It's Where I'm From

If you have had the opportunity James Joyce's Ulysses, or any of Joyce's works for that matter, one thing that comes to the surface is that the city of Dublin takes on its own character persona. Because all stories need an environment in which to take place, the ability create an environment that is as identifiable as any other character in a story is valuable skill indeed.

It's one thing to say this, however, and something all together different to execute. For one, we are trained, as writers, to always be moving the story forward. With characters as a main focus, we learn to make their stories move. The right environment, though, can make that story even better.

One hurdle that young writers face is in thinking that, because they come from a small town, there is nothing exciting to take from that experience. They try to set stories in big cities like New York or Chicago. The reality of this situation is that small towns are teeming with unique characters, dirty laundry, and oddball traditions. Big cities, however, harbor their own sense of anonymity fostered by the impersonal nature that comes with large populations.

To start figuring out how to create an environment that has character depth, start making notes about what makes your town so unique. If you live in a big city, focus on what makes your neighborhood so unique.

Where I'm from:

• Strangers wave hello as they drive by. The motive is two-fold. Of course, it's just good manners. It also lets you know they are taking notice of who is around.


• It's okay to close the bar as long as you don't miss the VFW pancake breakfast the next morning. You can bring your hangover; you won't be the only one.


• You ALWAYS tip the girl scooping your ice cream, because she is 16, her wrist hurts from scooping for the last 7 hours, and she's working hard instead of sitting at home on facebook... and that still matters.


• The land is so flat that the sunset takes an hour. And for that hour, the sky is painted the most beautiful shades of blue, orange, and pink you have ever seen. In fact, it's so beautiful that sometimes, you watch the sunset for the whole hour.

These are just a few examples. What you can see shaping up here is a pretty consistent backdrop. The way it affects a love story, a mystery, or even a comedy can add a new dimension. It's the invisible character that colors the story, provides calm or tension, and whispers that the story still continues even after the last page is finished.

So go ahead. Start making your list. What's it like where you're from?

The MacGyver Guide to Creativity

If you are old enough to remember MacGyver, the first thing that comes to mind is his amazing ability to fashion new devices from just about anything. (Okay, maybe the amazing hair is the first thing that comes to mind, but that device thing is a very close second.) It's this ability that made the character of MacGyver a television legend.

At the core of every conflict was MacGyver's ability to use his creativity to solve a problem. Really, the guy could make a detonation device from a shoelace, some nail polish, and a can of green beans. One of the points I talk about a lot on this blog being able see everyday objects in a new way. MacGyver had an innate ability to see those everyday objects and create new relationships between with them.

What Would MacGyver Do?
As writers, relationships are the foundation upon which everything we write is build. Because characters exist in real world scenarios, the potential for the unexpected relationship exists in every environment in which a story is taking place.

If you were given seemingly unrelated items, could you fashion a coherent narrative from them? For instance, what would you do with a firefighter, a case of candy canes, and an impending tornado? Could you create a story from these three elements? I bet you could. And what's more is that the story I create from those three elements would be very different from the story that Kimberly might. And those would both be very different from the one that Kathryn would create.

This is the difference that is established by the inner creativity we bring to each relationships. Going beyond our normal patterns of perception and looking for relationships in everything is the first step in tapping creativity. And it doesn't matter if you are a writer, musician, painter, interior decorator, or programmer. It's when you find new meaning in relationships that your creativity flourishes.

Next time you find yourself in a creative rut, ask yourself: What Would MacGyver Do?

Top 10 Blogs for Writers

Over at Writing White Papers, Michael Stelzner has put together a great list of the top 10 blogs for writers. Here's a copy of that list, but please go to his site as well to get some descriptions of each site. Then go to each site and see what there is to learn.

1. Copyblogger
2. Freelance Writing Jobs
3. The Renegade Writer
4. Web Content Writer Tips
5. Web Writing Info
6. The Golden Pencil
7. Catalystblogger
   
8. Freelance Parent
9. Write from Home
   
10. Copywriter Underground

And since Michael can't award his own blog a place on the list of top blogs for writers, I will. Check out Writing White Papers, and check it out often. Michael offers great tips and poses legit questions for writers that stir up a lot of useful discussion.

Write What You Know? Not Always.

I learned several very valuable lessons in grad school. Aside from learning how to survive on essentially NO money, I also learned how to focus my writing by finding my motivating force. One old adage is to write what you know. For many writers, young writers especially, knowing enough about anything to compile it into a book or book length collection is no easy task.

For my master's thesis, I was hoping to do a compilation of short stories. The stories I'd been writing were a mish mash of ideas and themes. When put together, they seemed even more out of sync. No university would ever let me slap them together like that. Fortunately, my thesis adviser, Kate Myers Hanson was not only a great teacher, but an amazing writer whose collection of short stories, Narrow Beams, is an ideal example of what a short story collection should be.

Her advice was this: Write about what interests you. In some instances, this is the same as writing about what you know; in some instances, it isn't. For a young writer, the latter is usually the case. She had me make a list of my favorite books. The list included: The Brothers Karamazov, Anna Karenina, and The Stories of John Cheever. The idea was that all of these books were favorites of mine because, through them, ran a common theme that was a deep interest of mine. And there was. The theme was how certain challenges break families down. After I learned this, I was able to choose the stories of mine that were consistent with this theme, and craft new ones more easily.

Fiction, though, isn't the only area of writing where this applies. My book, Tapping Creativity, was originally designed to be a textbook on writing, complete with grammar lessons and primers on APA and MLA styles. The more I hammered away at it, however, the more I realized what interested me most were the sections related to idea creation and ... well ... tapping creativity. And that is something that applies to all creative arts.