Interesting Things

Invoking Creativity

12 or 13 years ago, I was in Colorado for a convention and I found a great-smelling little shop that sold candles (and other cool stuff.)

I bought one that invoked creativity and brought it home with me, making most of my luggage smell creative in the process.

I burnt that candle sparingly but eventually I had used it up. I was able to find another online (spending a fortune on shipping!) and used that one sparingly until it too was gone.

I kept a little bit of the wax – not nearly enough to melt into a new candle – just because it smelled so great- but I just couldn’t justify the expense of getting another shipped here.

Then, a few years back, I discovered that a local store – The Natural Emporium* – carried them so I have been happily invoking creativity ever since.

Do I actually need outside help to invoke creativity?

No.

Do I enjoy how the smell of this candle puts me in mind of how often I have created things while the candle burned nearby?

Most definitely.

It’s good to for anyone to surround themselves with reminders of the things that are important to them.

It’s especially important for people with ADHD because those visual cues (and olfactory cues in the case) can help keep our plans and wishes top of mind.

Also, I just like it.

A photo of a lit purple candle in a small glass container
My creativity candle sat in the edge while I read on the tub yesterday. Image description: a purple candle in a small glass container sits on the edge of a bathtub with the blue shower curtain in the background. The white label on the candle has the word ‘creativity’ in purple at the top, then an square of rainbow lines with an artist’s palette etched into it. Below the rainbow square is text reading ‘“allow me to explore new dimensions, discover, new thoughts, ideas, and emotions.” and the name of the company – Crystal Journey Candles

*An absolutely delightful place run by a kind and delightfully enthusiastic woman and her low-key and friendly staff.

Delightfully Creeped Out On My Walk

I’m glad yesterday was such a wonderfully sunny day and I was in a good mood because when I saw this on someone’s lawn I could be delightfully creeped out instead entirely freaked out.

A statue of a little girl is revealed by a receding snowbank
I have a love-hate relationship with this little statue. Image description: an outdoor photo of a receding snowbank with a silvery statue of a little girl kneeling back on her heels in the middle of it. The statue is wearing a dress and pigtails and looking upward, one of her arms is extended as if pointing upwards and the other is cracked off at the end of her short sleeve. She has a small smile on her face which looks either all-knowing or shy. There is a slab of rock near her that could be a tombstone but is probably just a rock.

When I first saw it, from the side, I actually thought it was a child’s doll that had been left behind and had gotten mildewed over the winter.

A statue of a little girl surrounded by a receding snowbank
See what I mean? Image description: an outdoor photo of the side view of the statue described above – a silvery little girl statue surrounded by a receding snowbank.

Luckily, the good weather and my good mood meant that this creepy statue made me even happier.

I love when people just lean right into their weirdness.

Way to go sorta-neighbours!

Weirdness Abounds

A couple of weeks back, on a family member’s birthday, I made a mistake on the card I was writing for them.

(I often draw little cards for people and then write a message myself. This is partially due to forgetting to buy cards and partially due to enjoying the process of drawing one.)

I tore up that card (I was writing in marker) and I either threw it out or threw it in the recycling. I know I *should* have recycled it but if I was distracted, it might have gotten tossed into the garbage.

And I thought nothing more of it…until Tuesday.

On Tuesday, Khalee and I were walking along the sidewalk about 7 or 8 minutes from my house and I noticed a piece of paper with familiar handwriting on it sitting on a little patch of grass between piles of snow.

I picked it up to look closer and it was a piece of the torn-up, first draft card.

How did it get there?

Did our bag of recycling get torn and the piece of index card went flying?

Did a bag of garbage tear open in the truck and release this scrap of paper?

Did I unwittingly put the scraps in my pocket that day and then pull them out with my keys or my mittens as I was walking along?

All of these explanations seem unlikely (especially the last one) but clearly one of them must be true.

Otherwise we have some sort of time travelling/alternate universe/portal situation on the go and I don’t have the bandwidth to deal with that. 😉

Sunday Morning Collage

A photo of a collage
A photo of a collaged page with bits of paper and stickers. Images in the collage include a skull with a purple moth on top, a snake, a girl with an umbrella patting a dog, tulips, a stamp, a few vintage-looking photos of people and ads, small painting of coloured circles outlined in black on a brown background with black pinstripes, and text reading ‘impressions of reality…’ ‘crystal’ and ‘stones, bones, and skin’

Well, truth be told, I started this last night but I’m still playing with it this morning.

I was just holding a small piece of flower-printed paper over the right hand side of this collage trying to figure out where to put it when I was struck once again by how weird the creative process is.

When I’m writing, particularly fiction, the feeling of getting things ‘right’ is really strange.

Sometimes my words come easily and sometimes I have to carve each one by hand but they often (always?) feel like I am remembering or uncovering them rather than inventing them. As if they are something I already know but I have to go through a process to remind myself.

And when I am trying to figure out something about a character or to iron out a plot point, there is always this sense that I am trying to figure out something that already exists. Like I am guessing until I get the correct answer. Sure, sometimes I have to put an ‘almost right’ answer for the moment so I can keep the story moving but I always know I will have to come back to it.

So, there’s a certain feeling to it when the words or the ideas start to work. And then when I go to revise, there is a different feeling of sliding words and ideas from place to place until they fit- like figuring out the picture in one of those little square puzzles made from tiles.

A similar thing happens in storytelling or in creating a workshop, I uncover the ideas and words until I *get* them and then the story or the presentation is mine.

When I draw, I usually start with an idea of something to draw and then go through the process of discovering what else wants to be in the image, what else belongs.

With collage/junk journaling, unless I am using the process to work through an issue, it’s rarely about expressing a certain idea.

Mostly, I start with a piece of text or an image that appeals to me and then I flip through my current junk journal to see what kind of background page it needs.

Then I go through my bits of paper, my stickers, my ephemera, to see what else belongs with that starting piece.

That sense of it ‘belonging’ or (in drawing) of it ‘wanting’ to be there is very much the same kind of feeling as ‘remembering’ or ‘discovering’ in my writing and storytelling.

There is that real feeling that the thing I am making, be it a story or be it an image, already has a shape, a reality, and my job is to figure it out.

I often find myself saying ‘Oh, right!’ as I scribble words down, as I outline an image I have drawn, or as I finish moving an image around my collage and set it in the right place.

For example, the collage in the photo above, was going to be two separate things. I was just working on the left hand side until that rectangular piece of paper with the woman on it ‘wanted’ to bridge both pages.

That’s when I ‘discovered’ that this was a two page collage and that the left hand side would have one type of images while the right had something entirely different.

And my little piece of flowered paper belongs on the right, not the left, but I just don’t know where yet.

I’ll just keep moving it around until it tells me where it belongs.

A Poem A Day In April

For the longest time I would respond to the question “What do you write?” with “Pretty much anything you’ll pay me to write…except poetry.”

It’s not that I don’t like poetry.

And it’s not that I can’t write poems.

It’s that I am not particularly drawn to write poems and I have never worked on my skills in that area.

I am much more comfortable in other forms or word work and I haven’t felt the need to dig into poetry.

And, of course, given how my brain works, I was forgetting that poets work in drafts the same as every other writer…the same as any other creative person.

Then, recently, I received Sage Cohen’s newsletter in which she mentioned her book Write a Poem a Day: 30 Prompts to Unleash Your Imagination and I was intrigued.

Could I write a poem every day for 30 days?

Well, if I didn’t worry about writing a *good* poem, I probably could.

And since lots of people write a poem a day in April (it’s poetry month!), it seemed like a good time to give it a whirl.

I didn’t officially join a challenge or anything, I just decided to putter along with it by myself.

And the first two days have been really interesting.

As I mentioned above, I had previously forgotten that poets wouldn’t just be able to create a perfect poem on the first try but I had come to realize that poets do drafts just like anyone else.

However, I hadn’t really thought about what that would mean from a ‘getting down to work’ standpoint.

I mean, when I need to write prose, I have long since abandoned the idea that I need to be inspired…

Wait, that’s not completely true.

My conscious mind has abandoned that idea but it still floats around my subconscious and keeps me from getting started sometimes. It’s only when I actually turn my conscious attention to a slow-starting project that I realize I have been waiting for inspiration.

In fact, ‘Are you waiting for inspiration?’ is the first thing on my list of check-in questions for when I am feeling stalled.

I am a professional writer. I know that inspiration often only kicks into gear once you are already writing.*

But, I guess, unconsciously, I saw poetry as something different, something a little more inspiration-fuelled.

However, on Saturday, April 1, when I read Sage Cohen’s prompt for day 1 and sat down with my notebook, I wasn’t inspired but I was determined.

So I did the same thing I do at the beginning of any writing project, I started putting words on paper,

And then I rearranged those words.

And then I added some more.

Took some away.

And then I had a poem.

Not a great but a decent one. Definitely one that I could shape into something better if I worked on it a bit more.

It was a really cool realization.

The process was the same. I could use the exact same skills and produce something entirely different.

Now, I’m not saying that two days of poems makes me a poet. And poetry commissions won’t be a thing.

But it has been amazing to realize that I can express ideas in poems by just sitting down and working at them.

I don’t need to know anything else.

I don’t need to build my skills first.

I can just keep moving words around until they end up in the right places.

And it’s fun.

*Yes, sometimes it shows up first and I am drawn to the page but mostly I decided to start writing and the act of getting started pulls inspiration to me.