The Curious Creative: Week 39

Renaming Familiar Tales

This is the thirty-ninth installment of The Curious Creative, weekly 10-minute writing exercises for busy individuals interested in exploring their creativity. For the complete rationale, click here. 

My Thoughts:

Writing prompts are aplenty in how-to-unleash-your-creativity books, and with the Internet, it is so easy to quickly snag a prompt. But there is still something difficult about reading a prompt and then staring at a blank page.  That is why my site aims to engage in creative play, doing something a little out-of-the-box or multi-modal, in order to bypass any intimidation that might come from staring at an empty piece of paper.

This week’s exercise has you design the writing prompt yourself by visiting old familiar tales, and it adds a physical element – taking books off a shelf, slapping sticky notes on them, opening to first pages- in hopes that, by engaging yourself in these different ways, the writing will come more easily.

Your Turn!

1. Go to your bookshelf and pull out 3-4 books you’ve read. 

2. On sticky notes, write a new title for each book related to its theme (ie, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Entrenched Racism; O Pioneers! – Unforgiving Land; The Joy Luck Club – Mothers Revising their Lives through their Daughters). Slap these sticky notes onto each book. 

3. Choose one of these invented titles and stick it at the top of a piece of paper. 

4. As quickly as you can, think of personal connections – a situations or events from your life- and list them on the paper. 

5. Open the book from which the title came. Copy down the first three words of the first sentence. Begin telling your story from here.

How did you do? Did you feel released from over-thinking when slapping new titles onto old books? Were you able to list 2-3 personal connections to the titles? Did having the first three words written already give you a good jumping off point for your story?

To encourage each other and grow a community of Curious Creatives, sign in from a google account so you can share your creation in the comment box below. Also, if you subscribe to this blog (submit your email address in the "Follow this Site by Email" box to the right), you will get an email update whenever a new exercise is added. Thanks for playing! 

The Curious Creative: Week 38

Ekphrasis Formula

This is the thirty-eighth installment of The Curious Creative, weekly 10-minute writing exercises for busy individuals interested in exploring their creativity. For the complete rationale, click here. 

My Thoughts:

An ekphrasis is a visual description about a work of art. One of my favorite examples is William Carlos Williams’ poem, “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus,” written about the Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painting of the same name. 

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus

by Pieter Bruegel, 1525-1530 

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus 

by William Carlos Williams, 1883 – 1963

According to Brueghel
when Icarus fell
it was spring 

a farmer was ploughing
his field
the whole pageantry 

of the year was
awake tingling
with itself 

sweating in the sun
that melted
the wings' wax 

unsignificantly
off the coast
there was 

a splash quite unnoticed
this was
Icarus drowning

In this ekphrasis, William Carlos Williams employs a very simple technique: he literally describes what is happening in the painting in a journalistic manner (when, what, where). But what makes this poem powerful is his use of two simple words: “unsignificantly” and “unnoticed.” This adverb and adjective, with their emotive connotations, give the reader a feeling of pity for Icarus, who has failed at a lifetime achievement, so easily forgotten and unimportant to the everyman.

Ekphrasis offer a nice way into writing poetry, both through the accessible inspiration of visual art and the simple journalistic formula. In this week’s exercise, you will choose from several famous paintings and employ William Carlos Williams’ template for success!

Your Turn!

1. Choose one of the following paintings:

The Lady of Shallot 

by William Holman Hunt, 1896

 Ballet Dancers in the Wings

by Edgar Degas, 1834-1917

American Gothic

by Grant Wood, 1930

2. Begin your poem, “According to (artist’s name), when…” 
3. Next in your poem, describe the following literally:

a.     the occasion (what is happening in the painting)

b.     the season or time of year

c.      the atmosphere (look at the background for clues)

d.     describe the subject of the painting with 1-2 adverb and/or adjectives

How did you do? Did you notice new details from spending time looking closely at the artwork? Did having a formula allow you to connect with the artwork on an emotional level? Were you able to express some kind of (new) emotion about the artwork through your poem?

To encourage each other and grow a community of Curious Creatives, sign in from a google account so you can share your creation in the comment box below. Also, if you subscribe to this blog (submit your email address in the "Follow this Site by Email" box to the right), you will get an email update whenever a new exercise is added. Thanks for playing! 

The Curious Creative: Week 37

To Write Without Thinking: Exploring Body Language

This is the thirty-seventh installment of The Curious Creative, weekly 10-minute writing exercises for busy individuals interested in exploring their creativity. For the complete rationale, click here. 

My Thoughts:

For writers, sometimes we need to find our words in non-linguistic ways. Sounds strange, right? Admittedly, when I am most in the flow while writing, I am often not thinking. I leave that place of words, that linguistic center of my brain, and enter a different space. Similarly, while dancing tango, when I am at my best, which means most connected to my partner and the music, I am not thinking. If words do enter my mind, I immediately fall out of this connection and often make a mistake. As a result, while dancing, I work hardest to not think. The challenge is that unlike dance, where movement and breath are the building blocks, with writing, words are the building blocks, so how can we not think with words while creating words? 

I recently took a creative writing class called “Body Language” (see source below), in which we used the language of movement to inform our creative writing and vice versa. I was most interested in transferring the zen space I enter in tango to my creative writing practice. I was able to achieve this for a few moments through an exercise the teachers had us do. We were to watch a qi gong movement, and without knowing its name in Chinese, ascribe it a name. Both performing the motions myself, and watching our teacher and classmates do so, put me in that zen state in which I could muster up a name without thinking too cerebrally. I used as little language-based thought as possible to conjure up a title, operating from a place of “blink decision making” or intuition. 

For this week’s Curious Creative exercise, you will experience the exercise for yourself to hopefully put you in that same non-thinking mode of creativity. My hope is that with this mere 10 minutes of creative play, you will form muscle memory to help engage you in this non-thinking mode while writing in the future.

Your Turn!

1. Watch this youtube video.  You will see a man do two different qi gong movements. The subtitles are in German, so unless you know German, you will not be affected by learning the titles of the movements. The first one starts at 0:50. The second one starts at 2:36. He repeats both a couple of times. 

2. Without thinking too much, write a title for each of the movements. Just to give you an idea, some qi gong exercise names are “Immortal Looks to the Heavens,” “Dragon Holds Pearl,” and “Bamboo Bends in the Wind.” You don’t need to think of similar names; just know that you can create metaphorical ones, not just literal descriptions of the movements. 

How did you do? Did a title pop into your mind immediately, without apparent word-thought? Were you able skip any belaboring over word choice? Did you feel a kind of pressure-free relaxation as you watched the movement?

To encourage each other and grow a community of Curious Creatives, sign in from a google account so you can share your creation in the comment box below. Also, if you subscribe to this blog (submit your email address in the "Follow this Site by Email" box to the right), you will get an email update whenever a new exercise is added. Thanks for playing! 

Source: inspired by the workshop, “Body Language: Exploring Your Secondary Intelligence,” taught at The Hugo House by Jill Leininger and Ilvs Strass on 8/13/17.

The Curious Creative: Week 36

No More Be Verbs!

This is the thirty-sixth installment of The Curious Creative, weekly 10-minute writing exercises for busy individuals interested in exploring their creativity. For the complete rationale, click here. 

My Thoughts:

Writing teachers will often tell you to replace your be-verbs (is, am, are, was, were, have been, am being) with more interesting action verbs. The idea of be-verbs is very boring because something that ‘is’ is not doing anything. ‘Existing’ is very abstract. It is hard for the mind’s eye to imagine, but an action can be imagined. This week, we will play with a paragraph authored by someone else. This simple exercise will get you thinking about stronger verbs, so when you write your own material, you are conscious of making interesting verb choices.

Your Turn!

1. Glean a paragraph from anywhere. Make sure it is littered with be-verbs. Highlight the be-verbs.

example: Have you ever wondered why most of the things in Nature are so visually pleasing? Why spirals, though imperfect, are so attractive? Why four petal flowers are so rare? The answers can be found in mathematical principles.

2. In this first round, replace the be-verbs with action verbs that don’t change the meaning of the paragraph too much.

example: Have you ever wondered why most of the things in Nature PIECE TOGETHER so visually pleasingly? Why spirals, though imperfect, CURVE so attractively? Why four petal flowers VISIT so rarely? The answers SCREAM in mathematical principles.

Note: You may have to make some small changes in the rest of the sentences. If the sentence is a passive sentence, you may have to switch the subject and object for the sentence to make sense with an action verb. For example, you would change “He was eaten by the crocodile” to “The crocodile devoured him.” If the sentence uses a be-verb to describe something, you may have to change the part of speech of the adjective in the sentence. For example, you would change “She is beautiful” to “She hovers beautifully.”

3. In the second round, be more creative. Have fun! Wax poetic! Don’t be afraid to change the meaning of the paragraph.

example: Have you ever wondered why most of the things in Nature BLEED so visually pleasingly? Why spirals, though imperfect, WINCE so attractively? Why four petal flowers GIVE BIRTH so rarely? The answers DRESS in mathematical principles.

How did you do? Do your verbs give visuals? Does your last paragraph lean towards poetry? Are you more aware of how interesting action verbs can enhance writing?

To encourage each other and grow a community of Curious Creatives, sign in from a google account so you can share your creation in the comment box below. Also, if you subscribe to this blog (submit your email address in the "Follow this Site by Email" box to the right), you will get an email update whenever a new exercise is added. Thanks for playing! 

Source: “Why Seashells are so Alluring?” Inspiration Bit. http://www.inspirationbit.com

The Curious Creative: Week 35

Too Many Adjectives

This is the thirty-fifth installment of The Curious Creative, weekly 10-minute writing exercises for busy individuals interested in exploring their creativity. For the complete rationale, click here. 

My Thoughts:

One thing you are not supposed to do in most creative writing is clutter it with adjectives. Writing teachers tell you over and over again that good writing is all about interesting nouns and strong verbs, and that adjectives and adverbs water it down. For this week’s exercise, you will first indulge in what you’re not supposed to do- overwrite with adjectives- and then you will redact them to see what remains.

Your Turn!

1. Simply write a description of the room you are sitting in. Go out of your way to describe every noun with at least one adjective, more if you can. Even add adverbs to each of your verbs. Write in the form a paragraph or freewrite. 

The stained, splintered picnic tables, wooden and square, line the grey, textured, pressboard deck floor. Empty and blankly anticipating the afterwork hours, they are bare and dirty, silent bearers of unwelcome splinters. Oblong globular lights zigzag neatly above them, hungrily anticipating a later hour.

2. Take a black pen and cross out every adjective and adverb.

The stained, splintered picnic tables, wooden and square, line the grey, textured, pressboard deck floor. Empty and blankly anticipating the afterwork hours, they are bare and dirty, silent bearers of unwelcome splinters. Oblong globular lights zigzag neatly above them, hungrily anticipating a later hour.

3. Rewrite the remaining words as a poem, adding line breaks where appropriate. Change articles (a/an/the) and prepositions (to/from/in/at) as needed. 

picnic tables line the deck floor

anticipating the hours they are

bearers of splinters

and lights zigzag above

anticipating the hour

How did you do? Does your poem include space that the original description did not have? Space that allows the images to breathe – suggesting subtleties and connotations?

To encourage each other and grow a community of Curious Creatives, sign in from a google account so you can share your creation in the comment box below. Also, if you subscribe to this blog (submit your email address in the "Follow this Site by Email" box to the right), you will get an email update whenever a new exercise is added. Thanks for playing! 

The Curious Creative: Week 34

Food and Home 

This is the thirty-fourth installment of The Curious Creative, weekly 10-minute writing exercises for busy individuals interested in exploring their creativity. For the complete rationale, click here. 

My Thoughts:

For this week’s creative exercise, you’ll explore the connection between a specific food and the feeling of home. There will be plenty of rich sensory details to explore- taste, smell, texture, and sight. Also of interest will be how such concrete details can conjure up the abstract feeling of home.

Your Turn!

1. List several food dishes that remind you of “home.” They can be regional specialties or your own family’s traditional dishes.

2. Of these, circle your favorite.

3. Spend five minutes clustering or mind-mapping some of your memories associated with this food. Recall details of events, people, and environment.

4. Pick the most interesting detail from your brainstorm, and plug it into the opening sentence: “It was _______________________ that told me I was home.”

5. From this sentence, continue drafting a personal essay or narrative.

How did you do? Did your sensory details make for rich writing? Were you able to uncover interesting details that conjure up the feeling of home for you? Did one particular story emerge?

To encourage each other and grow a community of Curious Creatives, sign in from a google account so you can share your creation in the comment box below. Also, if you subscribe to this blog (submit your email address in the "Follow this Site by Email" box to the right), you will get an email update whenever a new exercise is added. Thanks for playing! 

Inspired by: “Apple Pie.” “The Time is Now,” Poets & Writers, 7/6/17, pw.org.

The Curious Creative: Week 33

Writing Dialogue

This is the thirty-third installment of The Curious Creative, weekly 10-minute writing exercises for busy individuals interested in exploring their creativity. For the complete rationale, click here. 

My Thoughts:

Writing good dialogue entails you first do some good listening. Tune in to the conversations around you. How do people greet each other? What catchphrases do certain people use? Do people finish sentences for one another? Does one person become more talkative in groups? These rhythms in how people communicate with one another create character. 

Your Turn!

1. Go to a public place with crowds- the airport, a bus station, the mall, a restaurant. It’s best if you pick a place where people are naturally tense, like at the airport. Sit near a bunch of people so you can both blend in and listen. Pretend to be preoccupied with your own thoughts so you don’t call attention to yourself and change their natural conversation.

2. Jot down several quick exchanges that you overhear. You may only be able to capture a phrase or two, and that’s okay.

3. Look over what you have. Are there any interesting seeds of conflict or characters worth exploring? A mysterious plot point worth developing? 

4. If you have time, choose one and run with it. Write a 10-minute sketch (dialogue) between two people in which you develop character and conflict from the exchange you overheard.

How did you do? Even if you didn’t have time to write a complete scene based on one of the exchanges you overheard, did you at least walk away with a few possible stories? Did you pick up on some interesting ways in which people converse- non sequiturs, interruptions, unfinished sentences, etc.?

To encourage each other and grow a community of Curious Creatives, sign in from a google account so you can share your creation in the comment box below. Also, if you subscribe to this blog (submit your email address in the "Follow this Site by Email" box to the right), you will get an email update whenever a new exercise is added. Thanks for playing! 

Inspired by: Chiarella, Tom. Writing Dialogue: How to create memorable voices and fictional conversations that crackle with wit, tension and nuance. Cincinatti: Story Press, 1998, p. 9-17.