Category Archives: Nourish the Writer

Creativity and your Surroundings

I’ve always loved this Lord Leighton painting Flaming June, dating from 1995. When you see it large on the wall it is just so lush and intimate, it just about takes your breath away.

(I’m the sort of person who can go to the art gallery, wander around for a couple of hours and come out feeling like I’m floating on air, there’s so many endorphins swimming around in my body).

I’m going to reward myself by buying a poster of Flaming June and getting it framed. I almost bought it 10 years ago but felt it was too much of an indulgence.

Here I have to confess that I love beautiful things.I always have. As a child I used to collect beautiful moments so I could take them out and think about them again at a later date. I thought everyone did this.

I found school depressing because the classrooms were so ugly and utilitarian. I grew up in Southport on the Gold Coast. In those days it was fibro beach shacks built on scrubby bushland.  I ached for beautiful things.

Here is a link to Dr Alice Boyes, a clinnical psychologist who believes how we feel affects our creativity. She says when we feel positive, we are more creative.

‘In an evolutionary sense, negative emotions like fear are designed to make us focus narrowly on a threat (e.g. is that moving thing a snake?). Positive emotions like feeling happy or upbeat are designed to make us want to explore, try new things, learn new information, and build relationships with other people.’

Which makes sense because to be creative we need to be open and let our mind make those lateral leaps that you just can’t produce by pushing for them. What makes you feel creative?

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A Salute to Female Writers of the 70s

Recently I came across an interesting phenomenon. Young women of today (educated, professional young women) find feminism a bit passe. ‘What’s all the fuss about?’.

I was there in the 70s  when the books written by female SF writers were being published.

In the 70s I had a bookshop where I sat and read all day. I’d read a book before lunch, a book after lunch and a book after dinner. It was heaven. Amongst the authors I discovered were  Joanna Russ, Vonda McIntyre, Ursula K Le Guin and Doris Lessing.

This was back in the days before the web and you could hardly discover anything about writers. I never knew that Russ had won both the Hugo and the Nebula, I just liked her books. When I discovered Joanna Russ, I read everything of hers that I could find. I can still remember scenes from her books 30 years later. Her characters were so different, they resonated with me. Now I can google her bio to learn about her. Her wry sens of humour came through her writing. Here’s a great quote from her on ‘How to Suppress Women’s Writing.

“She didn’t write it. She wrote it but she shouldn’t have. She wrote it but look what she wrote about. She wrote it but she isn’t really an artist, and it isn’t really art. She wrote it but she had help. She wrote it but she’s an anomaly. She wrote it BUT…”

And here’s a review of ‘How to Suppress Women’s Writing’.

Then there’s Ursula K Le Guin, much has been written about her work.  In 1969 when Le Guin wrote Left Hand of Darkness it won the Hugo and the Nebula. See here for some background info. (And here is a study guide for the book. Don’t you love the web?). When I read ‘Left Hand of Darkness’ I had no trouble identifying with the  non-gendered aliens. But the first time I read it I didn’t notice  that Le Guin had used  the male pronoun for these aliens. This book is all about gender and perception, yet  she used ‘he’ as the generic pronoun. When asked years later, Le Guin said she had used ‘he’ as a default. (I came across this quote while researching for my MA, and don’t know where the reference is now). But since then …

‘Le Guin has written essays since about the assumptions she made in writing the book. She’s also written the story “The Winter King” where she uses “she” as the pronoun for all Gethenians, rather than “he” as she does in the book (The Left Hand of Darkness), and the story “Coming of Age in Karhide.” Both of these explicitly feminise the Gethenians. They’re interesting, as are her writings about the book, but they’re afterthoughts from a different world.’

It is amazing how the perception of the character changes if you believe the narrator to be male or female. I once read a whole short story where no gender specific pronouns were used. (No ‘he’ or ‘she’). It made for some challenging grammar.The author used non-gender specific names and I found my perception of whether the character was male or female changed depending on whether they were being active or passive. The author was making a point about our perceptions as readers. (This story was also published in the 70s, when feminism was pushing boundaries).

Vonda McIntyre came out to Australia for a convention in the late 70s. (Can’t remember which one). I read her book ‘Dreamsnake’ . It won both a Hugo and Nebula. One line made me realise how gender blinkered I was by my upbringing. We are all products of our time. We don’t see it how blinkered we are unless writers and artists hold a mirror to us. SF and Fantasy create their own worlds, so they can hold a slightly distorted mirror that can surprise us with its insights.

In 2007 Lessing was awarded the Noble Prize for Literature. With Doris Lessing I must have discovered her in the brief period that she was writing Fantasy and SF. It is all a bit fuzzy now, but what stands out in my mind is the humanity of her writing.

All these years later, I’m taking my hat off to those writers. Thank you, Ladies.

It is because of people like you that feminism can seem passe.

What writers have impressed you with their insights?

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Filed under Fantasy books, Nourish the Writer, SF Books, The Writing Fraternity, Writing craft

Things you can’t forget

I live an ordinary life, in a safe ordinary suburb. I know when I go to sleep at night that, barring freak accidents, I’ll wake up safe in my bed.  But I’m always looking out at the world to find interesting facts about people and places and for interesting visuals to stimulate ideas. (To be honest, I’m just insatiably curious about everything).

I came across this web site. The photos are  real  (not computer generated). People used to live here. The picture of the piano keys is from this site.

Another place that is absolutely fascinating is Chernobyl.  Here is a link to a series of photos on the BBC site. I saw one documentary with a shot of  a sapling growing through the floor of an indoor basket ball court.

What visuals have you seen that you can’t forget.

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Cross Bookplate Pollination!

What is Cross Bookplate Pollination?

I’m glad you asked. It is when I create bookplate for my dear friends and then blog about it.

This one is for Tansy, whose Power and Majesty, book one of Creature Court has just been released. You can read about her launch here. And you can hear podcasts from the book here. Go Tansy.

If you like  Dark Urban Fantasy with a twist, in this case 1920s style combined with Roman festivals and sexy naked men falling from the sky, you’ll like Tansy’s new series.

Having read book one at the last ROR, I’m looking forward to reading book two!

Tomorrow I’ll give you a glimpse of the bookplate I did for Trent’s new series.

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Doing the Happy Dance!

Advance copies of book one of King Rolen’s Kin have arrived.  This is the moment when writers call their family members and proudly open the box from the publisher, so everyone can Ooh and Ahh.

Now I’m madly sending out copies to those people who helped me along the way to publication.

Of course not all family members were impressed.

Sassy cat had to investigate to see if this was a good place to sleep!

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Writers and time management

One of my writing friends asked for a writing craft blog post about how not to waste time surfing the net and reading blogs when you should be writing. While being aware of the irony of this, I got into the spirit and confessed to having a LOL Cat addiction.

I actually think LOL cats is evidence that the world is not a terrible place. The news gives us this skewed view of the world full of disasters and politics and sport. But there are all these people out there taking pictures of their pets and coming up with funny captions, which proves that the world is not all death and disaster.

Here’s one that I just love. I think you have to be a cat person to really appreciate it.

Having been way too over committed recently, I thought  others could learn from my mistakes. So I gave the ‘writer and time management thing’ some thought, and did a post over at the ROR blog on the topic.

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This one’s for Fletcher

If you are a young writer who is looking for feedback on your work, showing your parents and friends is all very well but, unless they are writers,  they won’t be able to give you the feedback you need to help you develop as a writer.

If you are serious about your writing craft, then join a local writing group. Look for one that specialises in your genre. If you’re writing speculative fiction (fantasy, SF and horror) then Visions Writers is great. They have an on-line group for everyone and meet in person in Brisbane city, so that’s handy if you live in South East Queensland. Grace Dugan joined the Vision group when she was 15 and went on to be published by Penguin.

The Queensland Writers Centre run a Young Adult Master Class series, specifically aimed at high school students who want to develop their writing skills.

It is also great to have goals and submitting to a competition is a good way to get motivated to finish the story. Who knows you might win or get noticed by the judges who are often editors. So there is the Somerset College novella competition. On the Ipswich Literary Festival site there is a list of writing competitions for people under 18. There is also the Voices on the Coast Literary Festival, which has competitions, although theirs is closed for this year.

And there are markets in Australia for spec Fic short stories. ASIM is a regular magazine which has a good turn around time for submissions. Here’s the guidelines. And here is the Specusphere web zine. And here is Inspillers which lists current markets, competitions, magazines

Here’s an Australian Spec Fic site with lots of news  and reviews. If you want to know what’s doing well in Australia by Australian authors in this genre, take a look at the Aurealis Awards page.

And if you are interested in the craft of writing the ROR site run a writing craft post every Sunday, just put in requests. The latest one was on agents.

Lastly, if you are keen to write, talk to your school or local library about bringing a published author in to run workshops. The Redlands libraries have had me run three workshops in the last month, How to write a Book Proposal, Writing Dark Urban Fantasy and Pitching your Book.

Writers are a friendly supportive bunch. We are all united by a passion for writing and our love of the genre.  Feel free to ask questions.

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Filed under Nourish the Writer, Publishing Industry, The Writing Fraternity, Workshop/s, Writing craft

Do creative people have more vivid dreams?

When I went to an acupuncturist, he asked me about my dreams. I told him I have lots of vivid fascinating dreams, complete with backstory, in full colour. I didn’t tell him they were sometimes stylized (if I’d been reading graphic novels) or, on rare occasions, set to music with rhyming dialogue. ( I know, weird).

He said it wasn’t normal for people to dream vividly every night. I’d thought my dreams were normal.

And perhaps they were for me.

According to David Watson, a professor of psychology in the UI College of Liberal Arts and Sciences,  “There is a fundamental continuity between how people experience the world during the day and at night,” he said. “People who are prone to daydreaming and fantasy have less of a barrier between states of sleep and wakefulness and seem to more easily pass between them.” In other words, creative people tend to have vivid dreams. See the full article here.

Now, it seems,  video game players might be able to control their dreams up to a point. Jayne Gackenbach, at Grant McEwan University has been doing research into dreams and gamers. She found that lucid dreamers and gamers tended to have better spacial skills. Both groups had a high level of concentration.  According to a 2006 study, people who frequently played video games were more likely to have lucid dreams and to be aware that they were dreaming.

“A second study tried to narrow down the uncertainties by examining dreams that participants experienced from the night before, and focused more on gamers. It found that lucid dreams were common, but that the gamers never had dream control over anything beyond their dream selves.

The gamers also frequently flipped between a first person view from within the body and a third person view of themselves from outside, except never with the calm detachment of a distant witness.” See the full article here.

I’ve been reading a book on current knowledge about plasticity of the human brain. It looks like game players have been rewiring their brains specfically for this ability. The more you do something the more this sinks into your brain and becomes second nature.  So keep reading, keep day dreaming and keep dreaming. It is all tied into creativity, even if we don’t understand how or why, just yet.

I’ve used scenes from dreams as leaping off points for stories. Do you experience vivid dreams? Ever had a dream where everyone is talking in rhyme?

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Back refreshed and ready to tackle a recalcitrant book!

You know how your mind gets when you’ve been working too hard. Seen the same thing day after day, done the same thing day after day and tried to be creative on top of that?

My mind felt stale.  Taking a trip to Tasmania was just the thing I needed to refresh myself.  The air was crisp and cool, something we don’t get much of here in Brisbane, and everywhere I looked there were scenes worthy of photographing. Not that I’m much of a photographer. Daryl took this one of Ross Bridge.

It was built by convicts back in the days when a soldier who had served at Waterloo could find himself on the other side of the world in a tiny town in the middle of Tasmania, guarding the female convicts.

I took this picture at dawn from the top of a hill at St Helens on the east coast of Tasmania. It was beautiful, the photo doesn’t do it justice. The people inthe house below had a fire going to keep warm and I was trying to capture the dawn sun shining through the smoke.

The other thing that I did a lot of was writing. I took my lap top and wrote about 60 pages of my latest WIP (work-in-progress). I did want to finish the book and I’m about a chapter off the end but I can’t finish it.

I know how I want the story to end, but the characters are refusing to go in that direction. I’ll have to return to the beginning and rewrite it, tweaking as I go, to get to know them all over again, because they have grown and changed as I wrote. Now they have a better idea of what is true to them, than I do and forcing them  to do something just because I’d planned it, is only going to make the writing flat and boring. Sigh.

Do you have recalcitrant characters?

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Holiday to restore my Creativity

I’m about to leave for a driving holiday around Tasmania. And frankly, I need the break. I will be taking photos but I’m sure they will never be as good as these. So I’m going to leave you with them for inspiration.

From Travel Point.

From Gondawananet.

Meanwhile, I’ve done a post on creativity and promotion over at the Mad Genius Club blog. And there will be a post on the ROR blog on Sunday about Dialogue, and another one on the MGC on Tuesday about Characterisation.

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