Writing Through The Dark… Or Not

 Writing Through The Dark… Or Not

By Cathy Perkins

One of the mantras you hear a lot if you’re an author is you can’t wait around waiting for that drunken hussy of a writing muse to show up for work. Instead, it’s BICHOK. You have to put Butt In Chair, Hands On Keyboard.

There are, of course, dozens of reasons this is true. Writing is, after all, a craft. Part of improving is doing. Practicing. Challenging yourself in new ways. Putting the words on that page.

So why are so many of us staring at a blinking cursor, if we even heave our protesting butts into the chair? Why are we cursing at that cursor?

I considered this last night during my 3 AM round of insomnia.

Sleep deprivation is an easy target. Lack of sleep has been linked to poor cognitive performance. This includes a laundry list of negative attributes including poor focus and concentration, low creativity, erratic behavior, inability to multitask, and increased mistakes. While there is a clamor about “creative insomnia” these days, the sad truth is we need sleep—and that’s before we explore the myriad ways sleep deprivation messes with the rest of our bodies.

What if you’re getting enough sleep? Or you’re trying to get enough sleep? Maybe you have to look a little deeper. Maybe it’s time to acknowledge the stressors underlying that lack of sleep.

Stress.

Interestingly enough, a number of the articles I read about creativity and stress actually focused on the role of a creative outlet in reducing stress. But as I explored this topic, the preferred “creative outlets” stressed repetitive motions: walking, gardening, talking with friends, activities that are too often curtailed these days by COVID-19-induced isolation and bitter winter cold.

Isolation. Cold. COVID-19. Darkness. Now those are some major stressors.

As I read more, I found useful discussions about psychological safety that doesn’t create crippling performance pressure. Basically, you need to let go of forcing yourself to “be creative.” If you’re already stressed, those threats simply trigger more fight or flights reactions—the most primitive, least creative part of your brain. Instead of demanding creativity, relax. Tell yourself, what if…

Let’s play around with this idea…

Of course, these articles also advocated, you guessed it, stress reducing activities like walking, gardening, and talking with friends. Or “going to your happy place” such as a favorite coffee shop or roaming a museum or art gallery.

Yeah, I’m looking forward to those creative inciting activities too.

In the meanwhile, the helpful ideas include:

1) Meditate. Calm your mind.

2) Walk. Get outside if possible. Let your mind relax.

3) Read. Turns out it’s a stress buster.

4) De-clutter. Research says decluttering your workspace can also clear your head.

5) Live life. Winter and COVID will end. Go enjoy every minute.  

An award-winning author of financial mysteries, Cathy Perkins writes twisting dark suspense and light amateur sleuth stories.  When not writing, she battles with the beavers over the pond height or heads out on another travel adventure. She lives in Washington with her husband, children, several dogs and the resident deer herd.  Visit her at http://cperkinswrites.com or on Facebook 

Sign up for her new release announcement newsletter in either place.

She's hard at work on Peril in the Pony Ring, the sequel to The Body in the Beaver Pond, which was recently presented with the Killer Nashville's Claymore Award. 

Sparking Your Creativity

Sparking Your Creativity by Linda Rodriguez (originally published June 2017)

As an artist and creative person, I can experience times when I reach down for ideas, for creative excitement, for images, and come up temporarily empty. These have usually been times that have combined lots of creative overwork and lots of business work—taxes, promotion, correspondence, contracts, freelance editing, etc. This kind of emptiness and feeling creatively dry can be terrifying, but I’m now used to it, and I know what to do to refill the well and spark new creativity. In these circumstances, it’s necessary to take time to do things to build up new creativity energy within you. So here are ten ideas to get you started.

Journal Writing—This is the backbone of the creative life, especially for writers. I’m not necessarily talking about a daily diary. This is a notebook in which you write about what you see and hear, turning it into dialogue or sensory description. This is where you can work with writing prompts from books, workshops, tapes, and DVDs, your version of the pianist’s daily scales. Set a kitchen timer for a few minutes and do some freewriting to unload some of the chattering of your surface mind and move into deeper ideas.

Read Poetry—I’m a poet, as well as a novelist, but I’ve been surprised by how many commercially successful novelists I’ve met who say they regularly or occasionally read poetry as a springboard for their writing. It actually makes great sense because the poet deals in imagery, which is the language of the right (creative) brain.  I know that, whenever I read poetry, it sets my mind whirling with tons of ideas and images. I have come up with ideas for entire novels from reading a poem.

Read Something Very Different for You—If you always read and write poetry, check out a popular novel. If you’re a mystery reader, take a look at what science fiction writers are coming up with. If you read and write literary fiction, pick up a romance novel. Jog your mind from its habitual ruts of thinking and imagining. Stretch out of your comfort zone. Even if you don’t like what you read, it should still shake up your mind enough to start generating ideas, images, and characters.

Singlehanded Brainstorming—Most of us have been taught how to do and forced to sit through group brainstorming sessions before. Take those techniques and a sheet of paper with pen (or iPad or laptop), get comfortable, set a timer again, and start throwing out ideas at top speed. Same rules as with the group process. You can’t disqualify any idea, no matter how unrealistic. You want to generate as many ideas as you can as quickly as you can. Just list them down the page—or even use a voice recorder to capture them.  After the timer goes off, you can go down the list considering the possibilities you’ve listed. Look for possibilities to combine aspects of ideas. Write down any new ideas that get sparked by your consideration of the ideas already down on the page. Choose one or two promising (or least abhorrent) ideas and freewrite about them in your journal.

Making Lists—I love listmaking. Make lists of ideas, of characters, of backgrounds you’d like to use someday, of isolated bits of dialogue or description, of actions you’d like to see a character to take. My favorite is to write a list of scenes I’d like to read—exciting scenes, action-filled scenes, emotional scenes, surprising scenes, suspenseful scenes. They don’t have to have anything to do with any project you’re working on or any character you are writing or have written. They just need to be scenes you’d love to read—because scenes you’d love to read are scenes you’d love to write.

Visit a Museum, Gallery, Play, Film, Concert—We writers live and breathe words. Sometimes we need to get out of our heads and see or hear art that isn’t primarily word-based. It can be especially fruitful to go to a film in a language you don’t understand or an art exhibit of a kind you know nothing about. When we have no words to use to explain or understand what we’re seeing, our brains are kicked into another mode of functioning that can become quite generative. Wander around a gallery or museum and take in the colors and shapes. Sit in a concert hall or movie theater and let the music or film engulf you completely, washing through your brain. Come out seeing or hearing in a slightly different mode.

Draw, Paint, Knit, Spin, Sew—Even better than looking at art is making it. Sink your hands into clay or fiber. Splash ten different colors next to each other, taking note of the changes each new color creates. Feel the texture of the fabric, thread, yarn, fiber as you work with it to make something new. Take a penciled line and see what you can create with it. All of this also kicks in the right brain, the imagistic, creative part of us. Stay in beginner mind without worrying how “good” your art will be. This is—and should be—play, completely carefree and innocent.

Go for a Walk—Physical exercise is always a good thing for us sedentary word slugs, but even more important than its many health benefits are the creative benefits of simply moving your body through space. As you move around, your brain begins to get unstuck and to move, as well. A nice, long walk outdoors (preferably in scenic surroundings) can often jumpstart the solution to a creative dry spell. Sometimes a sterile period can arise from being overstressed. Walks are one of the best ways to counter such stress and relax the mind and body.

Arrange Flowers/Rearrange Some Belongings—In the Chinese art of feng shui, rearranging 27 items will start stuck soul energy flowing again. Moving belongings into new configurations, trying for a more pleasing pattern, has long been a cure for the blues and the blahs. We are pattern-recognizing and pattern-creating organisms. To change the habitual patterns that surround us charges us with new energy.  A smaller, simpler version of this is to gather or buy some flowers and assemble them into flower arrangements that please our aesthetic sensibilities. Spending a little time in creating pleasing, artistic arrangements of flowers or accessories will provide a creative boost to stuck energies.

Go to Lunch with a Creative Friend or Two—Everyone has one or more friends or acquaintances who are creative sparklers. Like the child’s fireworks favorite, they give off showers of sparks, or creative ideas, constantly. They are positive and upbeat and always focused on possibilities. Spending some time with them will leave you filled with ideas, energy, and excitement. It’s always worthwhile to give them a call and set up a relaxed lunch in a nice place. Rather than complain about how dry and sterile things are for you right at the moment, ask them what’s new with them and what they see as possibilities for the future.  As they take off shooting into the blue yonder, follow them wholeheartedly and build on all their ideas. You’ll walk away at the end of lunch with a big smile on your face and a bunch of ideas bubbling in your unconscious. Cherish these friends, even if they are unrealistic and immature. Their wild, creative energy is invaluable when your own has temporarily deserted you.

One or more of these ten methods should start your creative powers working once again. I’ve never had to go through more than a couple of these at a time to get my creative mojo stirring. Post this list near your desk, and don’t spend any time or energy bewailing it when a creative dry spell hits. Just reach for this and try whichever of these ideas looks most appealing at the time. If the first doesn’t completely prime your creative pump, move to another of them. Creativity never leaves, but sometimes it needs a spark to start the engine running again. So spark your creativity!

Sparking Your Creativity

by Linda Rodriguez

As an artist and creative person, I can experience times when I reach down for ideas, for creative excitement, for images, and come up temporarily empty. These have usually been times that have combined lots of creative overwork and lots of business work—taxes, promotion, correspondence, contracts, freelance editing, etc. This kind of emptiness and feeling creatively dry can be terrifying, but I’m now used to it, and I know what to do to refill the well and spark new creativity. In these circumstances, it’s necessary to take time to do things to build up new creativity energy within you. So here are ten ideas to get you started.

Journal Writing—This is the backbone of the creative life, especially for writers. I’m not necessarily talking about a daily diary. This is a notebook in which you write about what you see and hear, turning it into dialogue or sensory description. This is where you can work with writing prompts from books, workshops, tapes, and DVDs, your version of the pianist’s daily scales. Set a kitchen timer for a few minutes and do some freewriting to unload some of the chattering of your surface mind and move into deeper ideas.

Read Poetry—I’m a poet, as well as a novelist, but I’ve been surprised by how many commercially successful novelists I’ve met who say they regularly or occasionally read poetry as a springboard for their writing. It actually makes great sense because the poet deals in imagery, which is the language of the right (creative) brain.  I know that, whenever I read poetry, it sets my mind whirling with tons of ideas and images. I have come up with ideas for entire novels from reading a poem.

Read Something Very Different for You—If you always read and write poetry, check out a popular novel. If you’re a mystery reader, take a look at what science fiction writers are coming up with. If you read and write literary fiction, pick up a romance novel. Jog your mind from its habitual ruts of thinking and imagining. Stretch out of your comfort zone. Even if you don’t like what you read, it should still shake up your mind enough to start generating ideas, images, and characters.

Singlehanded Brainstorming—Most of us have been taught how to do and forced to sit through group brainstorming sessions before. Take those techniques and a sheet of paper with pen (or iPad or laptop), get comfortable, set a timer again, and start throwing out ideas at top speed. Same rules as with the group process. You can’t disqualify any idea, no matter how unrealistic. You want to generate as many ideas as you can as quickly as you can. Just list them down the page—or even use a voice recorder to capture them.  After the timer goes off, you can go down the list considering the possibilities you’ve listed. Look for possibilities to combine aspects of ideas. Write down any new ideas that get sparked by your consideration of the ideas already down on the page. Choose one or two promising (or least abhorrent) ideas and freewrite about them in your journal.

Making Lists—I love listmaking. Make lists of ideas, of characters, of backgrounds you’d like to use someday, of isolated bits of dialogue or description, of actions you’d like to see a character to take. My favorite is to write a list of scenes I’d like to read—exciting scenes, action-filled scenes, emotional scenes, surprising scenes, suspenseful scenes. They don’t have to have anything to do with any project you’re working on or any character you are writing or have written. They just need to be scenes you’d love to read—because scenes you’d love to read are scenes you’d love to write.

Visit a Museum, Gallery, Play, Film, Concert—We writers live and breathe words. Sometimes we need to get out of our heads and see or hear art that isn’t primarily word-based. It can be especially fruitful to go to a film in a language you don’t understand or an art exhibit of a kind you know nothing about. When we have no words to use to explain or understand what we’re seeing, our brains are kicked into another mode of functioning that can become quite generative. Wander around a gallery or museum and take in the colors and shapes. Sit in a concert hall or movie theater and let the music or film engulf you completely, washing through your brain. Come out seeing or hearing in a slightly different mode.

Draw, Paint, Knit, Spin, Sew—Even better than looking at art is making it. Sink your hands into clay or fiber. Splash ten different colors next to each other, taking note of the changes each new color creates. Feel the texture of the fabric, thread, yarn, fiber as you work with it to make something new. Take a penciled line and see what you can create with it. All of this also kicks in the right brain, the imagistic, creative part of us. Stay in beginner mind without worrying how “good” your art will be. This is—and should be—play, completely carefree and innocent.

Go for a Walk—Physical exercise is always a good thing for us sedentary word slugs, but even more important than its many health benefits are the creative benefits of simply moving your body through space. As you move around, your brain begins to get unstuck and to move, as well. A nice, long walk outdoors (preferably in scenic surroundings) can often jumpstart the solution to a creative dry spell. Sometimes a sterile period can arise from being overstressed. Walks are one of the best ways to counter such stress and relax the mind and body.

Arrange Flowers/Rearrange Some Belongings—In the Chinese art of feng shui, rearranging 27 items will start stuck soul energy flowing again. Moving belongings into new configurations, trying for a more pleasing pattern, has long been a cure for the blues and the blahs. We are pattern-recognizing and pattern-creating organisms. To change the habitual patterns that surround us charges us with new energy.  A smaller, simpler version of this is to gather or buy some flowers and assemble them into flower arrangements that please our aesthetic sensibilities. Spending a little time in creating pleasing, artistic arrangements of flowers or accessories will provide a creative boost to stuck energies.

Go to Lunch with a Creative Friend or Two—Everyone has one or more friends or acquaintances who are creative sparklers. Like the child’s fireworks favorite, they give off showers of sparks, or creative ideas, constantly. They are positive and upbeat and always focused on possibilities. Spending some time with them will leave you filled with ideas, energy, and excitement. It’s always worthwhile to give them a call and set up a relaxed lunch in a nice place. Rather than complain about how dry and sterile things are for you right at the moment, ask them what’s new with them and what they see as possibilities for the future.  As they take off shooting into the blue yonder, follow them wholeheartedly and build on all their ideas. You’ll walk away at the end of lunch with a big smile on your face and a bunch of ideas bubbling in your unconscious. Cherish these friends, even if they are unrealistic and immature. Their wild, creative energy is invaluable when your own has temporarily deserted you.

One or more of these ten methods should start your creative powers working once again. I’ve never had to go through more than a couple of these at a time to get my creative mojo stirring. Post this list near your desk, and don’t spend any time or energy bewailing it when a creative dry spell hits. Just reach for this and try whichever of these ideas looks most appealing at the time. If the first doesn’t completely prime your creative pump, move to another of them. Creativity never leaves, but sometimes it needs a spark to start the engine running again. So spark your creativity!

Sparking Your Creativity

by Linda Rodriguez

As an artist and creative person, I can experience times when I reach down for ideas, for creative excitement, for images, and come up temporarily empty. These have usually been times that have combined lots of creative overwork and lots of business work—taxes, promotion, correspondence, contracts, freelance editing, etc. This kind of emptiness and feeling creatively dry can be terrifying, but I’m now used to it, and I know what to do to refill the well and spark new creativity. In these circumstances, it’s necessary to take time to do things to build up new creativity energy within you. So here are ten ideas to get you started.

 Journal Writing—This is the backbone of the creative life, especially for writers. I’m not necessarily talking about a daily diary. This is a notebook in which you write about what you see and hear, turning it into dialogue or sensory description. This is where you can work with writing prompts from books, workshops, tapes, and DVDs, your version of the pianist’s daily scales. Set a kitchen timer for a few minutes and do some freewriting to unload some of the chattering of your surface mind and move into deeper ideas.

Read Poetry—I’m a poet, as well as a novelist, but I’ve been surprised by how many commercially successful novelists I’ve met who say they regularly or occasionally read poetry as a springboard for their writing. It actually makes great sense because the poet deals in imagery, which is the language of the right (creative) brain.  I know that, whenever I read poetry, it sets my mind whirling with tons of ideas and images. I have come up with ideas for entire novels from reading a poem.

Read Something Very Different for You—If you always read and write poetry, check out a popular novel. If you’re a mystery reader, take a look at what science fiction writers are coming up with. If you read and write literary fiction, pick up a romance novel. Jog your mind from its habitual ruts of thinking and imagining. Stretch out of your comfort zone. Even if you don’t like what you read, it should still shake up your mind enough to start generating ideas, images, and characters.

Singlehanded Brainstorming—Most of us have been taught how to do and forced to sit through group brainstorming sessions before. Take those techniques and a sheet of paper with pen (or iPad or laptop), get comfortable, set a timer again, and start throwing out ideas at top speed. Same rules as with the group process. You can’t disqualify any idea, no matter how unrealistic. You want to generate as many ideas as you can as quickly as you can. Just list them down the page—or even use a voice recorder to capture them.  After the timer goes off, you can go down the list considering the possibilities you’ve listed. Look for possibilities to combine aspects of ideas. Write down any new ideas that get sparked by your consideration of the ideas already down on the page. Choose one or two promising (or least abhorrent) ideas and freewrite about them in your journal.

Making Lists—I love listmaking. Make lists of ideas, of characters, of backgrounds you’d like to use someday, of isolated bits of dialogue or description, of actions you’d like to see a character to take. My favorite is to write a list of scenes I’d like to read—exciting scenes, action-filled scenes, emotional scenes, surprising scenes, suspenseful scenes. They don’t have to have anything to do with any project you’re working on or any character you are writing or have written. They just need to be scenes you’d love to read—because scenes you’d love to read are scenes you’d love to write.

Visit a Museum, Gallery, Play, Film, Concert—We writers live and breathe words. Sometimes we need to get out of our heads and see or hear art that isn’t primarily word-based. It can be especially fruitful to go to a film in a language you don’t understand or an art exhibit of a kind you know nothing about. When we have no words to use to explain or understand what we’re seeing, our brains are kicked into another mode of functioning that can become quite generative. Wander around a gallery or museum and take in the colors and shapes. Sit in a concert hall or movie theater and let the music or film engulf you completely, washing through your brain. Come out seeing or hearing in a slightly different mode.

Draw, Paint, Knit, Spin, Sew—Even better than looking at art is making it. Sink your hands into clay or fiber. Splash ten different colors next to each other, taking note of the changes each new color creates. Feel the texture of the fabric, thread, yarn, fiber as you work with it to make something new. Take a penciled line and see what you can create with it. All of this also kicks in the right brain, the imagistic, creative part of us. Stay in beginner mind without worrying how “good” your art will be. This is—and should be—play, completely carefree and innocent.

Go for a Walk—Physical exercise is always a good thing for us sedentary word slugs, but even more important than its many health benefits are the creative benefits of simply moving your body through space. As you move around, your brain begins to get unstuck and to move, as well. A nice, long walk outdoors (preferably in scenic surroundings) can often jumpstart the solution to a creative dry spell. Sometimes a sterile period can arise from being overstressed. Walks are one of the best ways to counter such stress and relax the mind and body.

Arrange Flowers/Rearrange Some Belongings—In the Chinese art of feng shui, rearranging 27 items will start stuck soul energy flowing again. Moving belongings into new configurations, trying for a more pleasing pattern, has long been a cure for the blues and the blahs. We are pattern-recognizing and pattern-creating organisms. To change the habitual patterns that surround us charges us with new energy.  A smaller, simpler version of this is to gather or buy some flowers and assemble them into flower arrangements that please our aesthetic sensibilities. Spending a little time in creating pleasing, artistic arrangements of flowers or accessories will provide a creative boost to stuck energies.

Go to Lunch with a Creative Friend or Two—Everyone has one or more friends or acquaintances who are creative sparklers. Like the child’s fireworks favorite, they give off showers of sparks, or creative ideas, constantly. They are positive and upbeat and always focused on possibilities. Spending some time with them will leave you filled with ideas, energy, and excitement. It’s always worthwhile to give them a call and set up a relaxed lunch in a nice place. Rather than complain about how dry and sterile things are for you right at the moment, ask them what’s new with them and what they see as possibilities for the future.  As they take off shooting into the blue yonder, follow them wholeheartedly and build on all their ideas. You’ll walk away at the end of lunch with a big smile on your face and a bunch of ideas bubbling in your unconscious. Cherish these friends, even if they are unrealistic and immature. Their wild, creative energy is invaluable when your own has temporarily deserted you.

One or more of these ten methods should start your creative powers working once again. I’ve never had to go through more than a couple of these at a time to get my creative mojo stirring. Post this list near your desk, and don’t spend any time or energy bewailing it when a creative dry spell hits. Just reach for this and try whichever of these ideas looks most appealing at the time. If the first doesn’t completely prime your creative pump, move to another of them. Creativity never leaves, but sometimes it needs a spark to start the engine running again. So spark your creativity!

Linda Rodriguez’s third Skeet Bannion novel, Every Hidden Fear, was a selection of the Las Comadres National Latino Book Club and a Latina Book Club Best Book for 2014. Her second Skeet mystery, Every Broken Trust, was a selection of Las Comadres National Latino Book Club, International Latino Book Award, and a finalist for the Premio Aztlan Literary Prize. Her first Skeet novel, Every Last Secret, won the St. Martin’s/Malice Domestic Best First Traditional Mystery Novel Competition and an International Latino Book Award. Her short story, “The Good Neighbor,” has been optioned for film. Find her on Twitter as @rodriguez_linda, on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/LindaRodriguezWrites, and on her blog http://lindarodriguezwrites.blogspot.com.

Rain and Rainbows

Rain and Rainbows by Debra H. Goldstein

“Rain, Rain, Go Away. Come again another day.”  If this was California or during a summer draught in Alabama, this refrain would be the last thing coming out of my mouth.  Right now, the storms have been so intense we are in a state far from water rationing.  Sadly, during the past few weeks, tornados and floods have destroyed homes, possessions, and people.  Thunder, lightning, and sheering winds have sent people to their shelters, caused dogs to run amuck in fear, and knocked out power sources with regularity. The rain has pummeled everything.

There have been a few high points.  Gardens are still lush and green.  Flowers, not realizing that this is winter, are blooming early and those that have blossomed are retaining their beauty.  Kids are loving the abundance of puddles to jump in.

At times, my mood reflects the rain. Somber, dark, unrelenting but then there are days that the rain is constant, but soft, and I find myself curled in a chair reading, peaceful, sleepy and content.  My writing reflects the difference in these days.  The rain keeps me indoors so I am keeping my resolution of writing regularly, but in reading it back, I see the impact of the weather.  A gloomy short story, a tale with a ray of sunshine. 

I want the rain to be replaced by a rainbow, but it probably won’t happen.  At least, not in the real world, but isn’t it wonderful that as a writer we can make it happen in the world we are creating?

My wish for you this week – rainbows.