Category: Writing, Creativity and Art

Play

Little children play in various ways.Due to the broad nature of play in childhood, it has proved notoriously difficult to define and empirically explore. Scientific studies of creativity have basically concluded that it can’t be taught, as it is a “facility” rather than a learned skill. Putting it very crudely, creativity is the ability to play. And, to be able to turn that facility on and off when necessary.

I consider myself creative, playful and prone to fantasy. I know others who are not like this, and probably never could be and therefore the scientific studies and their results make a lot of sense to me.

To think of writing as ‘playing with words’ sometimes frees me up in the creative process. The pressure to produce and ship something is lessened when I think that all I have to do is start playing and poking around, and eventually something will come up that is mildly interesting, inspiring and then publishable.

If you get stuck on a project, start playing with all the boundaries and assumptions you make on that project. Just to play with it all might free you up.

 

 

Superfluous

superfluous
suːˈpəːflʊəs,sjuː-/
adjective
  1. unnecessary, especially through being more than enough.
    “the purchaser should avoid asking for superfluous information”
    synonyms: surplus, redundant, unneeded, not required, excess, extra, spare, to spare, remaining,unused, left over; More

Blocking out the superfluous. Effective filtration of crap. This is the biggest battle in most of our lives, and of course it isn’t just about finding time to write – it is about our psychological state, life on the internet, and creating any art.

I am into creating something from nothing. It’s the most important thing to be creative rather than destructive, and yet it takes time and that means it takes away from something else that may be easier for your brain to handle. Facebook? Exercise? TV? Socialising?

The thing is (there’s always a thing, isn’t there?) that most of the time, the other stuff has plenty of time….certainly enough time…. allocated in your day anyways. The other stuff is mostly (in my case anyways) the path of least resistance. To give yourself one hour a day to just create something from nothing is not going to bring the world to its knees. Quite the opposite.

And so I made myself write this post, and I make myself block out the superfluous stuff from my calendar more and more. Funnily enough, it also applies to the living space: http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2016/02/17/effects-of-clutter_n_9255032.html

Friday Fun – Reblog – Two kinds of filters — Seth Godin’s Blog on marketing, tribes and respect

Seth Godin just makes sense to me. Today’s post on filtering the net is so on the money. I aim for the sort of discipline he exudes.

Here’s a link after a quote:

“There’s the filter bubble of the internet, in which we willingly surround ourselves only with information sources with which we agree, soon coming to the conclusion that everyone agrees with us. The other kind is the filter we can choose to build to avoid falling into a rabbit hole of wasted time, misogyny and dissatisfaction.…”

via Two kinds of filters — Seth Godin’s Blog on marketing, tribes and respect

Rant

If the only thing you have to write about is how tired you are, or how terrible things are these days, or how little hope you have for the future, then I am not interested.

Give me people who take action over those who post despair to make an impact.

Give me someone who is creating something beautiful over someone who is scouring and searching for something to complain about, all the while playing it safe every day.

Rant over. Time to go make something awesome.

 

Thoughts on Dune

I managed to read a hefty chunk of Dune today (I have read 17% of the book). It is wonderful in its focus on just the right details.

Often when I write I become overwhelmed by the sheer scale of limitless possibility in fiction. The options are endless. The trick is getting the right boundaries in place to make believe.

Dune does this so well. The author is very precise and clear in their characters, images, its fictional folklore and worlds. Also, the pace at which the story is building is excellent too. A sense of tension and impending doom for some characters is mixed with excitement at retribution and glory for others.

Needless to say, I am completely hooked.

Smugglers of Earth – 4

The Nexus Space Station sat in orbit 400 kilometers above the planet of Bendaiir. The size of a small town, The Nexus was large enough to hold 500 people comfortably in its 4 quarters. Much smaller cruise ships and freighters came and went at regular intervals. Delivery ships docking to the mothership. Every few minutes, the Nexus fired its massive boosters to keep from being pulled down out of orbit by old earth’s gravity. Attached behind the body of the Nexus was a sort of interstellar trailer with hundreds and hundreds of bright blue capsules of varying sizes. Like a massive tray of eggs being pulled behind the ship.

At the helm of the Nexus, Captain Maddox was leaning over a communication device growing increasingly frustrated at the reception. “Hello? Marlon? Smuggler 1, do you read?”

“It’s the storm sir, they say it’s the storm of the century. Likely to go on for many hours still.” Marcus the engineer was pushing buttons and reading lists of code from the multiple screens on the dash board as he spoke. “I think it threw our co-ordinates off too. Last reading we had of the Smuggler, he was at the bottom of Colm Naiir. We wanted to port him to the top for the view.”

The Nexus was created in a moment of crisis. In the year 2200 The Bantam Civilization opened a portal to old earth, leaving the planet open to a classic Bantam siege. First the large, strong and alien Bantams had negotiated with the frightened humans, taking minerals and metals by the ship load through the portal, enriching a few humans and draining the planet at an alarming rate. Then water and food became their priority.

Desperation grew on old earth but any resistance by humans was quashed by the Bantams with advanced weapons and magic. Lakes dried up, forests turned to farmlands with no human access. The Bantams intended to bleed the planet dry.

In a panic, the UN and all banking organizations of old earth diverted all funding to a full scale planetary migration. Humans managed to find a habitable planet, pack up and leave with startling success and haste. What they left behind was the animals.

Increasingly endangered and prized throughout the galaxy as rare hostages, pets, and zoo exhibits – old earth’s biodiversity was on the edge of disappearing. Old earth’s red list of endangered animals had hundreds of species with less than 5 individuals accounted for. Nexus was created to smuggle the most endangered animals to safety. The most advanced weapons and transportation technology made the Nexus a formidable ship, able to move freely through the Milky Way. Blue pods cryogenically froze the most endangered animals of old earth, ready for space transport and introduction to the manufactured biospheres of new earth. But first, the animals had to be found and saved. The strategy was to smuggle the animals away from captivity and have them ported up to the Nexus. Sometimes the animals were captive on old earth. Often they were in the far flung planets of the Milky Way. Planets such as Bendaiir with its shepherd trolls.

Captain Maddox let out a frustrated sigh and bowed his head, “I guess all we can do is wait it out then?”

Marcus nodded, “That, or maybe he can use a card. If not, those trolls will get more and more rowdy. Not good smuggling conditions though, and a potential danger to the asset.”

Dune

I have started to read Dune.

I am 10% of the way in (according to kindle!) and it is fantastic so far. Like a fine painting, the author is adding layer upon layer to his characters. I can already see the influence it has had on other work such as Game Of Thrones.

My plan is to work through all these books, taking as long as it takes – because this is enjoyable to me. No deadline, no cutoff. Just a bunch of excellent books to read. Without doubt this will have an influence on my own writing. For that I am also excited.

Smugglers of Earth – 3

Sodom. Pronunciation: /ˈsɒdəm/

  1. A town in ancient Palestine, probably south of the Dead Sea. According to Gen. 19:24 it was destroyed by fire from heaven, together with Gomorrah, for the wickedness of its inhabitants.
  2. Collective noun for a group of shepherds.

If a shepherd troll offers you help, turn and run the other way.

As the leader of a filthy sodom of shepherd trolls, Lughar had delusions of grandeur. He forced his followers to treat him like a king. On hot summer days, he ordered the female shepherd trolls to fashion rich goat skin canopies to shade him from the sun. In winter they had to bed with him as often as he wanted and feed him warm goats milk on tap. He permanently had a crown of goat bone on his head and a cloak of goatskin hanging down his back. Bigger than the rest of the shepherd trolls, he crushed any opposition, flattening their skull with his bare hands. Many an uprising had resulted in blood and splintered bone staining the plains of Colm Naiir. Lughar felt as though he owned all of Colm Naiir and the Nea Tor. In reality he probably only owned a few goats and held one very valuable prisoner.

Lughar sniffed and wiped water from his nose, and what a nose it was. Disproportionately large for his face, in fact it made up most of his head. The nose started at his forehead and protruded out four or five inches, only rejoining his face at the top of his chin. Needless to say he had a good sense of smell. With his nose being so large, his mouth was distorted and squashed to the left side of his face like a cubist painting. Huge warts and nose hairs poked out of his nostrils and the rest of his body was hairy and dirty and slimy as you might expect a troll to be. This night he was also soaking wet, and excited about the storm of the century.

Lughar and his sodom were debaucherous on storm nights. First they cast a hex on the campfire to keep it going all night, turning the flames emerald green. To celebrate the storm of the century they had chased their herd of goats around the campfire trying to get them struck by lightening. When that didn’t work the shepherd trolls cornered the herd in the sticky mud. Picking victims one by one the trolls would drag the goats by the hind legs to open space away from the herd. Many goats had already been killed. Dismembered and physically abused in the plains, their bodies were left in the puddles to rot. All of them were terrorised and the goats sensed they would be lucky to make it through the night. There was no chance of escaping the torture, but they might not drown or get eaten if they huddled together and accepted the punishment when it came. It delighted the trolls to have their way with the goats in the mud.

The storm of the century was looking like it would last all night. Ideal for trolling. Lughar had his eyes set on a small kid suckling furiously for comfort from its mother. Swigging the last of his whiskey from his pot, Lughar started to approach his next victim. Then the night took a turn.

From high up above, there was a high pitched thunderclap and then there was silence. To the trolls’ dismay the storm of the century disappeared into thin air. No more rain, no more lightening, no more thunder. The terrified goats looked up and found they could not turn their heads back down. From tense, frightened animals the goats became calm, even happy at what they saw. The beauty of the clear night sky calmed them.