Tag: research

Happy Creativity

~ humoringthegoddess ~ 12 Comments

I’ve been having the most marvelous time these past few weeks writing my novel.

Now, hopefully we all have times of pleasure pursuing our creative endeavors. Otherwise, why would we bother?

But I had to chuckle. Not long ago I was writing blogs about fearing research (Research Overload) and overthinking and overwhelming (Am I/I Am Overthinking?).

These were, and ARE, legitimate concerns for most of us any time we think about taking on a project larger than ourselves. And we should  be cautious. We should give thought about exactly what we want to accomplish and how we will get there.

But once we push through all the intimidation, apprehension, and false starts, once we start moving forward on creating our dream work, we find that we can really enjoy the ride.

I found that I didn’t need to fill in the days and nights ahead of time. I didn’t need to have every encounter outlined, every reaction accounted for. That I could follow a general direction and fill it in one research day at a time.

Did I worry myself into an early grave? Hardly. But at the beginning it felt like it. 

At the beginning I couldn’t see how I could possibly create a life-like situation from a non-life situation. How I could be the participant in an adventure I never went on.

Then I started to write.

An introduction. A general feeling. A general direction. I loved to write, so I knew I wouldn’t let my inability to research or function stop me. I researched every place, every reference, every food. I thought about how I would react if I were really to see and do the things my lead character does.

And it became easier.

Your projects will become easier, too. 

Sometimes you do need an exact outline, an exact layout, of whatever it is you wish to create. You can’t willy nilly a landscape painting without wondering about the trees, the houses, the season. Same is true for the design of a mosaic or a mural.

Once you get that general feeling, that general outline, in your head, you can start creating. You can go wild, stay straight, or take a quick left turn, if that’s what your muse tells you to do.

You can break the rules once you know what the rules are.

I still have quite a few things to work out, including the big last night climax. I haven’t a clue yet as to who it is with or what it is or what they will talk about. But I know it will come.

Here’s to each and every one of you having a blast with your creations. Hard work pays off, if only in the heart, often in ways you cannot imagine.

And there is nothing greater than a payoff from the heart.

 

 

Research Overload

~ humoringthegoddess ~ 14 Comments

I think I am suffering from research overload. I fear my ambitions have been to high, too broad, too much for one simpleton to take.

If I could have an anxiety attack based on a book not yet written, I would be having one now. Have I taken on too much already? Is my ambition way too big for my size 6W shoes?

I am the one who tells you to dream big. To take chances. To write what you want to write. Yet I find my thoughts, my task, overwhelming. And I’ve barely started.

Writing about visiting a place you’ve never been and probably never will be takes more discipline than making up a world. When you make up a place where elves live or Merry ‘ol England in the 15th century your mind can play with what it wants.

But when you want to visit a real place in real time, it’s not as easy. You must be accurate, you must be realistic, even if your intention for a story is fiction.

Plus it is so easy to be led astray by a thousand places you wish to visit.  Do you base your character’s visit on where you would like to go? Or where destiny takes them? Do you go big? Do you go small? Do you have encounters in gardens or museums? Libraries or churches? If your character (in my case, me) wants to visit the haunts of famous people, which restaurant do you visit? Which cabaret? Which art museum?

Do you search the Internet and find articles like The ten Paris streets you just have to walk down or  A Walk Around Paris? Or do you just pick a starting place and figure out where you’re going from there?

I am so easily influenced by Paris. Any foreign place, really. Places I’ve never been, places I’ve dreamed of, places where my dreams start and end. I ask myself where do I really want to go, what do I really want to see? What do I want my book’s character to learn from her adventure?

On top of that, I find it hard to separate what I as a 67-year-old woman who will never visit Paris would want to see versus the 67-year-old woman I’m sending there through my book. A thousand answers come to mind. I can’t seem to sort through all of them.

This is the problem of a pretzelly mind. A creative mind touched with a bit of A.D.D. and old age.

Maybe I would be better off writing a simple love story that takes place in my own back yard or some make-believe town. That way I don’t have to guess what the streets look like; what the people sound like, what the local bakery or bistro smells like.

I’m not giving up yet, though. While I cannot say I love a challenge, it’s too early in the game to give up. For I know the payoff with be a big one. The biggest challenge of my writing career.

Tell me — do you go through any  madness like this before you start a new project? Do you fight to keep a hold of your crazy dream, or do you merely divert your energy to finding another project?

Computer Hoarder or Zen Master?

~ humoringthegoddess ~ 5 Comments

animated-gifs-computers-48 (1)Considering how haphazardly I live, organization is not a word that frequently passes my lips. I just have too much information, and not enough room/time/energy to organize it all. But then last week my Irish Muse stopped by, and I’ve been working on Big O 101. Most things around me are falling more-or-less in place.

One place I haven’t had much of a problem, though, is my laptop.

I used to fill notebooks with thoughts, ideas, research, menus for the week. The old-old ones were more like journals, full of angst and awakenings, blah blah blah. Necessary but over. The new ones, though, are a different animal. They are full of things I don’t recognize. Names. Lots of numbers that don’t mean a thing.  Notebooks became jotting books. Need a piece of paper to write down that stupid email address? Write it in the middle of a notebook. Need to add something to the grocery list but don’t have a piece of paper handy? Write it in the middle of the notebook.

I now prefer to document my writing, research, images, and ideas on my laptop.

I must admit I have kept things in much better order than the days of pen and paper. I keep/download too many things on my desktop, but they all eventually find a folder home of their own. I have folders for Stories, Chapters, Essays – Finished, and Stories, Chapters, Essays – Unfinished. I have a Humoring the Goddess folder with dozens of sub-folders.  I have one called Recipes, one called Resumes, and one called Research (which, btw, has the largest, oddest assortment of information I’ve ever seen). Novels have their own folder; inside those are sub-folders of character backgrounds, copy I’ve cut and couldn’t part with, earlier versions from cavemen days, maps of ancient landscapes that may or may not be relevant – all kinds of weird stuff.

I have folders with images: with my downloading prowess I’ve no doubt got three copies of every photo I’ve ever downloaded from my phone. I’ve got family photos, photos I’ve used in blogs, photos I think are cool, photos that are inspiration for other projects, and photos that are…just photos.

I’ve got folders with names of novels I’ve never finished, folders of novels I’ve finished, and books I’ve downloaded and have yet to read. I’ve got cute little folders such as Girl Things, Books-Music-Words, and Family Cards and Art, and boring ones like Taxes and Passwords.

The cool thing about keeping all those folders and documents around is once I open them,  it’s like time-traveling through the galaxy. Where did I get these things? Why were they important to me at the time? What did I want to do with these things?

It’s like a long, long trip through the past.

And although I don’t keep as much falderal as years past, there’s something satisfying about opening a pretzel logic database and actually being able to find something. There’s something fun about thumbing through my Research folder and perusing auras, Rite of Pan, Medieval words, wormholes, and clichés.

What a weirdo! And what a galaxy to explore!

Tell me about YOUR computer. Are you organized? Do you have more ideas than gigabites? Or are you a catcher-catch-can kinda laptopper?

 

 

Trial and Error is Better Than a Bottle of Whine

~ humoringthegoddess ~ 10 Comments

trialI had almost a whole blog finished this evening, one about deer ticks and broken teeth and watching Face Off. But when I reread it, all I saw was creatively written whine.  The beautiful thing about typing on a computer is that with one sweep I can delete it all.

But what about second thoughts? What if I destroy something that one day may be my Pulitzer Prize?

I imagine my friends in other arts have the same dilemma. Graphic art, photography, writing, pottery — there’s always those pieces that you gave your heart and soul to and it still sucks. So you redo it. Rewrite it. Re-form it.

But how many times to you redo it?

I would love to hear from my graphic artist friends or sculptor friends or my scrapbooking friends. How many times to you redo something to get it “perfect”? And if you DO redo it, HOW do you do it?

Writing is simple yet complex. Often my stories, novels, poems, and other ditties start out with notes or research of some kind. Not like the Encyclopedia Britannica, but I try and create an ocean of information so that I can eventually reduce it to a cup full of water. Quite like my research for my Sunday Evening Art Gallery. Writing about Doors? Collect images of 30 different doors so I can choose 8. Writing about Nail Art? Download 20 images so you can share 7. Writing about life in 1880? Better check out things like electricity, transportation, and currency, even if the reference is only a couple of sentences long.

I keep every other version of my creations, cutting here, adding there, rearranging when needed. As the years go by I get rid of the middle versions — I’ve either moved forward and created a masterpiece, or it just hasn’t “done it” for me. I have a computer full of half-formed ideas, research that goes nowhere, poetry that needs real work. I decide what I want to work on, what I still need to research, and what was a great idea at the time but now, no thank you.

How do you deal with developing your craft? Do you network? Do you draw a basic image and then play with that same image until you get what you want? Do you you have pages and pages of canvas that hold various versions of your final masterpiece? Do you have stacks of pottery that look nothing like what you wanted to create?

My notebooks are glimpses of my thoughts through time. I’ve kept some since I started writing in earnest years ago. It’s fun going back and seeing my thought processes through the years. Sometimes I go back and reignite the embers that once burned brightly. Other times I just smile and see why the ideas are still only in a notebook.

I think beginner crafters can learn from our paths of trial and error. The thrill of creating something unique is made from the sweat and love and honesty that comes from somewhere deep inside. Some pick one idea, one idea, and stick with it from beginning to end. Others have trial and error experiences, realizing a particular path was pretty much a dead end from the beginning. So we choose a different path. A different path in the same endless woods.

I feel so much better when I write about the Craft. If I ever unlocked the door to the Hallway of Infinite Doors, I would find worlds that I love almost as well — drawing, stenciling, jewelry making, gardening. I would never have a life because my life would exist in the next dimension — the ethereal one. The Creative Arts one. I only hope you feel that way about your Craft too.

Oh, btw — the tick bite wasn’t infected, my broken tooth gets fixed in the morning, and Face Off is down to its final three.

Life is good.