Wisteria Wars and Creativity in the Time of Covid—by T.K. Thorne

    
         

     Writer, humanist,
          dog-mom, horse servant and cat-slave,
       Lover of solitude
          and the company of good friends,
        New places, new ideas
           and old wisdom.

Most people assume, as a writer, that I'm eating up the hours a little virus has bequeathed to us by WRITING. They would be wrong. Yes, I am working on a novel, but it's in the editing stage. That means I'm calling on some craft skills, but mostly just plain old boring, repetitive checking for errors.
This piece is the first thing I've actually tried to pull from the creativity well, and I have no idea where it will go. But that is okay. I give myself permission to ramble and see if anything worthwhile will arise. (I encourage you to do the same.)  So here we go.

I'm fortunate to live on several acres of property surrounded by beautiful woods. Our nearest neighbors are cows. For the ten years before we moved here, I lived in the city, and tried to grow on a tiny patch of land what I felt was the most gorgeous of plants—a wisteria vine. For whatever reason, the one I planted with hopes of it gracefully climbing the crosshatch wood panel on the side of my front porch and spilling grape-like clusters of blossoms—never bloomed. When we moved, I dug up a piece of the root and planted it in my front yard, determined to keep trying. The ground was so hard, I ended up cutting off most of the taproot and throwing a small piece of it into the woods on the side of my house.

Thirty years later, that little piece of discarded taproot has been . . . successful.  That is like saying a virus replicates. It did bloom, draping glorious purple curtains from the trees.

At first I told it, "Okay, as long as you stay on that side of the path." It didn't. Then, I rationalized, as long as it stayed behind the fence in the backyard. (I didn't actually go in my backyard very much, being busy with life stuff.)  But I looked one day after covid-19 hit, and it had eaten over half of the back yard.  I couldn't even walk to the fence line. Two huge trees went down, strangled, and too close to the house.

It was time for war.

This engagement, like those in the Middle East, will never end. Wisteria sends out shoots underground and periodically forms nodes that may change the direction or shoot out its own horizontal and/or vertical roots, so each section can survive independently and pop up anywhere.  Of course, I have the most pernicious variety, the Chinese kind that takes over the world (challenging even kudzu, which fortunately, hasn't found my house yet.)

My first priority was to save the trees near the house. The vines were so thick at the base, no clippers would suffice. I girded myself with a baby chainsaw and determination. It hurt to cut into those old, twisty vines, to destroy something so beautiful, but the trees were more important. I imagined that with each cut, the tree could feel the release from the vine's embrace, the reprieve.  I was taking life, but I was giving it too.

I sprayed the growth in the yard and pulled up (some of) the root systems.  If you want a mindless, exhausting, frustrating, impossible task—pull up established wisteria roots. It will take your mind off anything, even a pandemic.

One side benefit of the fallen trees was that a little more light found its way into the yard, and I decided to try growing vegetables. Another feature of my backyard is an old fashion clothesline with rusty steel posts. Periodically over the past decades, I've thought we should take them down as they are eyesores, but another part of me (the part that worried what young girls with flat stomachs would do during the famine) worried that we would have a pandemic one day or some kind of disaster that would require actually hanging clothes out to dry, so I left them, as well as the abandoned rabbit hutch in the far corner.  We would be ready, if not attractively landscaped.  And worse case scenario, maybe the hutch, in a pinch, would hold chickens.

I thought my creative well was dry, but looking at those old steel posts, the pile of wisteria roots, the vines I had pulled up and cut down, and a package of bean seeds that has been sitting in a drawer for a few years, something started stirring. Beans need something to climb.  One of the fallen trees had taken out actual wire lines of the clothesline, but the poles were set in cement. They will be there when I am dust. The pole surface might be too slick for a bean to be able to curl up, but maybe—
And so, as a product of WWI (Wisteria Wars Episode I) and covid-19, I found that the outlet for creativity isn't always words on a page. If my beans grow, they will be beautiful and feed me, and if they don't, I will at least have a couple of funky art pieces in the backyard.

Foreground: Metal pole with wisteria roots and vines. Background logs from tree felled by wisteria, the carcass of another felled tree, and old rabbit hutch.

T.K. is a retired police captain who writes books, which, like this blog, roam wherever her interest and imagination take her.  Want a heads up on news about her writing and adventures (and receive two free short stories)? Click on image below.  Thanks for stopping by!

Fifteen Minutes

by Bethany Maines

As I’ve mentioned in a previous post, this year is all about trying new things for me. From submitting to contests and magazines to trying different kinds of writing I’m attempting to push myself into growth. I truly want to understand not just what makes good writing, but how to construct a story. One of the things I’ve discovered is that forcing boundaries onto a work can actually improve the work itself.  From outlawing specific words (swear words, oh how I miss you!) in some pieces to declaring that certain elements must be included (there has to be a dog, OK?) by working against/with a constraint it forces creativity. But one boundary that I consistently seem to be rubbing up against these days is time—I don’t have enough. Particularly since the birth of my daughter, the effort to carve out extended periods of time to be creative is monumental.

I have managed in some cases to do this by ignoring other areas of my life (Dishes? What dirty dishes?) or through the understanding of my husband who swoops in and carts our kid off while I’m furiously typing up some scene or another.  But on many days, there is no “vast, unbroken slab of time.” Which is why I found this article about What You Can Achieve in 15-Minute Bursts of Creativity to be an interesting articulation about the approach I’ve developed. Working on a project in smaller chunks does allow the project to always stay fresh in my mind and churning away in my subconscious. It also forces me to stop waiting for the perfect time to think or do something. I had not realized that the “perfect time” was such an illusion or that I clung to the illusion so much until I switched to a “do it now” approach. The accumulation of tiny chunks of time allows for a productivity that would have seemed impossible to me before the process was forced on me. This bit by bit approach does work. It may be a constraint I didn’t want, but like many of the other boundaries, it has forced me to come up with creative solutions that I might not have otherwise discovered.

So if you’re out there despairing of finding the few hours you want to do something – don’t give up.  Take your fifteen minutes and do the thing (whatever the thing is) now. It doesn’t have to be perfect. You can undo half of it tomorrow if you like, but it’s still more than you had before.

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Check out the most recent accumulation of fifteen minutes. (Cover reveal coming in September!!)

The Second Shot:A drunken mistake in college cost US Marshall Maxwell Ames the love of Dominique Deveraux. Six years later, he’s determined to fix the slip-up, but there’s just one tiny problem – someone wants the Deveraux family dead. Now Max must make sure that the only one getting a second shot at Dominique is him.

Join my mailing list to be alerted when additional platforms become available or pre-order now on Apple

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Bethany Maines is the award-winning author of the Carrie Mae Mystery Series, San Juan Islands Mysteries, Shark Santoyo Crime Series, and numerous short stories. When she's not traveling to exotic lands, or kicking some serious butt with her black belt in karate, she can be found chasing her daughter or glued to the computer working on her next novel. You can also catch up with her on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and BookBub.

Einstein, Oz, and Ms. Poppins by T.K. Thorne

Writer, humanist,

          dog-mom, horse servant and cat-slave,

       Lover of solitude

          and the company of good friends,

        New places, new ideas

           and old wisdom.






This glorious spring, scientists finally took a "real" picture of a black hole. All the ones we've been seeing have been artists' renditions because black holes are really not visible. They swallow light. Creative astrophyicists used a multiple array of telescopes hooked together to get an image of light bending around the massive gravity pit, just as Einstein predicted!

Einstein was right about so many things—space/time, gravity, quantum physics, even a big something scientists of his day scoffed at and he decided he was wrong about—the cosmological constant. Okay, he was a little off, but the concept was not, and modern physics has gone back to it. Albert used math, but first he used something we all have and think too little of—imagination.

Einstein visualized what-if's.  What if I could ride on a wave of light? What if I were inside a plunging elevator? All in his mind.

“The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.”—Albert Einsten

It makes you wonder if we are so busy stuffing knowledge into children, we neglecting to teach them to use their imagination. But Children are born with creative genius. The better question is, what are we teaching them that stiffles that creative thinking and problem solving?

"Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution."—Einstein

I'm not going to admit how old I was when I finally accepted that I would never be able to coss the Deadly Desert and find Oz. I wept, believing that I had lost something precious and irreplaceable.

But I was wrong. 

What was the Deadly Desert really, but that pesky voice that says, "No you can't," or "That's impossible."

 If anyone ever told Einstein it was impossible to ride a beam of light, it's an awfully good thing that he didn't listen. And neither did the scientists who took a picture of nothing. Maybe they both listened, instead, to Mary Poppins, who said:

"Everything is possible, even the impossible."

T.K. Thorne’s childhood passion for storytelling deepened when she became a police officer in Birmingham, Alabama.  “It was a crash course in life and what motivated and mattered to people.” In her newest novel, HOUSE OF ROSE, murder and mayhem mix with a little magic when a police officer discovers she’s a witch. 

Both her award-winning debut historical novels, NOAH’S WIFE and ANGELS AT THE GATE, tell the stories of unknown women in famous biblical tales—the wife of Noah and the wife of Lot. Her first non-fiction book, LAST CHANCE FOR JUSTICE, the inside story of the investigation and trials of the 1963 Birmingham church bombing, was featured on the New York Post’s “Books You Should Be Reading” list. 

T.K. loves traveling and speaking about her books and life lessons. She writes at her mountaintop home near Birmingham, often with two dogs and a cat vying for her lap. 

 More info at TKThorne.com. Join her private newsletter email list and receive a two free short stories at “TK’s Korner.”

Creativity--Where Does It Come From? by T.K. Thorne

   

 

      Writer, humanist,
          dog-mom, horse servant and cat-slave,
       Lover of solitude
          and the company of good friends,
        New places, new ideas
           and old wisdom.

To be a writer requires the ability to tap into creativity. It is the sine quo non, the foundation of  being novelist or a poet. This is not to denigrate the years of learning and work that go into the writing craft. But without the essence of story, craft and skill are tools without a job. 

What is creativity?  How does it work? How do we turn it on? 

Photo by Praveesh Palakeel on Unsplash

Let’s start with what it is. According to the dictionary, creativity is originality, progressiveness or imagination, more specifically, the ability to “transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns, relationships, or the like, and to create meaningful new ideas, forms, methods, interpretations.” 

Scientists like Dr. George Land, who has spent his career investigating the enhancement of creativity performance, have determined that there are two kinds of thinking. One he calls divergent and the other is convergent. Divergent thinking is when our brain is coming up with new possibilities. Convergent thinking is where the brain is making a judgment, testing, criticizing and evaluating. Although the two sides of our brains (left and right) have specialized areas that contribute to these types of thinking, much more of the whole brain is involved when a person is using their imagination than when using convergent thinking or analyzing. 

Louis R. Mobley says creativity can definitely be taught and the key is asking radically different questions in a non-linear way. He also suggests that self-knowledge, giving yourself permission to be wrong, and hanging around with creative thinkers are important elements or learning to be creative. 

What kind of specific things can writers do to stimulate divergent or creative thinking and get the whole brain engaged? Here’s a partial list:

• Bubble mapping

• Creating artwork

• Maintaining a journal

• Subject mapping

• Devoting some time to meditation and thinking

• Building lists of questions

All these activities can trigger divergent thinking. What works for one person might not for another and vice versa.

Photo by Praveesh Palakeel on Unsplash

For me, oddly, it’s being in a car for extended periods of time, such as driving on the Interstate. I go into a “zone” where my imagination creates scenes, and characters talk to each other. 

Where did that come from?

When I was a patrol officer on the late shift--yes, sometimes all hell would break out--but often there were long, boring hours of patrol. I learned to let part of my brain be observing what I was seeing out the window while the other part was writing a novel.

Those days are long gone, and I don't drive that much anymore.  Can't write a novel based on trips to the grocery store. So I'm trying to create that zone state when I walk, but, like "falling" asleep, it doesn't happen with willpower. You can't "make" yourself fall asleep. You can only create the circumstances that make it more likely and "let go" of activities and thoughts that create an anti-sleep environment. Then sleep happens. 

It's the same with daydreaming or being in a creative state and involves giving the mind permission to wander, a kind of “letting go” that doesn’t put requirements on what I am thinking, just a repetitive nudge in the direction of my current story. Random thoughts can splatter the bubble, but often, if I bring my mind gently back on track--like returning focus to breath in meditation--valuable things happen. 

Do you have a method of getting into the creative zone? I'd love to hear from you.

T.K. has written two award-winning historical novels, NOAH'S WIFE and ANGELS AT THE GATE, filling in the untold backstories of extraordinary unnamed women—the wives of Noah and Lot—in two of the world’s most famous sagas. The New York Post’s “Books You Should Be Reading” list featured her first non-fiction book, LAST CHANCE FOR JUSTICE, which details the investigators’ behind-the-scenes stories of the 1963 Birmingham church bombing case. 

Her next project is HOUSE OF ROSE, the first of a trilogy in the paranormal-crime genre. She loves traveling and speaking about her books and life lessons. T.K. writes at her mountaintop home near Birmingham, Alabama, often with two dogs and a cat vying for her lap. She blogs about “What Moves Me” on her website, TKThorne.com.  Join her private newsletter email list and receive a two free short stories at “TK’s Korner.”

Writing - A Walk in the Park

At the end of January, I quit my day-job to write full-time. A dream come true. 

 My last day of official employment was on a Friday. I gave myself the weekend to relax and on Monday I plunked my hiney in a chair, stretched my fingers above the keyboard, and wrote.

250 words.

Not good words.

Not terribly alarmed, I grabbed a legal pad and wrote long-hand.

Not good words.

What was wrong with me? This was the DREAM. I had a plan. And that plan included 3,000 words a day.

My brain had other plans.

Dratted brain.

The plan: I would be one of those SUPER-prolific authors.

“No, no,” said my brain. “No super for you.”

Good thing I know a way to get around my brain.

There’s all kinds of research about physical activities and brain waves and what stimulates creativity.

For me, walking and creative ideas have always gone together.

Closely.

Now I’m clocking 12,000 to 15,000 steps a day and the book is half-finished (still not according to plan, but so much better than 250 not good words or a blank page).

The other bonus of writing in my head while walking is that my aforementioned hiney is shrinking rather than growing to meet the edges of my chair.

The scenery isn't bad either!

 Look for a new book in a new series soon!

Are you following me on Bookbub? In addition to telling you about fabulous sales, Bookbub will let you know whenever I have a release!

Julie Mulhern is the USA Today bestselling author of The Country Club Murders. 

She is a Kansas City native who grew up on a steady diet of Agatha Christie. She spends her spare time whipping up gourmet meals for her family, working out at the gym and finding new ways to keep her house spotlessly clean--and she's got an active imagination. Truth is--she's an expert at calling for take-out, she grumbles about walking the dog and the dust bunnies under the bed have grown into dust lions.