread taut. It reminds me of the two cans with the cord we used to have as kids. Never worked really well, did it.

Being a writer can come from desiring this connection so strongly that you’ll do about anything to get the communication process started. Some of us have torn souls, ripped by the indiscretions of family or an evil neighbor who soiled our childhood innocence.

We spit out words and though to make a connection. We tried this as children and were often abused for trying to bother adults with our demands for shared moments. They slapped us and belittled us when we stepped forward with our fledgling efforts to make music, write stories or color a picture. But the more we (our feelings) are trounced upon by heavy sarcasm and mean-spirited comments, we grow in hunger to connect.

It’s like living as an alien in an alien world. A Stranger in a Strange Land. Jo Walton writes this review.

We then turn intelligently defensive, and withhold out thoughts and ideas from others. Or we build unclimbable walls. We then create in isolation. But that same powerful desire to connect keeps throwing us into the painful fray in our efforts to make that singular connection. Aren’t we all still looking for approval.

I’m at a place in my personal life that I’ve gotten some balance, and my soul is stronger now. It’s time to venture out into the world of humankind again. But this time, I’ll seek the company of artists and writers, poets and screenwriters, sculptures and musicians & of course, comedians.

My First Step

I’m considering joining a writer’s group. What do you think? I live in Orange County, California, so I know there are writer’s groups here.

My first search results:

If you are like me, living in your isolation? Are you sensing it’s time to step out and meet someone? Are you a writer or illustrator, poet or painter? Have you joined a community-based group? You may want to if you would like some companionship on this road to achieving success in your passion. You may want to try out www.meeting.com. On Google Plus I searched for “Writer’s Group” and got connected. But I live in OC not LA.

The LA Writer’s Group page

 

The Creative Process

 What is Creative?

First of all creativity is a skill, not knowledge and not science. That’s why writing and art instructors fail. They teach you what was considered good art or good fiction. They analyze it, and the can break it down into techniques and styles, but the creative skill is not something you get canned in a box. Writers often rehash materials or use a type of style to project their work into. Artists do the same. They tend to review other art and then copy that style. But just like musicians can play a piece of well-crafted music, that doesn’t mean they are creative. Copying someone’s work and playing someone else’s tune is performance. Creativity requires spontaneity.

In reading about what the intellectual world describes as creative, you start sensing that those who are the most creative are the ones who pull away from the norms of society. You read that folks have nonconforming attitudes and behaviors. But I seriously do not hold that viewpoint. People can be creative and use pre-existing styles and patterns of thought and function to generate a new design. Some creative work requires coming up with nuances of change rather than scrap the whole 25,000 years of history of mankind. You get a sense that the loft philosophical evaluators of society only recognize bizarre works as creative. It would seem that you have to be crazy to be creative.

I find it reassuring that you are no more apt to likely to suffer from a psychiatric disorder that the normal human population when you are a creative type. There are correlations between feeling positive and creativity. I like that. I tend to get moody, and when I’m not feeling good, I’m not productive nor creative. Stress is also a killer of the creative powers.

Some writers talk about hearing characters speaking to them when they are writing fiction. I don’t hear any voices, do you? Sometimes I wish my characters would just join in my thinking and tell me what to write. I think having voice talking to you is a sign of mental illness. But if your imagination is powerful enough, then maybe you can hear your fictional characters chatting over lunch in a little café. Do you imagine having your stories come alive in your imagination?

How to Sharpen the Creative Skill

Often we are told as writers and creative people to go and put down a prehistory of the characters we are creating. We give them personalities, have them have backgrounds, to give them context, to add dimensionality. These are the type of exercises one does to sharpen their creative skill.

But an artist can write as well, but instead of with words they can create sketches or story boards.   If one thinks of what they are working on as a scene in a movie, then they can perceive more – but it is when to add the detail, where to add the focus, which makes the focal point of a piece.

Creative Living

Brushing out a few sketches like an artists, gives the creative juices the right to flow. It’s like saying the magic words for the door to open.

Some say that they get their ideas from dreams, from what they’ve read and scene, but whatever it is, it comes through the gates of the mind. It’s not the sensational experience of seeing the scene in real life that makes it work, but the thought of the scene. Sometimes having a pen & notebook in your possession helps you capture more effectively those creative bursts.

An illustration:

You may be walking in a park. You are like a camera, mic and recording device on two legs. Someone is approached and mugged. Now the description of these individuals is not the story, but only a reflection. You the artist or the writer can choose what to focus on. Camera angle one: you write down who the individuals are in the focus. Where do they come from? Where were they headed? As soon as you pull them apart, and reverse the film from that camera angle, you start seeing that the palette of colors is of your choosing, just like the painter. Camera angle two: You can lean forward, and reflect what the person would think of the incident in the future tense. Say you have these character now described 30 days out from the event. Where are the two now? This makes you decide what they are doing in the future, and what they may think of the event from that perspective. Camera angle three: what happens after 3 years of time. You can now write about how the event is affecting the two prime actors in the story.

Furthermore, you can go back to these cuts and add defining light, a voice over, music and change the feel of the story as it is developing. Think about this. If you just veneer the scene with odd narration and commentary, like the input of a sports caster narrating the scene as it were a sporting event, you create a comedy of the mugging.

If you added three stand-byers who hold up number cards with 8.8, 6.9 7.8 like scores for the sporting event you add another comic veneer. That changes the story. If you switch to commentary about the politics of law enforcement, and focus the reader’s attention to facts and figures regarding crime in that local, you completely change the nature of the story. You could also have the event occurring, in front of another character, who could comment on the event from their point of view.

Writing exercises related to the creative process are a great way to sharpen one’s skills and exercise their creative talent.

Link to a great TED talk on creativity.  For more great art.