I have always wanted to publish a daily newspaper, full of the news I would want to read not the actual news. Lots of good stuff like: `Drunk sobers up`, `Poet appointed President of World Bank`, `Lawyer hands back fees after losing case` and so on…
hang small mirrors from the ceiling and also words on strings. let the breeze blow through the room and see how the reflection changes. wriite a poem as you walk through the words and mirrors
Following posts about aiding the creative process. My old life-drawing teacher made an exercise, whereby the model moved to a new position every 20 seconds. The students had to produce a new image for each pose. She went on to say that if you saw someone jump off a ten story building, the truly confident artist would have drawn them before they hit the ground.
I suggest an excercise , whether artist or writer, sit in a cafe or restaurant where you can see people walking past through the window. Sketch, or write a description phrase, for the next person you see each time you look up from the last - as many people as possible over ten minutes. You should end up with a notebook full of material. An excercise in beating hesitancy and building confidence.
Work in your least favorite medium for two weeks, no matter how annoying it may be initially. Again, disequilibrium allows for increased learning and growth, see Exercises in Creativity #1.
-If you paint, take up sculpting
-If you write childrens stories, dive into sociological research
-If you are an actor, take on a character you despise or are indifferent towards
-If you aren’t anything (everyone is something, don’t worry, you can figure it out), consider involving yourself in a creative endeavor, who knows what you’ll discover along the way.
I noticed that Christian Wiman, the current editor of Poetry magazine, has a new book out in stores. How fun would it be to type in all of the poems in that book, and then run a full concordance on the text to extract the complete vocabulary used in it, and then write a few new poems that use only the re-arranged language contained in that book, and then submit those poems to Poetry for consideration.
if you have or can get a good digital recorder, you can do it that way:
carry it around with you and record the various whooshes of water and traffic, clicks and clacks and whacks of movement…
if you have no recorder, spend a day focusing on sound as you wander…translate it into text.
In literacy training I learned a technique to help new writers overcome their reluctance to write, or their discomfort with writing (it differs from speaking or reading because it’s a commitment to the action that is not so easy to retract–if you say or read something wrong you can always backpeddle with “Oh right, that’s what I meant to say.” but if you write it down, it’s there in print and much more difficult to gloss over as anything other than a mistake), and I thought it could be a good method for beating writer’s block for some people (though, I don’t know for sure, I’ve never actually experienced writer’s block myself, and can’t even imagine what it would be like…I need a writer’s cork most of the time) because it gets the brain into the writing state of mind in a way that’s completely non-threatening. It gets the engine started without the worry of where are we going. The technique (like all good techniques) is very simple. Fill a page with writing. Write anything at all. Write your name, write the letter “m”, write blah blah blah, write words you see around you, copy out of a book within reach, write anything until you fill a single page. Then throw it away.
start a poem or story or doodle what have you and mail it to buddy a. buddy a will add a bit and pass it to buddy b and so on. could be just two people or more…
a variation of this is to play the surrealist exquisite corpse game thru the mail…via postcards or letters.
i love the idea of mail art.
Attach large pages together at their four corners with jewelry loops to create one enormous sheet that will move in the wind beautifully. Write something on those pages, or paint them. A quilt of words. Hang it out on someone’s clothesline in the middle of the night. Sneak off.
and then interview yourself about it. write a manifesto, share it with others. make it real. write work in support of the movement.
People Pointing Here