Happy Friday, dear loves, and welcome to the Open Mic! Today’s guest post from Juanita Mantz has been rescheduled, but in the meantime you can (and should) check out Juanita’s awesome blog.
A scribble I made in 2005
For now, I’ll open discussion with some questions from Ré (posed months ago when we were first talking about doing a discussion-based Open Mic). I’m using them verbatim from her comment, because I think they’re so spot-on. She asks:
How do you harness the creative impulse when it strikes at an inopportune time? Does the random note or quick sketch get you back into the groove later, or do you sometimes lose it?
Artists, I know you’ve experienced this. Tell us about it!
As always, comments are threaded so you can respond directly to others — and I say, go for it! I’ll chime in sometime during the weekend, but don’t wait for me to get started. Converse!
satsumabug.com | Lisa Hsia 
I always come up with the “greatest ideas” when I’m doing the dishes, taking a shower, driving or taking a nap. By the time I face the blank page on the computer the magic is gone. I tried taking notes but all that is left of that is huge poster board on my dining room wall. I’ve tried recording myself but I don’t like to listen to myself.
So what to do?
Back in November I went to a workshop with Cristina Garcia, she suggested reading poetry. She said to just open a book, read a poem and then write about the line that most stays with you. When we did it in the workshop it was great but I haven’t tried it at home.
I find that what has really worked for me is reading, listening to Ted talks, finding a song that speaks to my characters and most important showing up, sitting down and writing.
There is a great talk by Elizabeth Gilbert about creativity:
Helena, it sounds like you’re doing what I’ve recently realized I should do — prompt myself to work by getting inspired. TED talks are good, music is good, poetry works too — anything that makes me feel awed and energized by human creativity.
One of my other dear friends suggested I watch that Gilbert talk too. Must be time to get around to it. 😉
The random note and the quick sketch don’t usually help me get my mojo back, which really curdles my cheese! While I worked at ‘the horrible place that should not be named’, I actually stifled my creative thoughts, because I couldn’t bare to forget the specifics that made them shine for me. I’d rather not have a creative thought, than to lose it and live with the fact that it evaporated into the ether of my distracted mind.
Lisa — love the scribble!
I love the scribble too, Ré. 🙂 I hope you don’t mind me using your questions for this week’s Mic!
I also love “curdles my cheese.” 🙂 What a vivid image!
How does one go about stifling one’s creative thoughts — is it like plucking out weeds before they’re much bigger than just tiny sprouts?
Oh, of course I don’t mind! Glad to contribute!
I think I heard that phrase on TV somewhere! And loved it! 🙂 I kind of collect odd phrases; if they sound interesting to me I use them no matter how crazy people think I am! I often use Archie Bunker’s “Good night nurse!” in place of another well known four letter word. You should see the looks I’ve gotten when that one escapes my mouth in public!
When an interesting idea started to form in my mind at “that awful place,” I would throw myself into the search for new customers to smile at and lure in. That became my modus operandi after the one time I tried to jot something down on the pad in my pocket, and the manager glared at me because I wasn’t with a customer. I realized that there absolutely wasn’t time for me to do any thinking that didn’t involve selling. At the end of that workday, I vaguely remembered having a lovely idea, but to this day I can’t remember what it was, so I think it’s more like plucking out delicate flower buds before they can bloom! I hated the way I couldn’t concentrate on writing at all while I worked there. Not even at home. My mind had to be free to remember all their ultimately pointless facts.
I love that you collect odd phrases! 🙂 Might as well give them some exercise, no?
I’m glad you’re out of that job. 😐
Creative impulse frequently strikes me at the most inconvenient times! Sometimes I can remember what it is I want to do, other times I have to jot a quick note to myself in my sketchbook.
This might be tangential to your discussion, but I’ve also changed my mindset lately about “creating”. I used to have to prepare myself, and make sure I had hours and hours of free time before I sat down to “create”. Well, that led to about 4 years where I didn’t create ANYTHING, which is not good either.
I don’t have the luxury of hours and hours of uninterrupted time anymore (unless you count when both my husband and daughter are asleep), so whatever I create has to be on a very small scale so I can finish it in a short amount of time (I like to feel that sense of accomplishment). This small sketch usually gets me back in the creative groove because that spurs on other ideas. I find myself looking forward to the next opportunity I get to create!
Lately I have been doing daily sketches of my daughter. I’m rusty and I need to get back in the habit of creating. So, when she is awake, I quickly sketch. Then, when she naps, I go back to them to re-work them, and/or digitally manipulate them to create another piece. It’s my idea of a “2 for 1”. I get 2 pieces of art from one sketch 🙂
I don’t have any of them on my blog yet… (another project for another day) but you can see them via facebook!
Alison, I hear you on creating not needing to happen in big, luxurious, uninterrupted blocks. Erik and I had a conversation about this once, about feeling like we can’t work if all we’ve got is half an hour — and then finally realizing that those half-hours add up! We have to take what we can get, and sometimes, as you say, that can be all that creativity needs to get juicing. 🙂
I am so glad you pointed me toward your evocative sketches on Facebook! When you get them on your blog, may I link them from here? (Or better yet, would you like to do another guest post? :D)
I hope you say yes to one or the other, Alison! I was curious to see them when I first read your comment!
I have a lot of tools for recording the ideas that come when I can’t act on them. I keep pen and paper in my purse always, and by my bed there’s a journal and a light-up pen (though I’m also quite skilled at writing in the dark 😉 ). But like Helena, I find that some of my best ideas come when I’m just not in a position to work: washing dishes, in the car, in the shower! I read somewhere that that might be a right-brain thing, that activities like highway driving stimulate the parts of our brain that make connections and process the world nonlinearly.
The key for me is to return to my quick jottings and sketches as soon as possible after I’ve made them. There have been so many times when I’ve had a quick inspiration, written it down, and then not returned to it until months or years later when the scent was totally cold. I’ll look at the scrap of torn paper with the few cryptic words on it and think, “Damn, what the heck was this all about? I’m sure it was a really good idea, too!”
I so understand that feeling! I made a generic sort of sketch once for a cardigan or a blouse — I’m not a good enough drawer to know the difference after a lot of time has passed. It had a line around the bottom with an arrow pointing from it to an exclamation point. The exclamation point must have referred to an idea so wonderful and novel that it didn’t need words to express it. If only I could remember what it was.
This comment made me laugh. 🙂 For some reason my sketches tend to be a lot more concrete than my notes, so I haven’t had that happen yet with a drawing! But verbal scribbles, yes and plenty!
[…] I loved her first guest post last year and I just jumped with anticipation when she mentioned on another Open Mic that she’d been doing some sketches of her adorable daughter Isabel. Now, two days before […]
I really love poetry, Poetry helps me express my own feelings. I usually write my own poetry in a scratch paper and a small notebook. `,`*;
Take care
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