Reads for Writers: inGenius: A Crash Course on Creativity by Tina Seelig

From Kate’s Writing Crate…

          Creativity is essential for writers. In her book inGenious: A Crash Course on Creativity, Tina Seelig gives readers or, as she calls artists of all types, noticers great insights including:

“Mastering the ability to reframe problems is an important tool for increasing your imagination because it unlocks a vast array of solutions.” (page 19)

“You, too, can spark a revolution by looking at the problems you face from different perspectives.” (page 23)

“Connecting unexpected people, places, objects, and ideas provides a huge boost to your imagination. You can practice this skill by using provocative metaphors, interacting with those outside your normal circles, building on existing ideas, and finding inspiration in unlikely places.” (page 46)

“Scientists and artists of all types are the world “noticers.” They are trained to pay attention and to communicate what they see and experience to the rest of us.” (page 75)

“…the most salient thing [the students] learned from this intense experience is that by opening your eyes, paying attention, and asking a lots of questions, there are remarkable things to see around every corner.” (page 76)

“Focused observation is a powerful way to acquire valuable knowledge about the world. That knowledge is the starting point for all your creative endeavors because it provides rich fuel for your imagination.” (page 32-83)

“If you live and work in an environment that is stimulating, then your mind is open to fresh, new ideas.” (page 102)

“I eventually realized I that I putting off writing on purpose. It was creative procrastination!” (page 105)

          However, my favorite part of this book is the opening chapter discussing the “hardest exam in the world. It required both a breadth of knowledge and a healthy dose of imagination.” (page 4)

          It’s a “…‘one-word exam.’ The Essay, as it was called, was both anticipated and feared by applicants. They each flipped over a piece of paper at the same time to reveal a single word...The challenge was to craft an essay in three hours inspired by that single word.”  (page 3)

          “…This challenge reinforces the fact that everything—every single word—provides an opportunity to leverage what you know to stretch your imagination.” (page 3)

          What a great exam—especially for writers! I’m going to randomly open a dictionary with my eyes closed and point to a word. Then I am going to write an essay in three hours. Why not? I’ll be writing for hours this week in my notebook. I may as well use a writing prompt that will challenge me like this one.

          Take the one-word test. See what you know and notice.

Word count for the week of May 21-27 was 11,431.

My Personal Writing Class--Songwriting

From Kate’s Writing Crate…

          Songwriting without Boundaries: Lyric Writing Exercises for Finding Your Voice by Pat Pattison is set up as a two-month class. I’m three weeks in and I highly recommend it.

The first two weeks are timed writing exercises. Each day, one exercise lasts for 10 minutes, one for five minutes, and one for 90 seconds. In less than 17 minutes, you can meet your daily writing goal—a fantastic feeling—and it’s fun! It’s also easy to double up so you won’t fall behind when you have a busy day planned.

          The point of the exercises is to put your five senses to work, along with body and motion, when writing about objects or characters. You can read other writers’ descriptions for inspiration before you write or you can read them after you write to see which senses were stronger for them.

          The exercises seem easy. For example: describe an elevator (what writing), a sailor (who writing), six in the morning (when writing), a park bench in the city (where writing). It’s capturing all your senses in your answers that is hard. The pressure of a timer, especially one that ticks, helps squeeze words out.

          If you have kids old enough to write, you can include them in this class. Look at Taylor Swift—songs she wrote in her early teens became hits. You never know. Plus it’s fast and fun!

          Week 3 moves on to metaphors.

Metaphors have a way of holding the most truth in the least space.

–Orson Scott Card

          After a discussion of different types of metaphors on pages 49-51, you start with Adjective-Noun Collisions. On Day 1, the adjectives and words are given to you in the ten 90-second exercises. (example: Lonely Moonlight) On Day 2, you are given the adjectives; you get to choose the nouns. (example: Boastful _____) Day 3 you are given the nouns and have to provide the adjectives. (example: ______ cottage)

          The more you do these exercises, the more writing you can fit into the 90 seconds.

          Even if you aren’t planning on writing songs, these exercises would be useful to complete when you are having a hard time starting your writing day. Three or four exercises will jump start your brain.

          Writing is writing. Trying different genres gives you a new perspective—always a good thing for writers!

A Wintry Writing Prompt For Kids

From Cheryl's Writing Crate

In addition to my own love of writing, I'm also passionate about helping kids get creative in some way, shape or form in the written word.  For the past six years I've been the adviser of our middle school's newspaper club.  Our paper has grown leaps and bounds since we started producing it 6 years ago, and our student staff grew from 10 to 28.  

Not only do we publish our 16-page color paper four times a year, we are very fortunate to have it printed through a local newspaper, therefore giving our students a real journalism experience on authentic newspaper.  There's truly nothing like getting black newspaper ink all over your fingers when holding this student masterpiece each time it's published!

The student staff on our paper, The Mariners' Catch, participate in many different creative writing tasks each month to help build on their writing skills as well as stretch their imaginations.

With the holidays now in full swing, we found a jolly exercise involving snowmen that everyone really enjoyed.

The students all took turns reading the following book, Snowmen at Night, and then they brainstormed a list of all the things the snowmen did at night. They wrote 3 paragraphs, developing the characters in the first, describing the snowman's activity and a problem faced in the second and solving the problem in the third. The wide mix of ideas that stemmed from this project was fantastic, and we all voted for our top three stories at the end.

If you have kids that are looking for a creative challenge, you could try something similar and then sit back and be amazed at their wonderful stories.

What favorite writing prompt ritual do you follow to get your creative juices flowing? 

Sandford Lyne Provides a Masterclass

 

From Kate's Writing Crate…

 

As a reader, I always love finding books that appeal to me. As a writer, I am twice as pleased when the authors also provide masterclasses within their books.

        Masterclasses take place when performance artists and musicians work one-on-one with students. Writers don't generally have this option, but I have found some books to be masterclasses for characters, back stories, plots, settings, voice and/or creativity.

 

        As soon as I read a book that immediately gets me writing, I want to share it with every writer I know.

 

Before I go into more detail, I want to stress I am a writer, not a poet. However, I think poets have a lot to teach all writers as they capture minute details and moments in time using gorgeous turns of phrases.

 

Author, poet, and teacher Sandford Lyne believes everyone is a poet so they should start writing poems now. "With courage and honesty you initiate yourself as an artist-seeker, a lifelong learner, a worker in depth, in vertical perceptions, in discovered truths."

 

 

In his book Writing Poetry from the Inside Out: Finding Your Voice Through the Craft of Poetry, Lyne advocates poem-sketching [as] "it is a playful, open-ended approach; it draws upon and uses the wealth of our experiences, provides a vehicle for the specialized intelligence and expressiveness of the emotions, occupies the mind with simple puzzles to solve (the mind enjoys puzzles), and, finally is built on and requires the use of our intuition. And all of this happens in a blink of an eye; simultaneously, naturally, without having to think about it."

 

The key to beginning poem-sketching is to look at the over 50 pages of four-word groups until one grabs your attention. Then write phrases or sentences incorporating those four words. Sounds simple, and it is, and it works.

 

I was hesitant at first thinking I am not a poet. This is not going to work for me…and then I saw four words that inspired me. I flashed back to when I was nine and then a poem poured out of me. It was in rough form, but I worked on it until I was surprised with the satisfaction and joy I felt with my finished poem.

 

Lyne also encourages writers to make up lists of words for more advanced poem-sketching. He gives specific directions for different types of words to include in each four-word grouping to make them powerful, attractive, and inspiring.

 

This is another way for writers to hone their craft. It's crucial to find exact words. To notice specific details, feelings, actions, and surroundings. It forces us to use and expand our observation skills and vocabularies.

 

Then we use our original voices to combine the words into poems. "One function of poem-sketching is to awaken your ability to produce images in words…writing poetry is about playing with words, exploring the possibilities of combining words into sentences and fragments, rearranging lines into finished poems."

 

Lyne notes: "…the happiest, most successful, most fulfilled people I know are the ones who, over time, gave themselves the most permissions—in all areas of their lives…The best writers give themselves the most permissions."

 

Give yourself permission to try poem-sketching. "Along the way, each person on the path of the poem finds his or her own vocabulary, his or her own metaphors for recognizing and naming the experiences."

 

Poem-sketching makes us better writers. It's also fun!

The Beauty of Writing Prompts

From Cheryl's Writing Crate

Writing is so many different things to me.  I have always enjoyed articulating my daily schedule into a written "to do" list.  Organized pagesI  of grocery shopping lists, household improvement lists, personal, professional, and family written goals are truly a part of who I am.

In addition, I crave my sacred, early morning writing time where I can focus on what makes me tick as a writer, therefore feeding my muse with wide-open time slots to journal, work on columns and articles, conduct interviews for articles that I'm writing, work on my novel, or many times just sit and write about a random thought just for the sake of writing.

When I decided that I wanted to take my writing to the next level, I started investigating as many creative and insightful writing books as I could find.  One that I came upon during the recent holidays was The Writer's Book of Matches, and it's truly helping me to change how I look at any ordinary topic by teaching me how to just "let go" and write without any inhibitions.

You'll Love This Book If:

• You need writing inspiration
• You're looking for writing prompts
• You have a case of writer's block
• 
  

The Writer's Book of Matches is packed with hundreds of writing prompts to jump-start your writing! Whether you have a case of writer's block, are looking for writing inspiration for your next story, or want to get back to writing regularly, you'll find tons of creative writing prompts.

The Writer's Book of Matches provides three types of writing prompts. Each prompt details a conflict, revelation, or unusual situation.

The first prompt is called a situation prompt. These types of prompts provide an obvious protagonist who finds himself (or herself) in an unusual or emotionally charged situation.

The second type of prompt is a dialogue prompt in which you have to create the context in which the dialogue is being spoken. This gives you more freedom to create a plot, while at the same time forcing you to deal with character interaction before anything else.

The third type of prompt is an assignment prompt. They present a shared context in which multiple characters find themselves. Your job is to create a situation or conflict for each character given the context. 

My prompt for this morning was:   At exactly midnight on New Year’s Eve you receive an email labeled “Open Immediately.” The really strange thing is that the email is apparently from your future self. What does it say?

I wish I had seen this on New Year's, but it still got me thinking and before I knew it I had written an entire essay.   The book suggests you write your prompts in 500 words or less, which is extremely helpful in helping a writer to hone in and stay detailed without rambling, but many of these writing prompts are quite cathartic in nature, and I'm finding them helpful not only for my writing, but for my own personal life as well.

I hope you'll check this book out if you are looking for similar ways to jump start your creativity, but if you have another book or way that you launch your creativity, please share with us what that is.