My sister emailed me about my post, Interconnections, parallels, and epiphany. She got me to thinking about how individually we process things that happen in our personal lives through our writing and artwork. (Aside from teaching yoga, Helen creates paintings and collages.)
Working with people in non-fiction-related activities has fed into my fiction quite a lot. That was especially true when I worked in an office. I don’t mean anything as obvious as basing a character on a real person. I don’t think I’ve ever done that. Working with people helped me understand better how we interact, provided observations about life, and helped me train my ear for how people talk. In fact everything I experience while away from creative activity tends to feed into it. This includes all the trials, lessons, emotions both powerful and subtle, and all other information and events that life sends my way. In creative expression we have the opportunity to turn dross into riches, or one form of richness into another.
I think perhaps creativity is 50% input and 50% output, or maybe it’s a form of breath, inhaling one thing, processing it, then exhaling something different. The inhalation has to take place, or . . . you run out of air, you suffocate. It follows that the exhalation must also take place, which may be why people who experience trauma sometimes wind up with post-traumatic stress (PTSD). They have no opportunity or ability to process, honor, and exhale what that trauma creates inside them. We can get stuck in grief, too, whether it be grief for a loved one who’s died, or something else in our lives that has moved on or faded away.
Of course what we breathe in is critical to the process. But fiction and art are so eclectic, almost anything will feed them, depending on our willingness to shape the product of our creativity to fit what must be expressed.
There are times when we attempt to create but haven’t gone through enough inhalation to sustain the process. I suspect that’s the cause of many blocks we experience, except when they’re caused by our unwillingness to face whatever in us we must face to fully process it as creative product.
Now that I spend more time at home, even a walk or a drive to the grocery store and talking to the clerks or people in line can be part of that inhalation process. The same goes for reading, listening to music, poetry, interacting with neighbors or my pets.
Fiction or art — or any creative activity — is where we can take in the confusion and chaos that the world dishes out and make sense and order out of it. Creativity doesn’t have to be engaged in with the hope of making money. Perhaps in many ways it’s more satisfying when it’s not. Many people enjoy needlework, cooking, gardening, decorating, woodwork, or photography. Even self-grooming and assembling a wardrobe can provide an important outlet. I don’t think of that as vain, I think instead of hunter-gatherer clans in which self-decoration is a primary creative endeavor.
I put my own peculiar stamp on whatever I take in before returning it to the world. We all do. We might as well do so creatively, constructively, lovingly. It could be that we need this as much as the air we breathe.
Another terrific entry. Some writers think they need a lot of exotic experiences to process but we all have a huge amount of experience — any brain activity constitutes experience — and the secret might be not so much having exotic experiences to process as processing mundane experiences in an exotic manner.
Then too, what we experience to begin with depends on what we observe. At any given moment there is more going on around us than we can possible take in and different people absorb different things (well, there’s your point of view) It probably helps, if you write, to be able to pick out interesting things that wouldn’t necessarily be the first thing most people would notice.
I’ve always wanted to get published — and the measure of that is getting paid. But the vast majority of my writing, for fanzines, mini-comics, text adventures, club newsletters, and blogs has not had publication for money as it’s goal in any way. But people who are solely fixated on “publication” will denigrate writing like that. I don’t know why. I also ran in road races with no expectation of even being good, but just for fun, for the experience.
Good post Barbara. I believe that as you say, we absorb everything we experience. Sometimes we’re aware of what we’re involved in and consciously store it; sometimes it just leaves its mark so subtley we don’t even notice.
Here’s to a great new year of great creative experiences!
So many things spark my creativity…just looking at things closely even (like a row of threads on a rack, the inside of a flower, etc) are enough to give me new ideas. Great post.
As usual, very nice post.
I don’t know how anyone could write sans inhaling and exhaling. My first book was so dark and used up so much of me, me, me - I was panting at the end. I happen to love the story despite the catharsis, but maybe that’s why I love it, respect it, and thank it.
My second book is richly infused with my humor. I swear to you, I laugh myself silly - catching my breath for all the joy. xoxo
What a wonderful description of the process of creativity! And for me, when it won’t make sense, I make hash. Or I just leave it lie, leave it alone. Trying to make sense out of everything in life takes away the mystery sometimes.
True, Georganna. I like to go with the flow. When something makes more sense to me after filtering through me into a creative effort, that’s great. If it doesn’t, it keeps the mystery alive. I don’t like to force meaning into anything. I think it has to come of its own accord.
Reenie, exactly. Without inhaling life, there’s nothing to write.
Violetismycolor, I find that creative pursuits help me see the whole world in clearer detail. It’s like the difference between black and white and technicolor.
Susan, I think maybe the best creative work comes from that unconscious place.
Eric, yes, observation is a key. I think too many people (and I get into this mode too) go through life not really looking, not really experiencing, on automatic pilot. It seems that any creative effort helps wake us up, opens us up to the world around us. I know it makes me feel more alive.
[...] Original post by Barbara [...]
Oh gosh Barbara, creativity my very favorite topic. I crave the trance like feel of the active meditation. And then following it, almost a feeling of ‘coming to’ afterwards like from a deep meditation. I can understand the panting Reenie mentions…
Barbara, what you say about being on automatic pilot instead of really being present, makes me think of one of the yoga sutras I was reading today… it is only somewhat related but it was about listening with or without full attention and hearing the truth. Not multi-tasking but just really listening to one person, or could it be be reading or just doing one thing?
It was all about reality without conceptualization, verbal delusion one translation calls it. Well for fiction (and art work) conceptualization can be a good thing, so interesting… Under the five kinds of modifications of the mind; Sutra I.9… I know I am stretching it’s conceptual meaning here but this entry and comments sure makes me think deeper about it.
Creativity just fascinates me, we can each go so far and do so much! It really shows how individual and beautiful every one of us is…is it the exploration of the deep memories of our past and then our individual interpretation?
I wonder if I will make sense to anybody out there, with this comment, LOL! Oh well if I remember to exhale, it won’t matter all that much huh?
Thanks Barbara, love your Blog!
Helen