Tag Archives: creativity

Saturday with the Spark

Simple yet Effective Art

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Note: I am not and never will be a “great” artist, but I do like to mess around in MS Paint and see what kind of little visual creations I can come up with.

While playing around in Paint the other day, I started toying with shapes, colors, and random line shapes, just musing rather than trying to create a real picture. Along the way, I came up with 4 images that astounded me–they weren’t necessarily “great” art, but they were striking pictures nonetheless. It reminded me of logos for businesses, website headers, and other iconic pictures; the art was simple but effective.

The following simple tricks, like using various shades of one color and basic shapes, can sometimes make a bigger impact on your viewer than a complicated line drawing. Not to mention that it is MUCH easier to draw and color these shapes, especially with a laptop mouse. 😛 Read on to see examples of this kind of art!

Work with varying shades of the same color.

Sometimes, all you need is just one color, with various lighter and darker tones making up all the visual interest in the image. This sophisticated layered effect is created with just four squares of slightly different blues on a very deeply-hued background, which creates a soft picture perfect for some sort of logo or even just contemplative art.

Make your art look 3D with color shading.

With only four colors–bright yellow, black, and two shades of green–I created this simple image, which seems to be in 3D. The yellow “layer” of the picture pops up from the green “layer”, because of the line of darker green I put just below the zigzagging black edge. I seriously surprised myself with this picture…I had no idea the addition of the darker green could make the picture suddenly become dimensional!
This ribbon looks more realistic than not, with just a hint of darker lavender shading in strategic places. Curving shapes are a little harder to do than straight-sided shapes, but just add a little bit of shading at a time. (In this picture, I don’t think I got the shading QUITE right, but as with most of my art, I was afraid to try to do it over for fear I’d mess it all up…which is usually the result. LOL)

In both cases, all it comes down to is choosing a “believable” shadow shade and figuring out which “side” the light is coming from, and you’ve got it made!

Play with using the same shape in different sizes and colors.

By using various sizes and shapes of circles, as well as various colors, you can make a quirky and cool art piece. Layering shapes together in playful ways, experimenting with color combinations, and even putting in a bit of transparency here and there, can create an image you’d be glad to showcase as a logo, a print on a pillow, a piece of art in your bedroom–anything you can think of. This particular design would look nifty decorating a notebook or a pencil cup, I think. ^_^

The Big Secret? This Art Took Minutes

I kid you not; all this art took moments to make but doesn’t look it. Since I’m a very impatient artist, I needed art that didn’t take me hours and hours of sketching, erasing, drawing, coloring, erasing (and crumpling up of paper, eventually).

This kind of simple digital art can be easily used anywhere you want them to be, even in non-digital places–all you need is a printer and an appropriate medium for your project, and you’re set. Try it for yourself; open your simplest image-creation program, and start playing around… 🙂

Saturday with the Spark

Organize Your Creativity with Bubble Maps

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Around third grade, I was taught how to draw something like the following illustration:

Using this, we were told, you could expand out ideas based on a central concept. You’d put the seed of the idea in the middle of the map, and then write more details about the idea in the outer “bubbles”. This was called a “Bubble Map,” one of the many thinking maps we learned how to do that year (see examples of other thinking maps in this PDF).

We often used these in school to get our thoughts together before writing a rough draft of a report, or to record observations on a specific concept. And there are several other uses for them, according to this eHow article.

Mostly science, language, and history used these thought-organization tools…but it occurred to me recently to try using a bubble map in particular to expand on a creative idea.

Why I Chose the Bubble Map Form

The structure of a bubble map is quite adaptable to any idea you want to explore, and its creation is simple; considering that my motivation for creative things has been somewhat lacking of late, I knew I needed something that was simple and adaptable for my use as a visual “thought prop”, to allow myself to flesh out an idea without feeling so daunted and overwhelmed.

Examples of Creative-Idea Bubble Maps

Seeing your thoughts visually organized like this can boost your creativity, as I found out while constructing the following two examples:


This one depicts ideas on my newest layout ideas for WithinMyWorld.org. Notice how I’m tackling many facets of design–usability/legibility, color choice, image and link styles. Bubble maps are great for doing this; the only limit to what you put in the “bubbles” is how big you drew the bubble to start with!


In this bubble map, I’m thinking hard about the various style details of a new song, describing the “mood” of the music, how to play the melody and accompaniment, how to style lyrics, etc. Bubble maps are very good for fleshing out minute details–stuff you would usually think of in a burst of inspiration and then forget.

Learn How to Make Your Own Bubble Maps

Aside from the time-honored pencil-and-paper method described in this eHow article, you can also do as I did and create one digitally using your favorite image-creation program (I used Microsoft Paint). With later editions of Microsoft Word, you can also do SmartArt Graphics that mimic some aspects of bubble maps and other thinking maps, as well. (Learn more about how to make SmartArt graphics here.)

And, if you want to build your bubble map digitally and easily online, there are actually several online apps that you can use. These are NIFTY 🙂

Don’t Think These Would Work for You?

Well, what if I told you that the song I describe in the second bubble map wasn’t even on the list of creative projects until I started trying to do a bubble map about music? Within moments of finishing the map, I was inspired to go to the keyboard and start messing around with a totally new melody.

If these things can jump-start my creativity in these days of headaches and mental fatigue…well, they might just save the world, who knows? GO BUBBLE MAPS! 😀

Saturday with the Spark

The More Outlandish the Idea, the Better

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Ever come up with an idea that was just so silly you couldn’t take it seriously?

Or what about a concept that completely disregards all the rules?

In reality, these crazy, far-flung ideas may be the key to thinking more creatively. You just can’t allow yourself to dismiss them before they help.

Why “Outlandish” Ideas Actually Aren’t

When we’re trying to do anything, whether it’s solving a problem or coming up with a new idea, we sometimes lock our mental processes within certain boundaries, sometimes without realizing it. We follow the rules society has laid down for righting this particular problem, or we cling tightly to the types of ideas that have been successful in the past.

Now, I’m not saying throw aside all rules, regulations, and useful advice. It’s good to remember what’s been successful, and it’s good to remember what society generally likes. But it’s definitely not good to keep ourselves locked within rules when we’re trying to come up with something very new and different. “Thinking outside the box,” an innovative phrase repeated so often that it’s become cliche, really means setting yourself free from what you think you “ought” to come up with, and allowing the creative process to come more naturally and freely.

Examples of Outlandish Creative Ideas

For instance, Mary Shelley’s vision of a monster cobbled together from various body parts might have seemed outlandish, but it certainly laid the foundation for a genuinely spooky and sad tale–Frankenstein. And Edgar Rice Burroughs’ concept of how a man could live on Mars erupted into series of books, which laid the groundwork for the science fiction literary genre for over half a century, even up to the present day. (Burroughs is the author behind the book which the “John Carter” movie comes from.)

Other so-called “crazy” ideas are now commonplace to us. The automobile itself was considered more a novelty than a necessity, even when it first rolled off the production line. And when I read one of my cousins’ textbooks from the ’70s talking about corded phones which showed the face of the person you were talking to, no one ever dreamed it could really be possible–the cordless, wireless iPhone and its FaceTime were still nearly 40 years in the future.

Getting Hold of Your Own “Crazy” Ideas

So, how do you come up with your own wacky creative ideas that just might take off?

Make a promise to yourself that you will pursue and develop every idea that pops into your head, without laughing it away or dismissing it out of hand.

Start brainstorming, about whatever you need a creative idea for.

For instance, do you need an idea for a story’s villain? Start thinking about actions, voice types, facial expressions, clothing, and dialogue that you personally associate with being villainous, and expand on that. This will inevitably lead to developing a backstory or a “reason for being evil”–run with it. Trust me, you will like where it ends up if you let your mind wander. (I did this very process with my own novel’s villain, who didn’t exist until one of my very earliest readers pointed out that I didn’t have a real villain in my book yet.)

Document how your idea grows and changes. Sounds weird, but if you keep track of your original idea and the subsequent changes you’ve made to it, you’ll be better able to fall back on earlier changes if you need to. Plus, even if one little detail of an idea doesn’t work in one context, you could easily use it somewhere else. It’s good to hoard your ideas!

Don’t discount your dreams. If you find yourself dreaming about your idea (which often happens, if you’ve been concentrating on it a lot!), write down what you dreamed about as soon as you get up. Your sleeping mind might just come up with the solution to the last troubling little detail. (Don’t laugh, it’s happened to me before–I dreamed about taking a final exam, and one of the “questions” was actually an answer to the thing I couldn’t figure out before I went to bed. WIN)

If someone else thinks your idea is “weird”, let them think that. Until your idea is fully fleshed out, it might sound a little far-fetched to others, and that, contrary to popular belief, is OKAY. Don’t let anyone’s disapproval get in the way until you have sorted the idea out for yourself. If they have constructive criticism, like my friend’s suggestion that my book needed a stronger villain, that’s awesome; if they just brush your idea aside, then they’re proving they don’t need to be part of your creative process.

If this idea doesn’t work, take it apart and try again. The idea you come up with might or might not work. If it doesn’t, take the non-working bits out and refashion them, as many times as you need to. Ideas are not like laptop computers, whose parts seem specifically made to work with only a scant few other brands of components. Ideas are endlessly flexible and reparable, and best of all, you need only one tool–your brain!

Saturday with the Spark

Avoid Writing a Boring Song

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Boring songs do not get listeners. And yet, what do I find myself writing when I have such an awesome idea for these lyrics and it’s gonna be totally amazing? Thaaaaat’s right–a boring song.

Or what about when I find a melody that’s just crazily beautiful and I gotta find words to go with it right now or I’m gonna burst? Yup–I end up writing a boring song.

What prevents such awesome lyrics or beautiful melodies from being interesting? Well, I find that when you focus too hard on the lyrics and message of a song, the melody and chords–what really carries the message to your audience’s minds–go by the wayside. Ultimately, you end up with a really weighty song, like a cake that’s dense and chewy instead of light and fluffy (and yummy).

Conversely, when you work really hard at the melody and chords of a song and forget about the lyrics and message, the words of the song seem not to match up to the beauty of the music. It’s like trying to match a lovely, subtle striped pattern with a garish, huge polka-dot pattern; the delicacy of the former is overshadowed by the brightness and boldness of the latter.

Can You Quantify “Boring Music” or “Boring Lyrics?”

Well, I’m not sure, but I’m going to try. Here’s some examples of how a songwriter can bore audiences to death, at least in my opinion:

Boring Lyrics Boring Music
  • Introductory verse is too long/wordy
  • Too much “meaning” has been crammed into the song
  • Lots of trite or unnatural rhymes/word rhythms
  • Introductory music without words goes on too long
  • Music between first chorus and second verse repeats too much of the intro
  • Melody is reused over and over without any innovation

When your melody/chords sound like they repeat themselves ad nauseum, or the lyrics just don’t sound natural, your audience is going to be turned off (trust me, been there, done that :C ). You can just tell when their minds start to drift away and stop relating to what you’re singing about. Any time your music and lyrics are not in balance, any time they tug against each other for attention rather than supporting each other, your song becomes a drag to listen to.

Well, What Makes “Interesting Lyrics” and “Interesting Music?”

I believe the following examples are ways we as songwriters can make our songs more interesting to hear:

Interesting Lyrics Interesting Music
  • Introductory verse frames the “story” of the song
  • Song contains just a kernel of meaning, and builds emotion around it
  • Rhymes/word rhythms sound natural
  • Wordless introduction lasts just long enough to set a mood
  • Main melodic theme of the song is strengthened between verses with accompanying, grounding chords
  • Main melody is toyed with between verses, or a secondary melody is added

Wait, This All Looks a Bit Formulaic

I admit, this seems more like a mathematical formula or scientific theory rather than the stereotypically ethereal and beautiful practice of writing music. And I agree, sometimes good songs just form–they pop into existence in minutes, and it feels as if its chords and its words fit perfectly together without any help from you. But sometimes, especially if you’re struggling to write a new song, it’s hard to figure out what will be listened to and what won’t be.

That’s why I started coming up with this listing, as a way to educate myself about the creation of music (especially music that includes lyrics). Songwriting, at least for me, is kind of like speech-writing combined with music performance–you’re trying to get across a verbal message, but at the same time couch it within melodies and chords that are easy on the ear. How do you get someone to listen to a speech? You make it relatable and meaningful without being heavy. Same thing with a song–it must mean something and be memorable.

Summary

Boring songs, suffering from either lyric failure or melody/chord failure, do not have to stay boring! Thankfully, music and lyrics can be rewritten and revised till they both support each other, and an interesting and lovely song emerges. Believe me, it’s possible to make a previously boring song into something magical to listen to!

Saturday with the Spark

Picturestruck

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Have you ever been outside and been surprised by the beauty of light and shadow playing on an object? Or ever been amazed at the perfection of a flower blossom? Has anything, natural or man-made, ever looked so suddenly awesome that you just HAD to stop and take a picture of it with whatever camera was to hand?

If you have, you’ve been picturestruck. I get that way all the time, even though I’m not a particularly visual person usually. Sometimes I’ll see the sky in the daytime, for instance, and be awed by sunlight streaming down between cotton-candy threads of cloud; other times, the quiet loveliness of a full moon casting silver shimmers along the wide river close to my house will render me silent.

Taking care of the urge to capture the image before you is fairly easy if you have a cameraphone or small digital camera with you. It’s as simple as taking the device out of your pocket/purse, lining up the shot, and clicking the button. But if you’re picturestruck while driving, as I am so often, it can be difficult to balance your need to stay on the road with the desire to get an awesome picture right now!

I’ve been known to pull over to the side of the road long enough to fish for my phone and take the picture through my windshield, if I can’t stop long enough to get out of the car (or if it’s not safe to try to get out). But usually, I like to completely stop the car, get out, and take the picture without having to rush. Convenient parking lots are good places to stop for impromptu pictures, even if it does make me look like a tourist in my own town. LOL

Even if it might sound a little weird to practice this kind of art, I do enjoy it, and I end up with some beautiful images that I’ve even used in my web designs. Random spots of beauty in our world are always worth capturing for posterity if we can manage it, I believe.

Have you ever been picturestruck? Ever get any randomly awesome pictures? Tell me in the comments!

Saturday with the Spark

Clumpy Character Description = Boredom

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When I’m reading a novel, I personally hate character descriptions that are “clumped”–the kind that go on too long when they first introduce the character. You probably know the type; there’s almost a whole page dedicated to how shockingly beautiful the heroine is when you first meet her, or how devastatingly handsome the villain is despite his horrible ways. Bo-ring.

Here’s an example I crafted of “clumpy” character description:

Boring Character Description

“In the doorway stood Jean. She was about 41, with curling red hair down to her mid-back, porcelain skin with ruddy patches on the cheeks, and eyes that seemed to be nearly silver. If I had to guess, I’d say she wore a 36DD bra, had no waist to speak of, and hips that nearly took up the whole doorway space. Aside from the expensive, deep green blouse she wore, the rest of her clothing looked worn; even her shoes looked too scuffed to be new. Her rounded belly, not of pregnancy but of years not spent on the treadmill, became more obvious as she moved into the room. If she had once been beautiful, the bloom was rapidly fading.”

While this does make a great character sketch of “Jean”, it’s not very interesting. The story stops while this snapshot in words is taken; additionally, the character sketch is almost too detailed. Prime example of a “too-detailed” sketch: the “36DD bra” and the age of “41” detail, which is something I’ve actually seen done in many amateur stories. Like anybody can tell what size bra a girl wears or exactly how old she is by just looking at her! It’s like you’re reading a police report on somebody’s description rather than a story.

When you do a detailed character description like this, especially at the beginning of a story where it’s the first appearance of the character, it tends to slow down the storytelling, and many readers (like me) will want to skip over it. Nothing’s happening to advance the story in there, so why bother reading it?

Instead of clumping all my character description into one paragraph, I like to space it out across several story-moving sentences, slowly weaving a picture of the character while describing him/her through his/her actions.

I reworked my earlier example into the following sample, below:

Hopefully Not-So-Boring Character Description

“Jean appeared in the doorway just then, her generous hips grazing the doorjamb as she moved through. ‘What are y’all even talkin’ about?’ she said, defiantly placing a large hand on one hip. ‘You think I’m deaf in there, you don’t think I’m hearin’ you talkin’ junk ’bout my fam’ly members?’ For a moment, her anger seemed to spark along her tumble of red curls, and her pale, gently-lined skin flushed only on the cheeks in unbecoming spots. ‘I’m in there cookin’ supper an’ all I can hear is this mess, on a holiday, no less!’ Her large bosom, even constrained as it was underneath the silky green blouse, quivered with the force of her words and feelings. ‘If that’s what you think about my fam’ly, you can just git out, for all’s I care. Why should I bother feedin’ you when you’re talkin’ trash, in MY house?’

No one could say anything against her, not with her gray eyes flashing an unsettling silver, not with her words condemning them. Already a statuesque woman, she seemed to stand even taller in her frustration, and everyone was too intimidated to speak.”

For me, this character description works better because the story continues to move along–we get hints of what “Jean” looks like, especially in anger, and we also get the reasons why she’s angry through the dialogue she has. It feels like a much more active scene, a better emotional scene, not just a paragraph-long, flat painting of a character.

Your Opinion: Which is Better?

Depending on your personal opinion, you might like the first example better than the second, or vice versa. Which do you think is more interesting to read? Which provides a better character description? Is neither particularly interesting to read, for that matter? (That would be a sad result, considering I wrote both, but… LOL)

Saturday with the Spark

Find Your “Style,” and Revel In It

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What defines you as an artist? Is it the short poetry you write about random objects? Is it the monochromatic shades you use to define a mood around the subject of a painting? Do you use dance to show the fluid motions of air and water in human form? Or do you design websites that stun with only beautifully-chosen fonts on the page?

No matter what art you choose to do, if you try to stray too far from the things you love to do most, you will find yourself easily running out of steam. Stretching your creativity too far, into things you don’t particularly like creating or thinking about, will inevitably lead to the well of creativity drying up for a while.

Making “Fresh” Art Doesn’t Mean Trying to Be Someone Else

Artists should not be bullied into doing art that isn’t natural for them. Take a musical artist who is encouraged to “find a new sound” because his/her old sound is “tired.” If that “new sound” differs too much, the musician may not feel as connected to his/her music as before, leading to a less inspired sound. The same could happen to a painter who is told he/she needs to change the style and approach to painting–too far away from the natural style, and the subsequent paintings could end up looking and feeling like so much tripe.

Trying new things in art is great–it stretches your creative “wings,” and can allow you to become a better and more experienced artist. But that evolution and exploration must be a natural process. Artistic style evolution cannot be forced along by anyone’s good intentions, not even our own.

Art: A Growing Process, Not a Personality Change

For instance, I’m a little bit different composer and poet than I used to be. I used to write long tirades of poems going on about my inner life, school, and the junk I was going through; now, I write shorter poems about the life going on AROUND me. I used to write huge, long piano solos, and now I write piano/vocal music, mainly Christian in theme.

And yet, this evolution was not forced. It happened gradually as I grew up. No one shouted over my shoulder and told me I “shouldn’t be writing this way” or “shouldn’t make music like that.” I was allowed to grow as an artist naturally, by both my parents and my musical instructors, and I feel that this made me a much more balanced experienced artist later.

Experiment With and Explore Your Chosen Art, but Stay True to Self, Too

As artists, and as friends of artists, we have to be similarly supportive and understanding of our own works as well as others’. Being creative means we allow ourselves to try new things without fear of rejection, either self-rejection or others’ rejection, just to see if it works. Heck, at least half the art I do starts out as a silly experiment, something along the lines of “Hey, never tried this, wonder if it works? Ah, what the hey, give it a shot.”

But we should never pursue “different” and “new” art so far that it becomes alien to what we believe in and what we love. I cannot compromise my taste for symmetry, lovely blended shadows, and flowing, lyrical melodies, not even long enough to make a little money, because if I tried my hand at sharp, angular, and irregular art, it would feel fake. It isn’t my style, and it would show.

So, even though the sharp, the angular, and the irregular modern art are “all the rage” these days, I stick to what I love and what I can do best. I may never shock anybody or create headlines with my music and my writing, but since it is in my natural style, it will be better art.

Summary

Your art is your own, and don’t worry about it not being “the current style” or “what anybody’s looking for.” Create it first for yourself, to reflect your own tastes, and you might just find more people drawn to it for its authenticity.

Saturday with the Spark

Scheduling Your Creative Time

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Are you currently stalled out when it comes to your creativity? If so, I have been there, and this article is for you.

I’ve written in some of my Saturday articles before about having trouble writing my novel, and the troubles have continued even up until a week or two ago. It literally felt like it had come to an immovable standstill; some days I would just open the file that contained it, read over the last few pages of my writing, and just close the file again, not sure what to add or where to go from where I stopped. I felt paralyzed.

That is, I felt paralyzed until I began to put my novel on my to-do list.

Can You Really “Schedule” Creativity?

Well, no, you can’t plan when you’ll have inspiration. But you can carve out part of your busy day to allow yourself to BE creative. When you allow yourself time to be creative, you open the door for inspiration.

Not realizing this was my biggest mistake: I hadn’t scheduled myself any time to be creative. Without a definitive, set time for “noveling,” I was depending on “feeling like” writing, and I didn’t “feel like” writing because I didn’t see that I had time or energy to do it. The underlying problem was stress over ill-managed time.

Overcoming the Time/Motivation Problem

The last straw came when it had been about a month since I had last written in my novel. I knew that because I looked at the “Last Modified” date, and it read January 17th, 2012.

I was astonished at the date. How could it have been that long? How could I have stopped writing for that long? What was wrong with me?

And, just as quickly as I realized it, I got mad at myself. “If I’m intending to be a great novelist, I first have to get off my butt and WRITE the aforementioned novel,” I grumbled to myself.

Using the Sticky Notes desktop gadget, I finally wrote in a definitive goal for the next day: “Write 1,000 words.” That’s all I had to do–write a thousand words. Didn’t matter how far it took me in the story or anything. Just 1,000 more words: progress. 1,000 words is what I’d been doing every day before I had inexplicably dropped the ball; I wanted to hit the ground running.

…And It Worked

The next day, I looked at my to-do list for that day…and suddenly, 1,000 words in my story didn’t seem so unconquerable, especially when compared with the other stuff I had to do (write 2 blog posts, finish writing my Sunday school lesson for the week). Suddenly, I found myself thinking, “Hey, I can write a few hundred words in my novel when I get tired of writing my blog posts or reviewing the lesson.”

And that’s exactly what happened. That day, I finally started writing again, editing and adding new bits in the story in between crafting my blog posts and reviewing/writing my Sunday school lesson. Like a key had been turned in my brain, the creative “engine” had turned over and started up again, all because my novel had been given a place in my writing life again.

So, How Do You Restart Your Creative Engine?

These are the tricks that worked for me. Try them and see how they work for you and your form of creativity, whatever it may be:

  • Make “creative time” part of your to-do list. Making it a priority is the first step. If you never allow time for it, it won’t happen.
  • Write reminders for “creative time” somewhere prominent. For me, that meant putting it on the computer desktop; for you, that might mean writing it on a whiteboard in your office, or leaving a note on your coffeepot. Anywhere where you will see it consistently and be reminded to do it, especially if you’re absent-minded and living in the future like me, will help you.
  • Remind yourself of what you were attempting to do when you last left off. I’ve taken to writing “When last I left my brave hero, [X], [Y], and [Z] happened/was going on” in my to-do list so that it makes me laugh and remember what I was writing about. That way I don’t have to “catch up” on my own book if it takes a week or two before I get back on the horse. (That’s saved me a LOT of time!)

Summary

It may make writing (or any other creativity) a little less glamorous if you “schedule” time to do it, but believe me, trying to force yourself to find time (when you already feel like your day is packed full) is only going to make you feel more stressed and more down on yourself. Making sure you give yourself even 15 or 20 minutes to be creative can jump-start that long-dead project or that abandoned flight of fancy. And believe me, it works and is worth it. 🙂

Saturday with the Spark

Don’t Let Others Smush Your Spark

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When you’re doing creative work, no matter if you’ve been doing it for 20 years or 20 minutes, sometimes others’ judgments intrude upon your mindset. “What would Mom say about what I’m writing?” “What would my boyfriend think of this painting? Would he think it’s good enough?” “I wonder if this dance routine is really good enough to show my dance teacher.” Those vague fears become reality when we show our hard work to someone else, and see that twist of the mouth or narrowing of the eyes that indicates they don’t quite “get” what we’ve done.

This is ultimately one of the most dangerous threats to your creativity–the judgments of other people. As creators of any type, we tend to be more vulnerable to criticism, especially in our early years, and we fear rejection of our works because our works stem from us. Someone else pooh-poohing our creations is like them pooh-poohing US, all we are, all we ever will be.

I suffer this same fear, in just about every creative aspect of my life. Somewhere in the back of my mind is a hypodermic needle full of paralyzing comments I’ve heard about my work, and every time I start to worry, it stabs my brain cells and pumps them full of uncertainty, leaving me unable to work. Why bother working, when no one but me is ever going to like it?

A Personal Example of Others’ Judgments Snuffing Creativity

During Christmas of 2010, I wrote a song about the day after Christmas. I was trying to talk about the “back-to-business” mindset of December 26th–after the emotional warmth of the holidays, December 26th always feels like a day of cold shoulders, of people shrugging their shoulders and breaking the magic spell of family togetherness with an attitude of “Oh well, Christmas is over, I don’t have to be nice to people anymore till next year.”

I wrote the song and brought the lyrics up to show my parents (always my first audience for anything). But instead of smiles and praise, I got befuddled looks, especially from Mom. Mom couldn’t understand why I hated December 26th so much–to her, it had always been a restful day, a day of relaxing after the rush-rush of the holiday season. She kept saying she “couldn’t relate” to why I hated taking down the decorations and throwing away gift wrap (some of the symbolism in my song, depicting how the warmth and love of the holiday season is “taken down and thrown away” after Christmas).

No matter how much I tried to explain it to her, that it wasn’t about the decorations or the gift wrap but about the sudden lack of caring for other human beings that I mourned, I couldn’t get through to her. Finally, I went away, completely dejected; she hadn’t understood me. Had I lost my gift for writing songs? She always used to enjoy what I did, but this felt like a total rejection of everything I’d been working on.

I haven’t shown her or Dad another song since, and for a long while I went without writing a song at all, convinced that I had “lost my touch.” It made me sick to even look at the keyboard anymore.

Why My Reaction Was Wrong

Though my reaction was natural (at least for me), it was the wrong way to look at it. Yes, Mom usually likes my songs and understands them. But the law of probability says that at least a few times, even our parents won’t understand what we’re saying/doing/thinking. Instead of letting one negative critique bog me down for what ended up being over a year, I should have continued to work on my songs.

For instance, I could have reworked the song to make it more understandable (even though I thought it was already perfectly understandable and didn’t want to make its sentiment too painfully obvious). I also could have set the song aside as a failed project and come back to it when I was less emotionally invested in it or upset by it. What I should not have done, in any case, was to let one perceived “failure” eat me and my creativity whole.

How I Can React to Criticism Better

The following realizations helped me finally pull out of my self-hatred spiral and emotional creativity block:

  • Others’ judgment is others’, and not my own. Mom, and everyone else in the world, is allowed the right not to like or understand my works, and that doesn’t make them any less if I still find value in them. I still have a need to create and a need to express, regardless of what someone else says about it, and if it helps me, it’s done its primary job.
  • I have to know that what I’m creating is the best I can do, right now. If I’m not putting whole heart and whole soul into it, and I’m not making the best effort, then I need to either get my head in the game or leave the project alone. And if I’ve made my best effort and someone else still doesn’t like it, that shouldn’t be my problem to solve.
  • If I don’t leave myself room for improvement, I’ll always be hamstrung when it comes to creative works. If I keep feeling like everything I do has to be absolutely perfect and fully formed like Athena springing from Zeus’ brow, then I’ll feel too daunted to do anything.
  • I can’t allow others to discourage me from continuing my work, either directly or indirectly. Others who criticize and offer no constructive help are, as I’ve found out, generally a wee bit jealous. Others who don’t understand the work or make no attempt to understand before walking away from it literally cannot be a focus of worry (otherwise I’ll drive myself nuts).

It’s Not About Others’ Judgment, but About the Work Itself

If you’re a creator and often get daunted or discouraged by others’ comments or opinions, much like me, then I hope you take away from this article the knowledge that your work IS good enough if you find value in it. If you find awesomeness in your work, and it helps you emotionally and mentally to create it, then it’s helping someone, and it’s worthwhile to someone, even if only one person ever sees it or values it. Creative works are not just for other people, but for the self…perhaps even especially the self.

Saturday with the Spark

The Creativity Leak: Fatigue

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My novel, unfortunately, has come to a standstill, and not because I’m out of ideas. It’s because of a slow leak in my brain called fatigue.

Well, Isn’t “Fatigue” Just Being Tired?

Not necessarily. I used to think fatigue just meant I wasn’t sleeping well enough, but I have come to understand how wrong that viewpoint is.

Fatigue doesn’t just make you sleepy. In fact, it can make you the opposite of sleepy–you can end up so tired you can’t sleep, so used to the flow of adrenalin keeping you going that your body can’t relax enough to sleep.

Fatigue also takes away your energy to think and do things. You feel about 50% alive at all times, as if the other 50% of you is still in bed, and your thought processes are noticeably slower and less fleshed-out. There’s tons of stuff you want to do, tons of stuff you need to do…but even just thinking about it all makes you more tired.

This is what I’ve been suffering for the last few weeks, and my overall creativity has really taken a hit. Aside from time spent at the keyboard, I haven’t done much creative work except these Saturday blog posts (which, admittedly, have been much harder to come up with because of fatigue). And it’s not for lack of wanting to create–I just end up feeling too tired to deal with it.

This kind of tiredness, as I’ve found, leads to frustrated creative desire…and can leave you feeling painfully unfulfilled in your creative life.

Getting Rid of Fatigue So You Can Be Your Creative Self Again

This is as much for me as it is for y’all–I need this advice, too!

First, don’t fight fatigue with forced energy.. Pushing on through and trying to force creativity will only render an inferior product. You’ll be unhappy with what you’ve done, and you won’t want to try again for fear of the same terrible results. (See: my failed attempts at writing a “really good” song, leading to the fear that I’d “lost my gift.”)

Second, uncover the cause of your fatigue. It could be a chemical imbalance, a minor illness that just won’t go away, a vitamin deficiency, job stress, or even just a simple lack of GOOD sleep. Explore all these causes, and truly listen to your body.

In my case, I’ve had a cold and sore-throat bug that has been ongoing for several weeks, and the resulting fatigue left me nearly unable to write anything creative. How I’ve been able to come up with blog posts consistently is beyond me–I guess it is a labor of love. LOL

(I also must warn you to get checked out by the doctor if at-home treatments like vitamin capsules and meditation do not work for you. Fatigue can be a symptom of something worse going on. 🙁 )

Third, allow your energy to come back slowly. Don’t expect to feel absolutely AMAZING the day after you’ve figured out what’s wrong and started treating it. It will take a few days for your body to get back on the energy train, and possibly even longer for your brain to get back its precious creative juices.

Right now, for instance, I’m using these creative Saturday posts to get back my own creative juices. I know the ideas for my novel are up there, but I can’t pressure them to come out–it’s like pressuring a souffle to cook. If you rush it, it deflates. So I have to be okay with what I can do now, and look forward to getting back on the ball.

Fourth and finally, celebrate your efforts, however small they might look. Right now, I’d be glad if I could write 50 words in my novel; that’s how bad my fatigue has been. If I can muster the mental energy to do it, I will be as happy as if I’d written 5,000.

Similarly, you can’t be upset with yourself if you don’t snap back to epic creativity right away. Be glad for the little, itty-bitty victories. If you let yourself celebrate those, you’ll have a more positive frame of mind and thus set yourself up for bigger and bigger victories.

With this good advice in mind (I’m like Alice in Wonderland, I guess–“I give myself very good advice, but I very seldom follow it”, lol), I hope I’ll be back to writing my novel very, very soon. I hope, if you’re feeling a little tired and out of creative energy, that this helps you get back in your game, too. 🙂