Category Archives: Saturday with the Spark

Creative pursuits and life-related happenings.

Saturday with the Spark

Perfect Pitch

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perfectpitch
For a good portion of the world’s population, perfect pitch is a strange novelty, or an unheard-of phenomenon. For me, it’s part of my everyday life, and has been possibly since birth.

What Is “Perfect Pitch?”

Perfect pitch is the generally-used term for the ability to recognize (and often reproduce) correct musical pitches without an external reference. (Actually, in musical terms, “perfect” pitch references the ability to recognize pitches; absolute pitch covers both recognizing and reproducing pitches.) People with perfect and/or absolute pitch don’t necessarily hear BETTER–we just hear DIFFERENTLY.

Who Has Perfect Pitch?

It’s estimated that possibly 1 in 10,000 people have perfect pitch, most never discovering it due to lack of musical training. (Far more people can recognize played pitches as opposed to producing the pitches themselves, however.) But this isn’t just a musical phenomenon–it’s actually something that many people all over the world possess. While perfect pitch-wielders are scattered worldwide, it’s decidedly more common in Southeastern Asian countries, where a word or phrase said in two different pitches can mean two very different things (so you have to recognize the audible difference between those two pitched words).

Is It Genetic?

This apparent region-specific concentration of perfect pitch has led me to wonder if the perfect pitch gene (if such a gene exists) is a dominant gene; for instance, my father has it and my mother doesn’t, for instance. (Mom does, however, seem to have relative pitch, so there may be just a gene combination there that resulted in me having perfect pitch.) There are still currently ongoing studies to figure out the actual spread of perfect pitch, however, so we may learn in time just how widespread it is and whether it’s genetic or not.

My Theory

Since sounds are processed first by the inner ear’s organ of Corti, and then analyzed by the brain’s temporal lobe, it has long been my theory that perfect pitch requires a finely-tuned organ of Corti and a set of temporal lobes that is ready to receive such higher-definition signals. (This article seems to back me up, saying that the temporal lobes or planum temporale are generally enlarged in perfect pitch holders.)

My Personal Experience of Perfect Pitch

Almost like having a better cable box, my ears hear pitches, and my brain automatically identifies them–in fact, if I start focusing heavily on identifying a pitch, I can get anxious about it and psych myself out of the correct pitch. Perfect pitch is an instinct that shouldn’t be second-guessed–when I don’t second-guess it and get all obsessive about it, it’s always right.

For instance, I can be at a Wendy’s and hear the fries alarm going off, and I’ll say “I wish they’d turn that E-major chord down a bit–it’s a bit piercing.” Or sometimes I’ll be outside and hear a truck motor rumbling down the road, and I’ll think “Wow, it’s making an exact low C-sharp.” (One hilarious experience: standing outside hearing a plane roar by, a truck rumbling along, and an air-conditioner humming atop a building. The three together made a low, growly B-flat minor chord :P)

When I First Knew I Had It

As I related last week in my synesthesia post, my experience hearing the piece “Musicbox Dancer” by Frank Mills was perhaps the first inkling anybody had that I might have perfect pitch. But it wasn’t until seventh grade that I really began to hone in on the gift and really try to see if I still had it.

Dad would often have the radio on in the car, and he’d play “Name That Note” with me, identifying the keys of the various songs we listened to. As I grew up, I started to hear that certain radio stations’ versions of songs differed slightly from the CD versions I had at home. For instance, when I was nearly twelve, I noticed that the Spice Girls’ “Wannabe” sounded “lower” on the CD player at home than it did on the radio. Dad listened to both versions, and confirmed that while my favorite radio station played the song in C major, it was actually recorded in B major–no fault in the CD player could have accounted for it, since we tested it in at least 3 different players. My perfect pitch had picked up on an industry “secret”–radio stations often play songs at 17 turns a second on the player instead of 16 turns a second on normal players. This speeds up the song just enough to help them fit in more songs per hour, but it does generate a half-step-up difference in key.

By seventh grade, as I neared my thirteenth birthday, I began to memorize certain parts of the choral music I sang during school hours, and compared them to notes on the piano. We had a piece we were doing that I knew was in F minor by the key signature; thus, I could mentally compare the notes with the chord of F minor on the piano, and so on. Memorization is not what perfect pitch is all about, but it does help define a musical ear to get to “know” where pitches are in relation to each other. At the end of seventh grade, I knew I had it, and I began to use it to help my fellow altos and me stay on our part.

Everyday Usage

Perfect pitch, for me, is something I try to use every day if possible. I listen for the keys of music playing on the radio (keeping in mind that it will usually be a half-step lower if I want to buy it on iTunes later); I hear the rumbling symphony of truck motors and car horns on the highway, isolating each note as I drive along. Sometimes, I’ll even listen to people who “sing-speak” (their speaking voices actually have some pitches associated with them), and at the risk of being horribly inattentive and rude, I’ll determine what pitches they’re using when they speak.

I definitely do use my perfect pitch musically as well as in everyday life, though. Sometimes, I use it to help me find harmonies to popular music; I’ll sing a soprano descant part along with Lady GaGa, or challenge myself to pick out a seamless alto part to Katy Perry’s soprano. In choirs, I’ll hum our starting note while the introductory music plays loud enough to disguise the sound, and in solo performances, I’ll sing a cappella parts with no trouble, knowing that I can trust my perfect pitch to tell me when I’m going out of key.

For me, perfect pitch is like a hidden facet of life that I am blessed enough to be privy to, and I know only God is responsible for this. I enjoy it, and try to take care of my hearing so that I can keep using it for a long time. And in the meantime, it’s fun to pull out as a party trick (or ten)…

Saturday with the Spark

Novel Therapy

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noveltherapy
I never thought I’d be a novelist, ever. And yet here I am, producing original characters and inventing extended plotlines!

Why I Never Considered Noveling: Impatience

I was supremely impatient as a child and teenager; my brain balked at the idea of writing about a character or set of characters for a long time. Not to mention that I was notoriously horrible at picking names for my characters, anyway. Something in me at that age rebelled against the whole process, even though I enjoyed telling stories and I enjoyed the art of writing creatively. But I stayed within the world of writing largely short fanfiction, because I felt as though I had to keep my characters contained in a pre-approved box to make them workable. Writing a completely self-produced novel, or even longer fiction at all, I reasoned, would feel more like work or a school assignment than a pastime.

I continued with this self-philosophy well into graduate school, because I struggled to write enough pages for my professors’ long paper assignments. While I enjoyed creative writing, I decidedly did not like long academic writing. Sometimes I felt that I’d said enough about my perspective on a piece of literature in just 4 paragraphs, and I didn’t need to beleaguer the point; yet, my assignment said that the paper must be 10 pages long. That goal, of a set number of pages I had to produce, was locked around my neck time and again, like a yoke. “See,” I told myself, “this is why I don’t bother with writing a novel. I won’t like the process, and it’ll be too long and too hard for me to focus on and be happy with.”

The Sharp Mindset Shift

I had not counted, however, on my teaching career disintegrating into flaming ashes under my feet. I had to utterly quit the teaching degree program and return home, not because of any family emergency, but because I had begun to suffer severe depression and even suicidal thoughts. If I had thought writing a novel would feel like a prison, teaching had felt like a lightless dungeon.

So, while I sat at home recovering, I began to poke around with a story I had crafted about two years before for an online role-play. I had written a bit of backstory for the character (about 30 pages), but after my teaching classes got started, I hadn’t returned to it (though I had wanted to). I had all but forgotten about it…and then, there it was, sitting in a writing folder on my computer. Now, I had nothing else to distract me from it, so I turned to this little slice of backstory…and I began to write again.

Hope from Within My Own Pages

As the character’s backstory spun from my fingers into the keyboard, I began to take heart from the sparkles of hope appearing within the story. The heartbreak of my teaching career was still a fresh wound in my back, in my side, but in this story, which was so open, bright, and sweet, there was light to be found. My own story, one I never thought would ever be, was beginning to pull me from the mire.

As 2009 ended, I had a story of about 50,000 words; now it’s well over 100,000 words and still going. I’m writing on my own terms–not by a schedule, and not holding myself to a word count or a page count, and I think that’s what helps me keep on writing. It’s something of my own design, something I can find solace in. (Plus, if I make it feel too much like work, that feeling will come out in my writing and make the novel very hard to read!)

Your Writing Can Be Therapy for You, Too!

I’ve found that the act of creating (whether it’s writing, music, or another art form) is soothing and joyful, returning me to a better state of mind. If you find yourself in need of a “reset button” for your mind, try writing; you might just surprise yourself with what you create. Who knows, you might have your own novel buried in your head waiting to be discovered!

Saturday with the Spark

Seeing and Feeling Music

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seeingandfeelingmusic
For almost all of my life that I can remember, music has not only been an auditory experience, but a visual and tactile experience, too. As a child, I thought everyone saw swirls of varying colors when they heard music, or felt the hairs all over their bodies raise up like a standing ovation when a particularly beautiful chord was struck. To my utter surprise, when I tried to describe this to other people, they had no idea what I was talking about…and a good deal of them probably thought I was a bit off my rocker.

The Reason for the Swirling Colors of Sound: Synesthesia

It was not until I joined Facebook in late 2005 and saw a group called “We See Sound, Taste Shapes, and Smell Colors” that I finally found out what was at the core of my strange and wonderful experiences when listening to music. Synesthesia is a very interesting brain condition in which synapses in two or three different senses “leak” into each other; when one sense is stimulated, it triggers a response in the other sense. For me, every time I hear music or sound, the stimulated synapses in my temporal lobes (located just above my ears) “leak” into my visual cortex (at the back of my head), producing a veil of colors across my vision in response to the sound. (I have begun to wonder if the temporal lobes also leak somewhat into my sense of touch as well, since I experience tingling and hair-lifting in response to exceptionally beautiful music.)

Being a sound-color synesthete (and possibly a sound-touch synesthete as well) means that my experience of the world around me is very different from other people’s experiences. Every sound generates a color; the honking of a particularly grating car horn registers as a vomit-green flash at the corners of my vision, for instance. My boyfriend’s voice is the color of the eastern sky at sunset, a lovely, muted medium blue. And every musical key has a color associated with it, seen in the diagram I made for the synesthesia Facebook group below:

My First Experience of Synesthesia

One of my first and most startling episodes with sound-color synesthesia happened when I was a little girl (probably about 3 or 4 years old), playing with my Barbies in the living room while my father played a piece called “Music Box Dancer” by Frank Mills (see following video):

I had requested this piece because I was then infatuated with becoming a ballerina, and I made one of my Barbies dance along with the song as Dad played the merry little tune in C major. As you see in my diagram of musical colors above, C is a warm golden-yellow, the color of late summer afternoons in the South, and I luxuriated in this familiar, kid-friendly key.

When the song came to an end, Dad started it over again, except this time, he transposed it up a half-step, to C-sharp major. As the first notes were struck, I dropped my Barbie doll to the floor, my hands, arms, and scalp tingling–the explosion of deep midnight-violet in my mind was absolutely breathtaking! C major had made the notes feel like the kicks and strokes of a swimmer in a warm and languid pool, but C-sharp major transformed them into tinkling silver crystals, sparkling against a background like that of a clear moonlit night. I could hear the difference because of my perfect pitch (which I did not know I had yet), and I could actually see the difference between the keys in my mind, too. (This began my deep love and appreciation for the key of C-sharp, whether major or minor–it is my favorite key to hear music in.)

Every time after that, when Dad sat down and played “Music Box Dancer,” usually in C major, I would come up and say, “Play it up, Daddy, play it up”–I wanted to hear it in C-sharp major again. He understood what I was asking for after the first couple of times I requested this, and this, he related years later, was when he first started to wonder if I had perfect pitch. (My experience of synesthesia and perfect pitch are so intertwined that I nearly have to talk about them in context with each other; I have written more about how chords appear as multiple colors blended together in my mind in this blog post.)

Synesthesia in Everyday Life

I’ve had similar experiences with music and sound all throughout my life, and it’s an everyday joy for me. Singing in choral festivals and concerts, with all those varying voices joined in harmonies, creates the sense of a hovering structure in mid-air, silvery-gold and delicate like a thinning soap bubble; the chords we create feel as if they reverberate along my nerves, and every hair applauds. Even the sound of a plane engine flying overhead, the Doppler effect making the pitch go down as it recedes from me, generates a swirl of black and deep green in my peripheral vision. I can say it’s truly fun to be a synesthete–it certainly makes the world much more interesting!

Saturday with the Spark

Poems: Kernels of Art

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poemskernelsofart
I absolutely love the flexibility of poems; they’re like jars of emotion, containing poignant reveries, painful wounds, and powerful joys. But beyond this humble art form’s ability to adapt to any emotional range, it can also inspire the other forms of art (both performance and exhibition) to their highest expressions. Surprisingly, poetry can touch all other forms of art in the following ways:

What Poems Can Do

  • They can become songs by simply attaching a fitting melody and chord progression to the words
  • They can spark photography, paintings, or drawings; the imagery in a poem can lead a visual artist to create what he or she has “seen” in her mind from the poet’s words
  • They can imply a dance rhythm with word choice and stressed beats; a simple recitation can be done as a rhythm piece alongside interpretive movement
  • They can create a theatrical scene in the reader’s mind; the pathos in a poem can be expressed again through dialogue, or if the poem is itself a dialogue or monologue, it can be directly translated to the stage
  • They can inspire a longer work of fiction or non-fiction; a simple ten-line poem can create a character strong enough to warrant more writing about

I love this about poetry–it creates a sort of network between art forms. It’s fluid, malleable, and yet strong enough to support just about anything you put into it, which makes it both approachable for newbies and versatile for experienced creators.

So, have you ever tried your hand at poetry? If you haven’t, now is a great time to try!

Saturday with the Spark

Journals in Verse: My Personal Poetry

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journalsinverse
I’ve been writing poetry since I was a very little girl. Some of my earliest verses were composed on a summer vacation when I was about 7 years old, studying the motion of the waves against the beach as doubtless so many other poets before me had done. I was inspired by the fluid rocking motion of the water, and how it left the beach looking swept and clean, so I jotted down a little poem about it.

What I Used to Think Poetry was About

Poetry indeed served as a welcome diversion from other subjects like math and science, but I didn’t do a whole lot of it during elementary school. From what I learned in school, you simply had to write poetry in a very specific way for it to be considered “art.” I toyed with the idea of becoming a poet when I was older, but I certainly didn’t have the patience to sit there and rhyme ending words, or to make each line be the same length with the same beats as its predecessors. It seemed like a lot of work–and it ended up sounding a lot less inspired and beautiful–when I tried it, at least.

Poetry: Not Merely Meter and Rhyme

But the hangups I had about “appropriate” poetry style all but evaporated in middle school. I began to need a way to talk about the despair and anger I was feeling, without writing too directly about it and getting angry all over again. So I just wrote, breaking my poetry’s lines wherever it felt “right” to break them, choosing words only for their biggest emotional impact.

This poetry, in a real sense, became my journal entries. As I worked with fitting my emotions into a small space of verse, my feelings and problems became concentrated and yet refined. Other people could relate to what I had written, but it didn’t hurt me quite so bad to read it as it had hurt while I was writing it all out. It was quite like getting a splinter out of my finger and showing the sliver of wood to other people–it was painful poetry, but it was good because it was so raw.

I wrote this type of self-discovering poetry all throughout high school and well into college, and even some into graduate school. Much of that poetry probably shouldn’t really be shown to anybody now, since my style has evolved as I have grown up (not to mention my mindset). But the art form served its purpose–each poem helped me stay in control of my emotions, storing them in a paper jar, like storing fruit by canning it. And, I can reopen the jars at any time and re-experience my life at that moment.

Poetry as An Old Faithful Friend

As my life has become brighter, especially with the advent of my current relationship and my continued work on my novel and my music, I find myself less likely to lean on poetry’s shoulder, writing mainly life-observing poems rather than inward-looking poems (though I can still wring the tears out of a piece of paper if I’m in a mood to do so!). I use poetry now as an occasional journal entry, a way to immortalize a moment rather than a way to work out a problem. But I know that I can always write out my problem in verse; just like a faithful old journal, the art form of the poem waits for me to write.

How to Start Writing Poetry for Yourself

Though I’m sure the poetry purists out there are probably recoiling in horror from this post, I still recommend approaching poetry as an art form you can USE rather than as an art form you have to produce “just so.” If you let others’ guidelines for writing poetry become rigid rules, you can actually stifle your own creativity before it ever has a real chance.

That’s why I’m not suggesting any specific rules or regulations. Rhyme if you want to, make it rhythmical if you want to, but feel free to explore the edges of the art form, too; discover the line where speech becomes poetry, where words become art. Write what you really feel and think, and worry about refining it later, if it even needs refining. The world may not need another perfectly measured and rhymed work of art–but it does need your thoughts.

Saturday with the Spark

A Twist in the Web: Complex Subplots in Simple Storylines

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atwistintheweb
In the last few sessions of writing my novel, I’ve found a cool little subplot that I wanted to work with more in the storyline. It is a much more complex and dark subplot than the larger story it’s couched in, but I’m finding it to be surprisingly interesting and driving.

Why This Works: It’s a Little Shock of Mystery

Overall, my novel up to this point has been fairly straightforward, focused on one character and that character’s impressions and perceptions of the world. The lightness and relative simplicity of this larger storyline seems to set off this little shadowy gem of a subplot quite well–the smaller subplot is more other-focused, more about the wider world around the main character, like a glimpse out a window.

I somewhat planned this and somewhat didn’t–I knew that this subplot’s initiating event would happen, and I wanted the story to be more other-focused at that moment, but I wasn’t sure how I was going to achieve that until I began to write it. Then this subplot began to emerge from my fingers, seeping into my keyboard and into the Microsoft Word file, and I began to marvel at what was being created. It was a sudden touch of mystery in an otherwise fantasy/Christian-fiction story, and it just WORKS. 😀

The great part about this is that it helps break up any monotony that might have formed for readers thus far. And there are a few more complex subplots to be written as well before this first novel of mine ends. It certainly is a twist in the story’s web, but it makes a very neat little pattern all its own, and I like it!

How to Introduce a Twist in Your Own Stories

No matter what size your story is, you can give your readers the same interesting turn in a story’s plot without having to make the whole story “suspense/mystery.” Here’s a couple of tips:

  • Place your twist in the middle of a particularly peaceful scene or section of the story, giving your plot a bit more texture (like the surprise of crunchy peanut butter in a PB&J sandwich).
  • Whatever you decide to write as your “twist,” reveal it slowly–don’t give all the information to the reader at once. I find that writing my “twist” subplot works best if I intersperse mentions of it in between other, lighter parts of my novel, giving my readers time to wonder about what’s really going on.
  • Try writing your “twist” subplot from the perspective of a new character, or maybe one of your minor characters you haven’t developed much yet. (You may not end up including this in your story, but it will be good background information and will force you to view this subplot with a different character’s perspective!)
Saturday with the Spark

Happy Little (Sketched) Tree

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happylittlesketchedtree
With apologies to Bob Ross for the title of this post, this week I thought I’d showcase a recent sketch of mine that I scanned into the computer:


Number #2 pencil on computer printer paper. Awright.

The tree is mostly composed of simple leaf and branch shapes (similar to a crape myrtle tree). Not the most original thing in the world, perhaps, but this picture works for me on several levels:

  1. It’s mine–I didn’t have to borrow artwork from someone else like usual
  2. I didn’t have to worry about every leaf and twig being in EXACTLY the right place, because it looks better as an imperfect form anyway
  3. The sketch ended up pretty much how I wanted it, for just about the first time in my life

P.S.: Why This Isn’t a Color Picture

This picture isn’t colored in, because usually when I start trying to color my pictures by hand, I end up with something that looks worse than kindergarten. Crayons are too heavy and waxy, colored pencils are too light (takes too long to build up enough color), and markers are too permanent. (And we just won’t talk about the tragedy of my painting skills here. XD) Not to mention that “staying in the lines” is just about impossible for me and my impatient hands.

I did try to color this picture using Photoshop’s Paint Bucket too, but I found it much too hard to color in with a laptop mouse! I couldn’t stand the thought of having to click a hundred thousand times so precisely to fill in all those little leaves, so I quit after a few pointless minutes of accidentally filling the whole canvas with green. Sad.

Pencil + Paper = Fun

My difficulties with coloring is why I enjoy the impromptu ease of a simple pencil sketch. You don’t have to have any special tools–just about any kind of paper except notebook paper and any kind of pencil will do. You can also do this sketch anywhere; out in the wilderness, at your desk while avoiding homework, in bed watching TV. I also really love the ability to do subtle shading with a pencil, which is easier to control than a charcoal stick (for me). Plus, if when I screw up, there’s a handy little eraser.

This is my first pencil sketch in a long time, and I’m hoping it won’t be my last! Let me know what you think about this first attempt after a long, LONG time of staying away from visual art!

Saturday with the Spark

Confront the Giant in Song

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confrontthegiant
As a piano/vocal songwriter from the age of 12, I’ve written songs about the things I see in life that make me happy or catch my interest. But more often, my songs are about things that bother me; expressing my sadness or frustration in song has been one of the key ways I vented. I am definitely not alone in that, either, since many songwriters use music to talk about important social and political issues. Writing music about problems–confronting our problematic “giants” within the context of a melody–seems to be human nature.

Why Write Songs About Problems? Because It Helps

Songs are a great way to work out problems, as I found out at an early age.  I could sing and bang the piano keys about my problems more readily than I could even talk to somebody about what was going on.  Through music, I could put it more eloquently…and I found out through performances that other people identified with what I was singing about, even if it was sad.

Within a song, somehow, it seems easier to deliver a message that people will readily listen to. Even if the message is controversial, it seems less so when wrapped in melody and rhyme. And often, such a song can be the instigator of positive change, as it raises awareness about the problem–one such song is Jesus, Friend of Sinners by Casting Crowns, available through the video below:

The “Problem Song” Writing Process

In the act of writing a song about a problem, it forces me to condense my message and really “get to the bottom” of what I’m trying to talk about.  It makes me dig around in my conscious and subconscious mind–why does this problem bug me so much? Once I start trying to explain my point of view as if speaking to someone else, I finally find the little nugget of truth hiding underneath the layers of my own thoughts, and that truth becomes the basis of my song.  Then I write about how I see that truth, how that truth affects me, and the song begins to emerge.

Self-discovery and expression collide and combine once I finally sit down to the keyboard (either to type or to play).  As I write the words, sometimes I find myself adding the melody with it; as I hum the melody, sometimes I find myself adding the words where they best fit.  Either way, I am changing the word choice and rhythms to flow better together.  This is a highly instinctive process of addition, deletion, and rapid editing until I find the “right” way the song is supposed to work, how it’s supposed to deliver its message.

Once I feel that the song is done “right,” I perform it for myself, in many rehearsals.  Generally, the way I know that a song is good enough is if it either raises the hairs on my arms, or it makes me cry. (Yay for built-in quality control!)

Performance

The most challenging part of the whole “problem song” process, for me, is the first performance of the song for anybody.  I am challenged to deliver my message as if I am a keynote speaker, and in a way, I am.  I need to keep their interest, sing clearly, and express the nugget of truth with emotion and description, to help someone else understand how much this means to me.  My song should go out to the audience and travel straight from their ears to their hearts, giving them the message in a way that makes them think without being hostile to the idea in my music.

How Can You Confront Your Own Giants with a Song?

I find that writing a bullet list, outline, or even just random notes about things that concern you is a great starting point toward writing your own songs (or poems, if you aren’t musically inclined).  Amid the detritus that you will inevitably produce (as everyone does), there will likely be a phrase or sentence you write that will point you in the direction of your own nugget of truth.

From there, try to dig into it, to completely explain that nugget of truth as you see it.  Your own poem or song will emerge from your pen or your keyboard–and you just might be surprised at what you’ve come up with!

Saturday with the Spark

Awake in the Middle of the Night? Write!

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awakeinthemiddle
Insomnia. It’s a frustrating feeling to be so tired and not be able to sleep–or to be so bored that you can’t even bear trying to close your eyes. Couple that with the feeling that you’re the only person awake or alive in the whole world, and insomnia can be very lonely, too, even with the electronic companions of computer and TV.

Generally, we’re usually awake in the middle of the night because of worries or something weighing heavily on our minds, unless it’s a physical symptom of an underlying condition. For me, my mind tends to start whirling as soon as I try to find a comfortable position on the bed–I suddenly recall all the minutiae of my day, at a breakneck pace. Very, very aggravating.

A New Approach: Using Insomniac Time as Writing Time

Instead of taking a pill or just tossing and turning for several hours, I’ve taken to writing during sleepless nights. Sometimes the coolest and most beautiful stuff comes out of my brain when I’m absolutely worn out from the day. Maybe it’s just because I’m too tired to self-censor anymore, but I write more freely and creatively, somehow. I also seem to be able to express more emotion and capture scenes better.

How can you harness this same wakeful time to get down some of your best ideas (or most random thoughts)? Try these tips that have helped me:

Use whatever medium you like to write out your thoughts.

I prefer to type because I type so much faster than handwriting, and my brain is usually going a zillion miles an hour. (Handwriting infuriates me now because it’s SO SLOW!) Some people, however, enjoy the sense of pen on paper–it slows their thoughts down enough so that they can capture what they’re really worried about or really thinking about. You may even want to arrange words graphically, like a collage (either digitally or actually writing out the words in artistic form on paper). Choose whatever method is most comfortable for you.

Start out writing formlessly.

You don’t have to write perfectly. Just write your thoughts without worries about punctuation, idea continuity, or grammatical sense. Some people have suggested that when you find yourself stuck, you should write a nonsense word over and over (like “potatobug”), just to keep yourself writing. I, however, don’t subscribe to the idea that you have to keep writing the whole time, writing nonsense words if you can’t think of anything else. (I produce enough nonsense that I don’t need ready-made nonsense to write down. LOL)

If writing nonsense words similarly annoys you, try focusing your writing on a particular topic, like why you’re mad about that guy cutting you off in traffic today (and why you’re still thinking about it in the middle of the night, etc.).

When you’ve run out of things to say about one topic, switch to something else.

This is not only a way to keep writing, but a great way to get at issues that are bugging you or that you’ve had on your mind for a while. One night, while doing this writing activity, I randomly discovered that I was still upset about what a friend had written on my Facebook wall months before. She had said something pretty innocuous, but I took it the wrong way and stewed about it long after I should have given it up. I set about resolving it the next day, and it was all good in the end. If I hadn’t written about it, who knows how long I would have hidden that grudge from myself?

Keep writing till you’re too tired or don’t have anything left to say.

Whichever of these comes first, follow the impulse and put aside computer or pen for the night. I usually get tired before I’m done writing, but some nights I get on such a roll I can’t stop! Those nights, I finish up my idea and collapse into bed, feeling like I’ve run a mental marathon. 😀

IMPORTANT! Keep That Writing!!

Now, once you finish writing, don’t throw your paper/digital file away–keep it and look at it again in the morning. you might have a winner of an idea hiding in there! (This actually happened to me; I wrote something down, looked at it in the morning, and thought “You know, that’d be a great poem.” Thus, a new poem was born out of utter randomness.)

Summary:

Being awake in the middle of the night doesn’t have to be a lonely, unproductive time. Writing about what you’re feeling, even if you think you’re not a good writer, even if you don’t like to write a lot, can really help you sweep your brain clear of mental clutter so that you can sleep. And who knows, you might find an awesome creative idea along the way. You never know what you’ll find hiding between your synapses!

Saturday with the Spark

Getting All Beaded Up

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gettingbeadedup
It was a random side trip to Walmart that started it. I found myself in the Fabric and Crafts section, staring down a glittering aisle I’d not bothered to travel before–the bead section. Literally hundreds of cards full of beads hung on the racks, in varying shades and amounts of sparkle and glimmer. How had I never seen this aisle before?

Pretty much out of the blue, I picked up a few cardfuls of beads that interested me, plus a couple of “Instant Necklace” kits, with the appropriate silver clasps already attached to the wire and cut to size. Two necklaces later, I was absolutely hooked on creating my own beaded jewelry.

The following pictures are of necklaces I created using the Instant Necklace wire kits plus my own selection of beads, arranged in self-created patterns. The Instant Necklace kits are cut to size, but some of the beading patterns did not take up all the room on the necklace (mainly because I needed room to handle the wire long enough to thread it through the other side of the clasp). Thus, they might be a little bare in spots, but they wear well once they are on.

Samples of My Work

This was my first necklace, but certainly not my last. I loved alternating the silver and dark blue, denim-patterned beads, and this is still one of my go-to necklaces when wearing blue, black, or white tops, though it can also go with gray and even red on occasion.

This is one of my favorite necklaces I’ve ever done, because it is BLUE and SPARKLY. 😀 It makes me happy. Not to mention that I enjoy the play between pearls and gemstones, managing to create a weightless look without too much effort. Since I wear a lot of teal and white, this necklace sees a lot of wear especially in the summer. (This necklace’s wire was accidentally bent in two places during an aggressive airport baggage check, which accounts for the odd angles in the picture, but it straightens out well when I wear it.)

Even though this one was a bit of a color stretch for me, I’ve found myself wearing it more often than I thought I would. I have some purple tops that go well with it, but it has surprised me how well it wears with other colors–even pink shirts look good with this!

My Personal Beading Style

The trend in beading today may be big, chunky, earth-based necklaces, but I prefer my beaded jewelry to actually look, well, like jewelry: polished, pretty little stones, delicately set together. Thus, I choose small beads over large, and I like to combine sparkly beads with pearlescent ones on the same necklace for pretty variations.

Most of how I put necklaces together is rather instinctive; I look at a selection of beads in a store and think, “Ooh, I have some pearls that will go well with that.” A few minutes of arranging the beads back at home generally brings me to a setup I like, and I run with it.

Along with my idea of pairing a sparkling translucent bead with a pearlescent bead of same or similar color, I also like to vary sizes along the length of the piece I’m making–usually, the beads in the middle of the necklace will be slightly larger than the ones at each end, and that’s deliberate (called “graduating sizes”). If I do change it up and mix in bigger beads earlier in the pattern, I will generally set smaller, clear beads around each large stone to help it not stand out quite so much.

Lastly, I try to use symmetrical patterns for my necklaces. If I have a pattern started on the left side of the necklace that goes “tiny pearl, tiny gem, small pearl, big gem, small pearl, tiny gem, tiny pearl,” then I mimic that when I get to the right side of the necklace in the same place.

It can be hard to keep up with where you are in the necklace, so I recommend laying out your beads first on a beading tray to get your pattern together. Amazon.com has several beading trays (also called “beading boards”) that help corral your beads and even align them into a necklace-like shape so that you can make your patterns and thread the wire through more easily.

I’m certainly not the most skilled beader out there–I’m still not familiar with all the intricate patterns you can use to make bracelets and necklaces out of, like macrame. However, the single-strand necklaces I make are enough for my jewelry needs, and they are simple enough to master even for my clumsy fingers.

Try Beading For Yourself

For those who are veterans in beading, or those who are completely new to the craft, many big-box stores like Walmart have cheap beads that don’t look completely tacky. Choosing solid colors of beads generally gives you a better product–some of the mixed-color beads end up being ill-made, as I’ve unfortunately found out. There are also a lot of online tutorials and articles which can help you out!

You can also find quite a bit of beads and beading supplies online, or go to an actual beading specialty store–I’m lucky enough to have a beading specialty store in my area, called Off The Beaded Path. Beading specialty stores will likely have beads of better quality, but you will often pay a little more for that quality (which is okay).

In terms of metallic beading wire, necklace clasps, earring pins, etc. (collectively known as “findings”), you’re better off going to a specialty store or looking online. Walmart had those Instant Necklace kits that got me started, which were great for me because I didn’t have to fool with putting the clasps on the wire myself. But if you want to build the necklace completely from scratch, you will find more variations in color and style going to a specialty store.

I tend to blend my big-box-store finds with my specialty-store finds to make pieces that are at once fairly inexpensive to make and expensive-looking. Try combinations of your favorite colors and favorite textures of beads, and experiment as much as you can!

Beading Links

Beadage.net – projects, instructions, beads available online
BeadingDaily.com – daily ideas, tutorials, and patterns
BeadingTimes.com – every month, a new issue, with articles about how to market your jewelry, how to come up with original designs, and lots of other topics!
Free Patterns @ Beadwork.About.com – free beading patterns
TheBeadCoop.com – patterns to download and print