Tag Archives: creativity

Saturday with the Spark

Desktop Art: Wallpapers

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As long as I’ve had a computer of my own (which was when I started college), I’ve had the urge to design backgrounds for my desktop. In a way, it was part of creating art for me–I wasn’t particularly good at drawing, wasn’t particularly good at coloring, but I did seem to be good at making desktop wallpapers.

Unfortunately, most of the wallpapers I’ve created over the last few years are locked on a hard drive that may or may not be recoverable :(, but I can share with you the few that I uploaded to my deviantArt account many moons ago. I can also give you a few tips on creating a desktop wallpaper that will be a delight to your eyes.

Picking the Desktop Style that’s Right for You

What you like as a wallpaper varies greatly, depending on what you need your desktop to do. I know plenty of people who cover their whole desktop with icons for files; I myself prefer a desktop uncluttered with icons (regardless of how my physical room looks…*snicker*). Other people have hyper-organized desktops with tons of informational widgets and gadgets all over the place, from daily calendars to how hot the CPU is getting, and so forth.

I’d say that your desktop should represent you, and should also be functionally beautiful for what you need. In the next few examples, I’ll show you various ways of organizing as well as decorating your desktop wallpaper.

Make it Expansive and Gorgeous

A wide, panoramic shot is great for a large-picture desktop; I favor nature pictures for these, and I try to make them as uncluttered as possible, with very few desktop widgets or gadgets. Any picture with a broad view, lots of color, or an amazing light effect works great for desktops.


A Beautifully-Colored Sunset

This is a photo I took with my cell phone camera; I used it for several months as a desktop image, though I don’t have the actual desktop screenshot available. I loved the colors and plays of light and shadow in the picture, and so I fought to keep my desktop as clear as possible for this picture–I think I only had four icons on my desktop the whole time I used this picture. GASP!

A Desktop’s Not Just for Pictures

I like to include verses of poetry or quotes on my desktops, along with pictures or images. Usually I come up with my own poetry or quotes in direct response to what the image evokes in me; sometimes, though, I’ll mix my own words with someone else’s on the same desktop if I want a variegated desktop.

For these two screenshots, I show how I organize my desktop differently depending on my needs for that span of time.


Desktop January ’07 to March ’07

During the time this screenshot was up, I needed a constant HTML to-do list up on my desktop–thus, the large black area on the left, balancing the image (Sustaining Spirit, by Rebecca Guay) and my poetry on the right. (Had to motivate myself to do my homework somehow! I miss that functionality of Windows XP, to put an HTML page directly on the desktop…)


Desktop September ’06 to January ’07

For this desktop, I didn’t need a to-do list, so I just kept all the icons to a minimum and let the background speak for itself, with self-created poetry and a lovely image for which I cannot remember the source.

Make It Look Like a Scrapbook of Your Life

To create a “scrapbook” look, I’ll often put several pictures on a plain or subtly-patterned backdrop, arranging them so they look either neat or haphazard, either all together or spread out across the page. I find this to be an inspiring and fun background style to use on a daily basis–gives a little “oomph” to a bad day!


Desktop June ’08

During this time, I was away from home and was very homesick, especially being away from awesome boyfriend of win, so I created this bulletin-board-like desktop with five real pictures, including a picture of us together. ^_^ I also had Vista’s Sidebar active (on the right, with some gadgetry in it), so I made sure the background did not compete with the Sidebar, nor did the icons on the left.

(Also, this was the infamous desktop that one of my classmates saw and asked, “Aww, is that your boyfriend? How many years younger is he?” I replied, “I’m twenty-FOUR and he’s twenty-NINE.” LOL)

Designing a Desktop of Your Own

To try out some of your own desktop art, pull out a few personally-meaningful photos, find some lovely patterns and images online (or make some yourself if you like), and start working. Play around in your favorite image-creation software or online image-manipulation site (like Pixlr or Aviary); arrange the photos and images any which way, add text if you want, and splash color all over it. It’s your desktop, after all–try everything and see what works best.

A few guidelines and tips for this process:

  • Check out your monitor’s screen resolution settings before you design, and make sure your image is as close in size to the resolution as possible. For many of my old desktops, I designed for a 1024 x 768 resolution; later, I had to design for a 1300 x 1050 resolution (I think), and so on.
  • Remember that the desktop background will likely be stretched a little bit to fit your screen if it’s not the same size as your monitor. Keep this in mind when selecting images, especially big images–you might end up with a funhouse-mirror photo!
  • Know where you’d like to put your icons and desktop widgets before you start designing your background. In my June ’08 desktop, I knew that I wanted Vista’s Sidebar to display on the right, so I offset the pictures left of true center so that the pictures wouldn’t be shadowed.
  • Try out “framing” your pictures in colorful patterns and shapes, and play with drop shadows and blur effects. These all seem to work well in a desktop setting.

Summary

Making wallpapers into “desktop art” can be an easier and more accessible way to involve creativity in your life. If you’ve never tried it, I encourage you to do so–who knows, you might make something truly inspirational!

Saturday with the Spark

Writing a Relatable Song

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What makes a song “work?” What makes a song resonate with people?

Musical artists have been trying to capture that idea for centuries, and yet it still seems like it’s more luck than anything. Sometimes you just have a wonderful idea, not a winning formula.

As a longtime poet, composer, and songwriter (since the age of 12), I’ve written a lot of songs that either just don’t captivate me or don’t get a whole lot of response, even though they have a lot to say. Then, I’ve written songs that other people absolutely love and enjoy. Studying my “better” songs versus the less-popular ones has brought me to understand something about music that I never really thought about before.

Songs people enjoy are ones they can relate to best.

Seems too simple, right? I thought so, too. But as I thought about how I listen to music, and what kind of music I like, I realized more and more it was right. As a songwriter, you have to make your song relatable to others, and to do that, you have to balance between being too personal and too generic. So, I came up with lists of what makes a song too personal (as in, I can’t really listen to it because there’s so much detail I don’t relate to), or too generic (as in, it doesn’t have a point and/or doesn’t feel like it’s saying much of anything relatable to my life).

Note: Even though I ain’t professional yet and am not formally trained in “songwriting,” I have had a lot of experience playing, writing, rewriting, reworking, and eventually performing my songs.

You know your song is too personal when…

  • Your lyrics are cluttered with many specific place and people references, like a diary entry
  • You’re having trouble stretching your melody to fit around all these specific place names and friend names
  • There doesn’t seem to be enough room within the “2-verses, 2-choruses, 1-bridge, final chorus” song template to say all you want to say about the situation

I’ve fallen into the “too-personal” trap a good bit with my own songs. When others hear lyrics that are more about you than about how your situation parallels theirs, they can find it hard to relate to your song. Personal details flesh out the story you’re telling or the imagery you’re crafting, but don’t load the song up with tons of personal details that are too specific to you. It’s hard to sing along when you don’t know the story and can’t imagine it!

You know your song is too generic when…

  • The verses seem “empty” when you sing them, like there are too few words, but there are plenty in there
  • You’re not sure anymore which episode in your life you’re drawing inspiration from for the song
  • It seems like you’ve heard something similar on the radio, somewhere along the line

While trying to come up with an awesome new song for my church, I was falling into this trap over and over again. Everything I wrote felt forced, trite, and stupid–I kept thinking, “This verse could have been written by anybody! It sounds good, but it’s…not me, and it’s not about me. Grr!” I was trying too hard to write something people would like, and I was going too generic to do it. When audiences hear a song that’s too generic, the usual comment is that it feels like it’s been done before. And it likely has been!

So What Makes a “Relatable” Song, Anyway?

I believe it’s all about being just personal enough and yet appealing to all listeners’ emotions. (Good songwriters know how to strike that over and over; I hope I’ll get there one day, though many people have already told me they hear themselves in my songs just as much as they hear me. But not every one I write is a hit, and I have to remember that–it’s a balance you have to recalibrate every time.)

The following list of tips are the ones I follow when I’m writing a new song. To make this list, I thought, “What makes ME love a new song?”. The resulting list seems to work well and cover all the bases. (It’s more about crafting lyrics than melody, but there’s ways in which crafting one definitively influences the other.)

A Relatable Song…

  • …References emotions/repercussions coming from a specific event, rather than referencing the whole event itself
  • …Describes a state of being, even a transitional or transformational state of being (like coming to terms with death, entering a new relationship, etc.)
  • …Uses visual imagery to describe a place, intertwined with feelings that the place evokes
  • …Matches the mood of the melody (bouncy, somber, peaceful, tormented) with the mood and tone of the lyrics
  • …Contains the main emotional idea of the song within the chorus, and expands upon the main idea (and how it came about) in the verses

Summary

Though writing a “good” song may not always be quantifiable, I think we can weed out some of the too-personal/too-generic problems that hurt many beginning songwriters. It’s not about trying to “market” something, but trying to make something that others genuinely respond to. When I weep or laugh aloud at the end of the first playthrough of my song, I know it’s pretty good. When others weep or laugh aloud at the end of the first performance, because they have felt that way before and know exactly what I’m singing about, I know it’s really good.

Saturday with the Spark

I’ve Still Got It!

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My creative musical life has gotten a huge boost very recently–in fact, “Monday of this week” recently! Thus, the following blog post is in honor of it. And if you’re experiencing a slump in your own creativity, I urge you to read this for advice that really helped me get back my creative groove.

Before Monday: I Haz a Musical Sad

It seemed that I was no longer interested in composing music, as I once had been. I had been used to writing tons of piano solos and piano/vocal music every year (at least 15 every year); in recent months, however, it felt like years since I had even sat down to compose. Once, I had done performances for other people, but even those were rare. It was like the desire for my own music had been drained from me, replaced by performing others’ music, as well as not having a ton of time anymore to muse at the keyboard.

I mourned this loss, and it made me downright unsure of my creativity in music anymore. I wondered, “Do I even have “it” anymore, the gift of writing beautiful music? Or has it all been replaced with ‘everyday life’ and random stuff?” Not only that, I feared I had lost the capacity to write beautiful melodies, and had also lost the time to just sit at the keyboard and expand upon them.

Then, I Got Mad

On Sunday, I realized all this. My first instinct was to wallow about in my sadness, and I started to draft a Saturday with the Spark post about “losing my musical mojo” or something like that.

And then, I stopped about halfway through. “Why am I LETTING this happen to my music?” I thought, staring at my writing. I was starting to get ticked off. “What is all this stuff about ‘I used to be good at music?’ Dangit, I want to be good AGAIN. And I can be–it’s just there’s all this CRAP in the way!”

Getting Rid of the Aforementioned “Crap”

So, in a fit of drivenness rather than rage, I systematically removed all the obstacles towards practicing music. Since my keyboard is currently set up in our finished basement, there were a LOT of physical obstacles in the way. I replaced the cold, creaky, too-short keyboard chair with another; I moved the pile of junk that sat boldly in the path to the keyboard; with Dad’s help, we fixed a light on the basement stairs to make it easier (and safer) to go down.

But that still didn’t remove all the mental obstacles. I had a lot of fear about whether I still had “it,” whether I could still write beautiful music. That, I left ’til Monday, and rested the rest of the night.

The next day, I spent most of the day writing, kindasorta avoiding the melody (and part of a little song) that had been twisting and twining between my brain cells for the last month and a half. At last, about 6:00 Monday evening, I set aside what I was writing, and began to fix up the song’s lyrics properly so that they matched the melody–what I had roughed together was okay, but it wasn’t the best.

About 10 minutes later, I took computer and all down to the keyboard, and set up the screen so I could see it from the keyboard. Then, I began to play and sing the song…

And Then, I Haz a Glad

…and it was magic. The song slid from my fingers easily, and I maneuvered the vocal melody just as easily as if I’d been practicing it for days (which, in a way, mentally, I had been). Not only was it prettier than I had imagined, but it was easy to sing, was honest, and…it was good. Much better than I had expected from myself after months of not doing this.

I had been so long out of practice that I had been afraid to try anymore. But I was pleasantly surprised–and very, very happy. I wept at the keyboard–it was like a long-lost friend had finally come home.

Have You Lost “Mojo” for Anything Creative Lately?

(Pardon the Austin Powers reference 😛 ) If you’ve lost the ability or time to be creative due to too much work, illness, etc., then you know the sense of emptiness and loss I was feeling. It really took me getting mad about it and getting fired up enough to change what had been happening, and I think that’s what it takes for any change like this to come about. You have to be dissatisfied with how it’s been going, and know what to change to make it better.

One key, as I found, is to remove all the obstacles towards being creative. If you feel at a loss for writing because you have no space to work, for instance, make a space to work. It might be at a kitchen table or counter, or it might be a cheap folding table in the corner, but make a place for your creativity. For me, the junk pile, the lack of light, and the too-short chair made it easy to make excuses…they had to be changed.

Another key is to make time to be creative. If you allow no time for creative activity, it won’t just happen on its own. If you keep yourself busy, don’t leave the Internet behind for a few hours, or don’t carve out even a teeny bit of time in your commute to just think out a couple of ideas, it won’t happen. I had to leave the Internet behind on Monday afternoon, just long enough that I could draft and play my song…and it was WORTH IT! 😀

The last key? Trust your ability. If you could do it before, you can do it again. You might be a touch out of practice, you might feel a little differently about the process, but if you expel all the doubt and fear from your system, you’ll do fine. At least, that’s what I found out.

Saturday with the Spark

Words as Pictures: The Wordle Way

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A few years ago, while stumbling about on the Internet, I discovered a very creative site, and I think it’s one of the best modern ways to use words in visual art (besides web design, of course).

Wordle is a Java-enabled way to make blog entries, feeds, articles, pasted-in text, or even Delicious tags into a graphic. Now, I know that doing graphic arrangements of words is not new to the world of visual art, but Wordle does it in a particularly interesting fashion, with the largest words being the most used in whatever text sample it gets.

Some Personalized Examples

For some beginning examples, I used Wordle to do a couple of graphics based on two large samples of my writing, below:


Based on my webmistress page
It amuses me that “Grits” and “driveway” are two of the biggest words…LOL


Based on Crooked Glasses’s RSS Feed
You can tell the gaming post was prevalent on my feed this particular day. Haha

In both these cases, I chose the font color and style, as well as the background color. I also chose how the words spread themselves across the image. All of these tools and many more options are available to you through the Wordle interface–play around with it and see what you like best!

Some “Famous Poetry” Wordles

I also used Wordle to make word pictures with a couple of my favorite poems, seen below:


From the poem “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe


From the poem “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost

Wordles as Wall Art/Gifts

Making a Wordle would be a fun thing to do with a particularly inspirational monologue, poem, or prose piece you like–print it large and frame it to put it on your wall, or just stick it on your bulletin board with tacks and call it a day. Anything that gets it into your line of sight on a daily basis would work well.

Also, if you wanted to give a Wordle as a gift, you could easily copy in the text of something a family member or friend has written, and transform their writing into evocative visual art that they can enjoy. Choose favorite colors for the words, arrange it all for best effect–it can make a beautiful personalized gift.

You could even write in just random positive words that describe the gift recipient into the text box provided. Just make sure the words that you want to be largest are there multiple times, and you’ve got it! Almost anything that uses words could become a word graphic using Wordle…you might come up with a totally new way to use it, too!

Try It On Your Own Writing!

Take the largest sample of writing you have, or the most vibrantly written work you have. Anything you want. It could even be a long Facebook status. Copy in your text, and see what Wordle can do for you. It’s not only a fun timewaster, but a great tool for design and art, too. 🙂

Saturday with the Spark

Finding the Harmony

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Singing along with the radio or my personal music in the car is awesome–and yet it poses a unique challenge for me, as a person with perfect pitch. Whenever I go anywhere in the car, I challenge myself to find pretty harmony to sing along with the songs I hear, without any help from other instruments to find the “correct” note.

My Personal Experience with Vocal Harmony

With any singer, I can generally add either a harmony line below the melody line or above it, as appropriate for my vocal range. (My normal vocal range is from F-sharp below middle C to F-sharp above C above middle C, which is two octaves. I can get down to E below middle C and get up to A above C above middle C fairly comfortably, buuuuuut not all the time. :D)

I sing either soprano (high) or alto (medium-high) harmony with female singers, and either alto or tenor (medium-low) harmony with male singers. It’s kinda funny to sing harmony that goes below where a guy singer is singing, but it does happen–listen to “Eye of the Tiger” by Survivor for a perfect example of a song that I sing below the melody line on.

Another song that I can do really cool harmony on is Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep”; I sing a harmony line that is generally a third above her melody, making a haunting, lovely chord (even if it does get a teensy bit close to the top of my vocal range, LOL).

Why Bother Doing This?

Firstly, it’s fun; it adds a new, personalized twist to the songs you love to sing along to. Secondly, it’s a great way to keep in practice if you’re a harmony singer in a singing group–it gets you used to picking out harmonies. Thirdly, it can train your musical ear to “hear” these harmonies better in general, whatever instrument you play, whatever kind of musical training you’ve had.

Try It At Home!

Even if you don’t have a sense of pitch that helps you make harmony on-the-fly, you can still do it using an instrument. I use a physical piano keyboard; you could also use piano sites, like Virtual Piano, or apps like LittlePiano (for Androids) and Magic Piano (for iPhones)! (Since many band and orchestra instruments are tuned differently, you’ll probably want to stick with a piano for picking out melody and harmony–I find it’s easier. But maybe that’s the pianist in me talking. LOL)

First step is to pick out the original melody. Easiest way to do this is to listen to the song in the background and then try to match the notes you hear, one at a time.

Then, you’ll want to add a second line of notes to what you’re playing, either below or above the melody–this will form your harmony line. Follow the key signature and the sharps and flats that the key has for these steps; for instance, “Rolling in the Deep” is in C minor, so the E and A will be flatted (they are the third and sixth steps in the octave, respectively), and after you hit the A-flat, you’ll go up to a B-natural for the seventh step (called a “raised seventh”).

I’ve made up a small sheet-music-style selection of the melody and proposed harmony lines from the first two lines of the chorus of “Rolling in the Deep,” below. (Please forgive the fail quality of these–this sheet music approximation was all I could do using Microsoft Paint and a laptop mouse. LOL)


This is the original melody, with no harmony put in.

This shows harmony a third above the melody, in light blue. This is what I usually sing in the car along with the song. ^_^

For those who do not read sheet music (or if the images aren’t showing up), here’s the translation for playing it on the piano.
(“Bb” = “B-flat”; “Eb” = “E-flat”)

Original Melody

“We could have had it all – ll, roll – ing in the dee – ee – eep”
(G) (Bb) (G) (Bb) (G) (C) (Bb), (Bb) (G) (Bb) (G) (C) (D) (Bb)

Proposed Harmony

“We could have had it all – ll, roll – ing in the dee – ee – eep”
(Bb) (D) (Bb) (D) (Bb) (Eb) (D), (D) (Bb) (D) (Bb) (Eb) (F) (D)

More Tips on Finding Harmony

Singing an interval of a third above the melody (like I’ve done in my example), or a third below the melody, or even singing in intervals of sixths above or below the melody line make generally pretty harmony. In some cases, you may have to change the intervals slightly for harmony that fits better in a chord (such as changing a third-above interval to a fourth-above interval so it doesn’t sound out-of-key), but otherwise it usually works out okay.

A Note (tee-hee) About Voice Timbre

If you sing this along with the song, try matching voice timbre with the singer as much as possible–if he or she sounds a little more nasal than full-throated, try to match that, or if they have a lighter, bouncier voice rather than a big, heavy sound, try matching that. If you match how they sing really well, the harmony ends up sounding like a seamless part of the song. (Matching Adele’s bell-like pronunciation of the “ee” vowel on the word “deep”, while singing the higher E-flat…chills and goosebumps. It’s COOL 8D)

Summary

If you’ve never tried finding vocal harmony before, I encourage you to try it. It may take a couple of tries (or more), but it’s something you can use to train your ear and give you a new way to enjoy your favorite songs.

(And I don’t own any rights to “Rolling in the Deep”–I used it as an example in this post because it’s a lovely song, and the chorus is easy to translate into sheet music.)

Saturday with the Spark

Papercrafting Post #6: Parchment Craft/Pergamano

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Today’s post features a papercrafting art that is both decorative and functional: parchment craft (or Pergamano). It is generally used for greeting cards and gift tags, but it’s also extendable to ornaments, picture frames, and even boxes!

How Do You Do It?

To craft with parchment paper, you can emboss or paint designs onto the paper, and/or cut it into interesting shapes. Parchment is thinner than regular paper, so it takes better to raised designs, like fancy lettering or detailed shapes, but you do have to be careful with it so you don’t accidentally tear it.

Tools You Need and Basic Techniques

  • Mapping pen (used generally with white ink) – for drawing out larger, bolder designs on the “rough” side of the parchment paper before you emboss them
  • White pencil – for tracing smaller, finer designs before you emboss them
  • Embossing tools – for raising designed lines on the paper. Press down/rub back and forth gently on the “rough” side of the parchment, and on the other side, your design will appear as a whiter area. Narrower embossing tools make sharper lines; wider tools make softer raised areas.
  • Scissors – for cutting and shaping the paper
  • Needle tools – for perforating parchment, lending a light and lacy look–great for borders and within embossed designs. Single-needle and multi-needle tools are available to create different shapes!
  • Felt pads – for cushioning your parchment so that you can emboss and perforate the paper without damaging the paper or the surface underneath.

Other Fun Techniques

  • Add color with markers, acrylic paints, colored pencils, crayons, and even watercolors. Doing this gives your parchment crafts a more modern look, since colors were not traditionally used for Pergamano until the 20th century.
  • Use the needle tools in concert with small scissors to create interesting borders for your designs. Perforating and then cutting selectively can give you lovely snowflake-like looks in a matter of minutes!

To Learn More:

ArtofParchmentCraft.com
Parchment Craft Magazine
Free Pergamano Patterns
CreativePapercrafts.com Pergamano page
The Pergamano Place

Saturday with the Spark

No Drama Queen, Just a Theater Dabbler

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This week, I thought I’d write a little creative anecdote instead of my usual “creative advice column”-style post. It’s all about drama–theater drama, not emotional drama. 😉

Acting as a Creative Impulse

Bringing a character to life is just as creative as other art forms–you have to make this character feel real, human, believable. You have to make the audience believe you ARE this person; the best actors make you love them or hate them even off-screen and out of character, just because of the character you saw them play last.

The skill with which an actor does this comes partially from knowing the lines and knowing the actions, and partially from the actor’s imagination, imagining how someone would look and sound doing these actions and saying these lines. And we instinctively know good, believable acting when we see it!

My Small Contributions to Drama

Though I’ve never been a complete theater buff, I have done some minor roles in local productions here and there, mainly during high school and early college. I’ve done enough to know that I may not be a show-stopper (my disabilities and clumsiness keep me from that), but I do seem to do comedy pretty well. (My life is full of pratfalls and epic verbal fails…maybe that’s where I got the practice. LOL)

Experiences On the Stage

I’ve played a random assortment of supporting characters (a friendly old biddy, a young schemer, a couple of motherly types), and pretty much any role is cool with me–I actually like to play supporting characters more than leading characters; less pressure, and sometimes you get funnier lines because you’re the comic relief.

I’m more easygoing about my role, mainly because I enjoy taking roles that other people don’t like to play. But it’s also because I’ve acted alongside some supreme prima donnas who wouldn’t take less than the leading lady’s role (there’s at least one in every production, it seems). People like that make the whole set tense!

I prefer to keep my out-of-character acting out to a minimum, though I will admit that long hours of rehearsal on flat, painful feet make my tongue a little sharper than usual. Physical endurance? What’s that? 😛 That’s one reason I’m not in major dramas; my body just doesn’t care for the tedious bits of rehearsal (of course, all done while standing in one place for what feels like hours).

I’ve been lucky, however, that in all of the productions I’ve been in, there has been time after rehearsals for me to rest–professional actors are not so fortunate always! I’ve also been blessed that most of the local actors I’ve worked with have been fairly sweet individuals, barring a few who thought too much of themselves. Generally, I have been part of convivial and companionate casts who truly cared about each other; a rarity, from what I’ve heard from others who are more experienced in theater.

Backstage: Character Prep Work

One of my trademarks in acting is that I flesh out my characters before I play them–I tend to go home on the first night after receiving the script, and extrapolate the character out from the dialogue and actions into a full-blown short story. It’s something like an autobiography for the character.

Once I do that, I have a much better and easier time playing the character because I “know where they’re coming from,” so to speak. (I’m not sure if this falls solidly into much-maligned “method acting” or not, but it sure works for me. I just act better when I can find something to empathize with in the character–even if she is a crazy villain. :D)

I like to flesh out characters because I want my acting to be the best it can be for the sake of the whole production. When people don’t care about their characters and are bored with the lines, it shows, and it really brings the rest of the scene down. Populating the scene with a well-acted “supportive character” can often help the other members of the scene get more excited (and deliver better performances of their own).

Onstage Helping? Yes, it’s Possible!

I also like being able to keep tabs of others’ lines as well as my own (thanks to God for the good memory I have), just in case one of them forgets a line; I am pretty good at ad-libbing in a reminder line if I have to.

I remember in high school, one very young, very frightened fellow student I worked with in one production forgot her entire semi-monologue in one scene during the performance. There was a very tense, gut-wrenching, eternity of a second, and then I prompted her with a question that rephrased the first sentence of her speech. She recovered enough to say the speech, and I was so happy for her I accidentally complimented her onstage with an emphatic “GOOD!” The audience got a huge laugh out of my reaction, and we carried on. The teacher later told me that I had done well (and even made her laugh).

This is part of the excitement of acting–being able to help out and make the production good, or react and recover from gaffes. Like the time I completely bungled my whole dance routine up because I literally got off on the wrong foot–since I was playing a granny, I waved my arms about and shouted to my dance partner, “Lordy, sonny boy, don’t drag me ’round this ole dance floor like a dead fish!” Much, MUCH LOL followed–I don’t think anybody kept a straight face! Stories like this make for great after-party anecdotes; afterwards, you can all laugh about how you made it through despite the fails.

Ever Tried Acting for Yourself?

I’d like to hear from my fellow actors out there–anybody ever done any off-off-off-Broadway stuff, or gotten write-ups in the local paper? ^_^ It’d be fun to hear from some actual famous people!

And even if you haven’t acted much before, have you ever tried your hand (or voice) at it? It’s a lot of fun, if you’ve never experienced it. 🙂

Saturday with the Spark

Christmas Glassics: Saturday with the Spark

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Creative thinking and activity, ahoy! Today’s Glassics post features all the artsy posts I’ve done on Crooked Glasses since July 2011, from writing to papercrafting, music to drawing. You can also view my first Saturday with the Spark Glassics post for the creative posts I did before July.

Sparking Creativity

I’ve written a good bit about tapping into one’s own creativity. Using dreams to inspire yourself is one way; I’ve also used Play-Doh as an analogy for creativity (sounds funny, but it worked out well!). I want to encourage people to stop thinking they’re not good enough to be artists, allowing themselves to use things in their everyday lives to jump-start creative thinking.

Philosophies of Art

The big philosophical question I pondered this season was: “Is art for entertainment or for meaning?” This is one of the deepest-thinking posts I’ve written in this entire category so far, and I think it gets to the salient point of why we create art at all, as humans.

Writing

Knowing a good bit about the craft of writing (and doing my best to practice it and get better), I have blogged about practicing your writing skills every way you can, as well as inspiring yourself by finding a topic you love to write about. I also covered how to deal when writing feels like punishment, when it feels like your brain has locked up on you and won’t produce a single syllable more.

And, since I’m practicing my noveling craft (is that a word? Wellp, it is now), I’ve written a few articles as helpful advice for myself and other novelists. Wading through a tough/boring part of my book by experiencing what I’m trying to write has really helped me get back on the writing horse; my post about expanding the world inside my book made me remember to go back and add more details to my own works.

Crafts

Along with my thoughts on beautiful beaded jewelry designs, I began a series of papercrafting posts this season, as well: making greeting cards and gift tags, and learning the skills of ornare, quilling, and origami. I plan to expand this sub-category a good bit in the new year!

Visual Art

I’m not much of a visual artist, but I have written a few posts this time around about art. I did one that shows how to shade your artwork for a more 3-D look, and I also depicted my own versions of digital cut-and-paste art. (Might not be the best in the world, but it’s fun to do!)

Music

Since I’m a longtime pianist, composer, and singer, this category understandably exploded with posts on music this fall and winter. I wrote about how singing in choir saved my life, trying to write a “catchy fast song”, and musical exploration with just a keyboard. My great love for the key of C-sharp also peeped in this fall, as well as my affinity for making my own movie soundtracks (it’s not as laden with mad leet skills as it sounds, but it’s still quite fun). Lastly, I discussed my peculiar ability to find the musical note that matches someone’s personality, and even write songs about them.

Get Comfy, Read, and Be Inspired!

I hope these posts get you thinking about the types of creative work you’d like to do; I hope they also expose you to different creative thoughts and activities that you might like to explore more. They’ve certainly helped me explore the various reaches of my own creative thought, and even gotten me to try my hand at art techniques I never would have explored otherwise. 🙂 Enjoy!

Saturday with the Spark

Well, Have a Nap–Then Fire Your Cylinders!

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[/shameless paraphrase of “End of the World” flash video]

Dreams as a Sleeping/More Creative Life

Dreams are powerful experiences, at least in my life. I often kid that I don’t read horror novels or watch scary movies because my nightmares are free (and forced on me). I’m sure Stephen King could have a field day with my subconscious’ meanderings; from horrible rites of death to gruesome imagery, my dreams often leave me terrified to go back to sleep, even at close to 30 years old. I could probably make money off these dreams if I wrote ’em down and made ’em into a book…but I’d probably go mad trying to write it all. LOL!

But as scary as my dreams can be sometimes, they also can be veritable reservoirs of creativity. During the night, your mind isn’t as constrained by what is “right” and “proper,” what is “beautiful” and “pleasing,” and sometimes you end up with powerful imagery and plotlines that are just crazy enough to work.

Creativity & Dreams through History

Many artists of every type have harvested their dreams for inspiration in their works. One of the more famous stories of a dream inspiring creativity is that of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a poet of the Romantic era (1800s), who woke from an opium-induced dream and wrote one of his poetic masterworks, “Kubla Khan.”

We, too, can use dreams as a jumping-off point for our creativity (even without pharmaceutical help 😉 ); if we can allow ourselves to dream, we can allow ourselves to reach ideas we haven’t even TRIED to play with before.

Harvesting Creativity from Dreams

  1. First, you’ve got to have a really intense dream. Positive or negative, lovely or scary, whatever it is, usually the most intense dreams translate the best into waking creativity.
  2. When you wake, write down everything you remember from the crazy dream you experienced last night–don’t leave out any detail, as silly as it might seem!

    Don’t try to make sense of any of the images, or try to make it into a “sensible” story yet. If it happened in your dream, write it.

  3. Don’t let anything interrupt you, at all, till you’re finished. Coleridge, according to the popular story, answered the door in the middle of his poem, and when he returned to his desk, the dream had fully evaporated. “Kubla Khan” looks like a finished masterpiece, but in reality it was probably only a quarter complete.

    Whether this anecdote is true or not, dreams do tend to fade very quickly after waking. Don’t let this happen to you…capture as much of it as possible!

  4. Later in the day, go back and see what the meat of your dream is. Pick out imagery that really stood out to you; pick out characters that intrigued you, delighted you, even frightened you. Anything about the dream that really hit you, really made you FEEL and EXPERIENCE the dream, is worth thinking more about.
  5. Transform this raw material into any form of creativity you wish–a song, an instrument solo, a short story, a painting, a play, even a dance. Use those characters, that imagery, that feeling, whatever it was, to carry your idea forth in a way you may have never expected to do so.

Most Importantly, Have Fun!

Don’t worry about making this dream-creation “good” or “interesting to others”–primarily, enjoy your creative inspiration as your own, even if you weren’t aware that you were creating it! To embrace your creativity, your ability to MAKE cool stuff up, you first have to accept that you CAN do it…and your dreams give you the perfect license to do it.

Saturday with the Spark

Everyday Writing

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What can you use writing for in your everyday life?

For many, writing is confined to their to-do lists, but there are many ways you can incorporate writing even if you don’t think of yourself as “creative.”

For one thing, look at the plethora of status updates and tweets that go around the Web on a regular basis. These bitsy life updates speak volumes about the people who make them, just as much as writing a long blog post would.

Today, I want to encourage you to write every day, even if you don’t think of yourself as a writer, even if words come with difficulty. Writing can be helpful, soothing, invigorating, and even cathartic. Try the following tips to incorporate a little bit of writing in your day:

Just a Word, a Sentence or Two

  • Leave a little positive note for yourself to discover in the morning. Just as you take time to write out or type up a to-do list, which can be more negative in tone, take a few minutes and make a happier-sounding note. Something like “smile, it’s almost Friday 🙂 ” or “don’t forget your awesomeness” can make you grin long enough to face your day with a little more happy.
  • If you hate writing (and reading) your to-do list, add jokes or hilarious phrasing. One of my permanent to-do lists is titled “THINGS I GOT TO PWN TODAY OMG LOL”, and it’s full of Internet and LOLCat references. (“I can haz chek in the bank?” XD) It makes me laugh every time I read it!

    It also casts my to-do list in a new light; each part of the list is something I have to pwn (defeat) rather than just drag myself through. I can pretend I’m a to-do list warrior!

  • Try a Twitter account, and post one short thought of yours, once every day. It can be a random philosophy you thought of, a question for other users, a grumble about something bothersome, or even just a statement about your day. The 140 character limit forgives those who don’t care to write a whole lot every day (one reason it’s called a “microblog”).

Step Up to a Paragraph

  • If you have a lot of worries running marathons in your head like I do, try writing them down in paragraph form. These five questions will help you shape your worry paragraph and get that worry out of your head at last:
    1. 1st sentence: What am I worried about?
    2. 2nd sentence: Why does it bug me so much?
    3. 3rd sentence: What is the worst-case scenario for this worry?
    4. 4th sentence: What is the best-case scenario for this worry?
    5. 5th sentence: What can I do to make the best-case scenario come about?

    Here is my example “worry paragraph:”

    I’m worried about my hard drive being unrecoverable. I fear losing 8 years of very hard work that isn’t backed up. At worst, I’ll have to restore data from my old laptop that died in June 2010, which means losing a year and a half of irreplaceable work and purchased digital content. At best, I will get all my data back. I can’t do anything personally to get my data back, but I can have it shipped to a data recovery company who can potentially take care of it.

    What this does is to quantify the worry. Instead of formless thoughts whirling about constantly, you can refer to this worry paragraph every time you find yourself thinking about it, and the paragraph details everything about the worry you need to know. Soon, you find comfort in what you yourself have written, knowing that the process need not be thought about anymore. (Mine’s already working for me!)

  • Along the same lines, if you’re sad and anxious, write a “5 reasons to smile” paragraph. All you have to do is find 5 answers to the question “How is my life going well today?” No matter how big or small the reason, if it makes you smile, it’s worth writing about.

    Here is my example “smile paragraph:”

    The headache I had yesterday is all gone (woot). So is the swelling on my ankle (yay!). I got all the gift wrap I need for under 12 bucks today, spending almost $20 less than I thought I was going to. I was able to fix the family laptop’s software problem. And I get to sing with my church choir today and tomorrow.

Try a Series of Paragraphs

  • Try an old-fashioned journal entry if you don’t want to post things on the Internet. Grab any size piece of paper and pen/pencil, and just start writing your thoughts down. Anything that’s on your mind, written any way you want to state it. Own the fact that you ARE writing! You can do this!

    Once you’ve written it, you can either read it over right away, hang it up somewhere prominent as inspiration, or file it away for later–just make sure to return to it within a week, and see how your writing affects you. You have to love your writing first before the passion for it seeps into its very substance, and to love it, you must experience doing it and reading it afterward.

  • Do you have a strong opinion about something? Write about it! Just like I write my opinions in my blog posts each week, you too can write a blog post or Facebook note about whatever you wish to.

    The following structure is something I go by to help me form my posts. It’s largely based on the five-paragraph essay style; you can take the girl out of English classes, but you can’t take the English-class training out of the girl. 😛

    1. Introduction/Hook: Make your topic sound interesting. Rhetorical questions about the topic (see where I used that in this very post? :D), or a personalized anecdote referencing the topic really makes me want to read about it.
    2. Background Info/Basic Concepts: For those who don’t know very much about the topic, give a little bit of basic information. This also gives you a chance to talk about the big concepts behind your opinion.
    3. Your Opinion: The meat of your blog post. Explain why you think what you think, in as plain language as possible.
    4. Others Who Agree or Disagree: Gather information from other bloggers or just other people about why they agree or disagree with your position; this gives your user a broader view of the topic than just your opinion. Quote the other people you’ve consulted, and link to them if possible within this paragraph.
    5. Sum It Up: Condense down your points into short sentences for a good summary. One sentence to describe the main point of each paragraph before your summary works very well.

Summary

Writing need not be intimidating. In fact, if you get a little bit of practice with it and accept your writing as it progresses, you can find yourself surprisingly expressive. Trying some or all of these various writing tips can give you the experience you need.

Start out small, maybe less than 140 characters at first; then, as you get more confident, try writing paragraphs, and then series of paragraphs. Who knows, you may be the next blogging sensation!