Creative Writing

Brainpickings has a post on The Ravenous Brain by Daniel Bor. It sounds like a fascinating read.

The arts, too, generate their richness and some of their aesthetic appeal from patterns. Music is the most obvious sphere where structures are appealing — little phrases that are repeated, raised a key, or reversed can sound utterly beguiling. This musical beauty directly relates to the mathematical relation between notes and the overall logical regularities formed. Some composers, such as Bach, made this connection relatively explicit, at least in certain pieces, which are just as much mathematical and logical puzzles as beautiful musical works.

But certainly patterns are just as important in the visual arts as in music. Generating interesting connections between disparate subjects is what makes art so fascinating to create and to view, precisely because we are forced to contemplate a new, higher pattern that binds lower ones together.

I wonder what that says about rhetoric, especially in a time (such as now) when rhetoric may be still more written than oral/visual.

I mentioned a way to jumpstart your creativity, 31 postcards with original poetry on them sent to 31 people.

I just got my list.

The final sign up day, officially, is July 25. I think it’s a great idea and hope that you will join us.

Since not everyone has signed up yet, some lists are not complete. So if you sign up now, I might get to send you a piece of original poetry.

I do not promise that what I send will be first rate, but I promise to send it. And just imagine the fun of opening your mailbox and receiving–not just bills and flyers, but a handwritten postcard with a piece of original poetry composed just for the purpose of sending it on to you!

Here’s a first shot at a first poem:
Postcards and poetry
really related?
Strangers staging stories
in writing and reading,
sharing shenanigans
for the fun of feasting
on a cornucopia of conversations.

Just because I really like the alliterative quality of OE verse.

You Are Your Words from the American Heritage Dictionary, lets you upload both a picture of yourself and words you have written. Then, using your words and picture, it combines the two to create a piece of rhetoric that is visual… It uses your words to re-create your photograph.

Very cool idea.

Send 31 postcards, with original poetry–written by you, for the month of August.

Gather 30 postcards from book stores, thrift shops, online, drug stores, antique shops, museums, gift shops…or make your own.
Buy some stamps. Mailed to U.S. addresses, standard postcards (up to 4-1/4″ x 6″) currently take 32-cent stamps; oversize/undersized cards take 45-cent stamps. (This is an international project, so some cards may require additional postage and extra delivery time.)
Receive (by e-mail) your list of 31 names (including your own) and addresses of participating poets.
Each day in August (best to start the last week of July to allow for delivery time), write an original poem on a postcard and send it to one person on the list, starting with the name that follows yours on the list and moving through the successive names until you’ve sent all your cards.
This is a commitment, so if you sign up, do send poetry postcards.

Found at New Pages Blog, where how to sign up and other important information can be found.

Scientific American has a post, “If we remember more, can we read deeper–and create better?”

Creativity is, at some level, about linking disparate facts and ideas and drawing connections between notions that previously didn’t go together. For that to happen, a human mind has to have raw material to work with.
…
memory isn’t just for remembering; it is also—and centrally—for creating.
…
At the end, you need that base, those building blocks that memory offers, even if alone, the blocks are not of much use. … It’s up to us to understand how to apply what we’ve memorized, what we’ve learned, all the knowledge we’ve stored, up to us to know what to make with the disparate blocks of memory.

So, one thing we can do for our creative writing students, is give them more to remember, more experiences, more memories.

Yes, it may be self-promotion (talking to you, @readywriting), but it is great stuff, nonetheless.

Garbanzo is coming out in author editions this week. I am so excited! I get to be one of those to receive one of the 304 and 6/10s books. Yes, they made a 6/10s book (or thereabouts). I wanted it, but it is going into museum space.

You should definitely go surf the website and read at the parent website, too.

Poet biographies, a disclaimer:

Biographies will be odd, authentic, but obscure. The assignment was to take a list of words and create a community biography of sorts.

Here is mine:

Garbanzo is another entry into the canon of the Quiescence series of chapbooks – hand-created books that are rivet bound, silk bookmarked, screen-printed dust-jacketed, and individually numbered. There are, without a doubt, no other books being created in this way, anywhere, within a solar system or three.

–Marc Moorash, editor

From Seraphemera Books

Picture from Garbanzoganda.

A handmade poetry journal is being published with two of my poems in it. The journal’s home page is here.

One celebrates my father’s attempts to recover his life after a massive stroke.

One laments a colleague’s passing (suddenly and unexpectedly) from cancer last year.

The published works will be in the mail for author copies this week.

Other notes from The Progress Principle.

“even in tough circumstances, it makes sense to take strategic measures to keep their workers creatively and productively engaged” (Amabile and Kramer 1118 of 4703).

creativity and productivity lead to positive inner work life and positive inner work life leads to creativity and productivity (aka the progress loop) (1153 of 4703)

“design each job so that… people gain knowledge about the results of their effort” (1383 of 4703) because feedback is good and feedback from the work itself is best

Progress is the most important positive trigger.
If you feel that you are making progress, you are happier about the work and so make more progress.

Video games feature progress bars… (1454 of 4703)…
What if classes had progress bars? You would have to know approximately how many assignments there were.

Work is “simply part of being human” (1486 of 4703).

“The effect of setbacks on emotions is stronger than the effect of progress. … [T]he effect of setbacks is not only opposite… it is greater. The power of setbacks to diminish happiness is more than twice as strong as the power of progress to boost happiness.
…
Small losses can overwhelm small wins” (1531 of 4703).
I thought they said earlier that progress was the strongest principle. Why would setbacks overwhelm progress?

“Consistent daily progress by individual employees fuels both the success of the organization and the quality of those employees’ inner work lives” (1671 of 4703).

“Having clear goals orients people as they approach any job” (1704 of 4703).

Progress is first (of the positives?).

Catalysts (support) are second. Here is the list of what teachers should be doing:
1. Setting clear goals.
2. Allowing autonomy.
3. Providing resources.
4. Giving enough time–but not too much.
5. Help with the work.
6. Learning from problems and successes.
7. Allowing ideas to flow. (1776 of 4703)

Something for administrators to consider:
“Three main climate forces shape the specific catalyst and inhibitor events that occur inside an organization” (1818 of 4703)
consideration for people and their ideas
coordination
communication (1826)

Sometimes administration needs a clue bat. Just saying.

Nourishers:
1. respect (2237 of 4703)
2. encouragement
3. emotional support
4. affiliation

“show the team how to learn from failure” (2769 of 4703)
This is something that I would like to learn how to do better. I think it is something that Mikee does well.