Tag: creativity

creativity

Writing Promptly

September 28, 2018
Susan Breen

NaNoWriMo starts November 1. To encourage writers to start thinking about their upcoming writing odyssey they ran a month-long Instagram challenge featuring daily prompts. Writers were encouraged to post ideas for cover art, describe what their main character had in their pockets, and choose their main character’s theme song, among other ideas. The Career Authors blog posts a writing prompt every Sunday. Last week’s was about replacing unnecessary dialogue with a gesture or action that conveyed the same message.I don’t use writing prompts to help me with my work in progress. But sometimes I’ll use a random writing prompt as a creative warmup, a way to get the ideas, and the words, flowing if I’m in a dry spell. Sometimes, like with the NaNoWriMo Instachallenge, I’ll join in for fun. I asked my fellow Missdemeanors their opinions about writing prompts. SusanI use a lot of writing exercises in my teaching. So often when my students are working on them, I work on them, and it’s very helpful. But mainly I love filling out character dossiers. I love those little details that crop up about characters and find I have to go hunting for them and the dossiers really help. The […]

September 25, 2018
Alexia Gordon

I’m a procrastinator. Always have been. I never do today what I can put off for at least a week. I’m the kid who wrote the book report the night before it was due, the college student who pulled an all-nighter studying for an exam at eight the next morning, the woman who leaves the house five minutes before she’s supposed to be at church and slides into the pew as the opening notes of the processional hymn ring out. My motto could be, “There’s no time like the nick of time.” I am the Queen of the Last Minute. Occasionally, my procrastination is born of passive aggression. If I have to go someplace I don’t want to go to or do something I don’t want to do, I’m in no hurry about it. Mostly, however, I procrastinate to stave off anxiety. The less time I have to think about a task, the less time I have to obsess over the infinite number of ways things could go wrong. If I finish the paper right before I turn it in, I don’t have time to fret over how terrible my writing is, how shallow my analysis is, how flat my characterizations […]

March 14, 2018
Alexia Gordon

More than 300,000. That’s how many new titles were published in the U.S. in 2013, according to UNESCO figures reported in Wikipedia. Add in all titles published in a year and the number doubles or triples. That’s a lot of books competing for readers’ attention. Authors have to create ways to gain notice. In this modern, social media-connected world blogs, newsletters, and Facebook pages have become standard ways to build a platform to attract readers. Posts and newsletters, brief pieces offering readers writerly advice, funny or poignant stories about the writing life, and insights into how one’s work speaks to the human condition, come out more frequently than novels or short stories. They require frequent trips to the creative well. Once in a while, the well runs dry. An idea for a blog post hits you then you remember you used the idea six months ago. You stare at the blank newsletter template and realize you have no news. You’ve already described your writing process, your inspirations, your journey to publication, your tips for completing a first draft. You’ve got nothing but a deadline. What do you do? The blog has to be posted, the newsletter mailed. A goats in sweaters video […]

October 10, 2017
Ellen Byron

Author Ellen Byron joins the MissDemeanors today to share her thoughts on mindless creativity. Don’t miss her new mystery, A Cajun Christmas Killing, available now. Here’s Ellen: I spend a lot of time when I’m not writing, writing. It may look like I’m getting dinner together or doing the laundry, but I’ve found that when I’m engaged in some mindless task – and if you ever ate at my house, you’d know my cooking is mindless – I have some of my most creative thoughts. It turns out I’m not alone in this. Google “mindless creativity” and you’ll get pages of articles proving this really is a thing. I found an article in Nature magazine about a study that showed “simply taking a break does not bring on inspiration — rather, creativity is fostered by tasks that allow the mind to wander.” A piece in Inc. Magazine was titled, “Want to be more creative? Do something mindless.” In a recent post on the Chicks on the Case blog, Lisa Q. Mathews shared this tidbit: Dame Agatha Christie herself claimed that she did some of her best plotting while doing the dishes. Around the time I was thinking about this topic, the inimitable Dru of Dru’s Musings posted […]