Creativity, Laughter and the Element of Surprise

Two weeks into My Great Twitter Adventure and I've made some surprising discoveries. The first of which is how openly friendly and just plain nice most people are to strangers. Didn't their mothers teach them basic safety rules? I know, it shouldn't have surprised me, especially since I'm mostly talking to other writers, but it did.

I was equally surprised by the concern expressed by my "imaginary friends" about my time spent twittering. I found this ironic coming from a community of friends with whom I have chatted away VAST amounts of time in blogland. A part of me acknowledges their point: time spent twittering is time not spent writing fiction. And they’ve been hounding steadfastly cheering me on all along, wanting me to finish the damn book already. So they can buy it. And read it. Certainly can't fault them for that. I love my imaginary friends; they're completely awesome even when they mistakenly think I still have a curfew.

But the biggest surprise, and the reason I will continue to twitter, is the effect it has had on my creativity and productivity. I expected twittering to be awkward and confusing. It is. I expected some people to ignore me. They have. I expected it to be a chore I would quickly grow to despise and then abandon. Instead, it has become a source of laughter and camaraderie. Also information overload, but that's another post.

I have a dry sarcastic sense of humour that, even in person, is easily misinterpreted and can come across as . . . something less than amusing. I've experienced the pitfalls of this in both email and blog comments. I figured the potential for disaster when limited to 140 characters was almost unavoidable. Really, I've lost track of the number of times I've offended people who took me seriously when I was kidding.

So I don't think of myself as someone who is funny. But a few fellow twitterers seem to think I am. I mentioned this oddity to my daughter, who said, "Of course you're funny." She then informed me that she sometimes reads my emails to her friends, who all think I'm hysterical. Not sure what I think about that. The last email I sent her pretty much said, "Be Careful Whitewater Rafting This Weekend."

The point of this long rambling post is that I've realized that making people laugh, and more generally evoking an emotional response, is my own personal crack cocaine. Using words, twisting them and playing with them, is my favourite game. If things get a bit risqué, even better. Finding people who appreciate that game and will play along in the spirit of light-hearted fun is invigorating.

So for now at least, Twitter has become my place to play. I'd forgotten how much I need that, how imperative playfulness is to imagination. At a time when I have been floundering and frustrated with my writing, re-discovering the ability to use words to evoke a response from and connect with people who don't know me has sparked my creativity. I have made more progress on my ms in the past two weeks than I had in the past two months.

Some writers need doom and gloom and angst and despair to inspire their writing, using misery as their muse. I'm not writing comedy but I've discovered that I need laughter, my own and that of others. Twitter is still at times awkward and confusing, some people still ignore me and I'm sure many more will (the wise ones, at any rate), but it is fueling my creativity like nothing else has in a very long time. And that surprised the hell out of me.

What feeds your creativity? We're all creative in some way. Do you know what does it for you? Laughter, music, solitude, open spaces? Fritos?

Oh, and if you haven't watched the TED talk given by Sir Ken Robinson about creativity, you should. It's excellent and can be found here. 

Connecting on the dark side

Has it been a month since I posted? Gasp. Well, I've been busy. Mostly up to no good.

Yes, the rumours are true: I've lost my mind and gone over to the dark side. I've entered the Twitterverse. An evil scary place with glowing green faces and random beeping sounds and constant updates 24/7. Just what a pressed-for-time, easily distracted writer needs, right? Um, yes actually.

Twitter has become a significant part of what is called "social media." The persistent buzz in publishing lately -- where is that flyswatter when you need it? -- is that writers need a presence in social media arenas. Publishers and agents increasingly expect writers to find their own "fans" and market themselves and their books, not just after publication, but before they're even under contract. Before they're even done writing the damn book.

One agent went so far as to comment recently that she was seriously considering not reading submissions of any writer who did not already have a significant social media presence. I'm not going to get into how short-sighted I think that is, because this does seem to be the current reality for writers. Especially those as-yet unpublished. A fiscal sign of the times.

So I researched the likely alternatives: MySpace and Facebook. By "research" I mean I asked my 21-year-old daughter whether she'd "friend" me if I had a Facebook page. Her answer was an emphatic NO. Then she warned me about the dangers of MySpace and how no one even goes there anymore.

So I'm Twittering. I feel foolish just typing that. The tweeting itself isn't time consuming. I'm having fun with that. It's the following that's going to kill me. There are an awful lot of funny and informative Twitterers out there, linking to articles or people I'd never have found on my own. I did stop following one person, not because he wasn't interesting, but because he updated EVERY TWO MINUTES and I couldn't keep up. I have limits. Really. Trouble is, I could easily wander around, lost in information intake mode, for days.

But the really odd thing, which I'm having trouble reconciling, is my dual, er, triple identity. My Twitter ID is "BCB_" because it's short (plus I've kind of grown attached to it) and my name over there is "w/a Katherine James" (w/a = writing as), which will be my pseudonym once published. But I'm following people I know and who know me only by my "real" name. A couple of them are now following me in return and I have no idea whether they know that I'm, well, me. It's weird. But my real name is reserved for the day job, the one where I'm a responsible adult in charge of other people's money. I don't want the two linked, and certainly not out here on the intertubes.

It's a dilemma. Because it leaves me feeling somehow fraudulent. Yeah, I know, I'll get over it eventually. And really, I guess it's just another instance of being a writer, making stuff up and hoping people enjoy it.

So, want to follow me into the darkness?

Take a moment, give something back

Take a moment today, Memorial Day, to remember the sacrifices others have made on your behalf. Even if -- maybe especially if -- you disagree with the decisions that led to so many deaths.

Photo of Arlington National Cemetery by Bruce Dale, published in National Geographic, June 2007.

A Google team has created a new website, just unveiled this weekend, called Map the Fallen. From Sean, its creator:

"This Memorial Day I would like to share with you a personal project of mine that uses Google Earth to honor the more than 5,700 American and Coalition servicemen and women that have lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. I have created a map for Google Earth that will connect you with each of their stories—you can see photos, learn about how they died, visit memorial websites with comments from friends and families, and explore the places they called home and where they died." 

While I am somewhat disturbed by the invasion of privacy caused by all this high-tech satellite imagery, this application of it serves to remind us that those who died had names and faces and individual life stories, and they grew up in hometowns all across our country before facing death halfway around the world.

Go take a look. It's worth the hassle of installing the newest version of Google Earth.

And then go read this CNN article that states, in part:

". . . a recent study conducted by the RAND Corporation estimates more than 320,000 service members returned home with traumatic brain injury, and 300,000 suffer from post traumatic stress disorder, depression and anxiety. That is nearly one in five who have deployed."

Those who died are deserving of a day of national remembrance. But perhaps we can also take a moment to reflect on the sacrifices of those who did not die, but who are suffering daily under our nation's dubious care and respect.

They deserve more than one day of showy parades and solemn speeches, more than one moment out of our happy busy normal lives. They deserve the commitment of our effort and resources, the acknowledgment that we have a responsibility to take action and make sacrifices on their behalf, as they did on ours.

Go HERE and make a difference. I did.

Rainy day in spring

It is dark and raining here this morning. The kind of hard heavy steady rain that says, pay attention, and no matter what you thought you were going to do, you stop and listen instead. Too many drops to count, yet you can hear the rhythm of each one. The small steady slap of it on the roof and leaves and street, the music of it running fast through eaves and downspouts, in the fleeting splash of a car driving by.

A quick gust of wind waves dense leafy branches through the flow, disrupting the steady downward path, diverting drops like a hand testing the temperature of a shower. The gust moves on and the thick drops fall harder, crowding together in a pale gray sheet.

The back door is open and the smell of wet comes through the screen. Sodden chlorophyll and damp ground, giving up the hot sweat of the past week's growth, rinsing off leaves and bark and blades of grass to run down the slope of the next yard to the creek, filling the air with the ripe earthy scent.

The torrent is timeless and ageless, full of significance yet devoid of meaning. The rain is all there is. No crackle of lightning or rumble of thunder. Nothing moves under the onslaught, there are no other sounds, only the steady soaking drum of the rain. And you are still, listening.

The gloom lifts slowly as the rain tapers off, the symphony ending not with a crescendo but a soft reprise as a cool damp breeze gently teases small drops down in a light patter from the high branches where they linger. There is movement in an upstairs bedroom and you recall the tasks at hand.

Soon the air is redolent with the smell of freshly sliced melon and frying bacon. Outside, the birds resume their springtime songs.