Today’s new post is in the above video.

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What concepts might help someone be more creative?

Do you wish you were more creative?

Creating things for others is important – even when you know what you will create will be imperfect – flawed or incomplete.  It might be better to create things to please others; rather than to “play it safe” and create little or nothing.

I have watched some of the smartest and most educated people I’ve known go on to create little.  Ironically, one of the reasons they may have chosen to not continue creating may have been because they have so much knowledge, experience, and . . . good taste.

Some of the brightest minds I have encountered may have often silenced themselves – even when their artistic expressions might have been some of the most valuable that could have been created.

There are excellent musicians who stop performing because they cannot get past hearing their own imperfections.

Sometimes a person’s highly-refined standards raise the bar so high, sometimes a person has seen others achieve such lofty heights, in whatever form of artistic expression, that with the knowledge of those “superior” achievements, a person decides their “inferior” artworks or efforts are not worthwhile.

Does anything stop you from expressing your artistic self?  Fear of criticisms you’ll receive?  Or your own high standards that whisper:  You won’t be good enough?

I create imperfect things.

I walk onto stages, fumble my lines, miss my marks, and sing the wrong verses.  I publish things with silly errors.  But I regularly sacrifice the illusion of perfection in order to attempt to be of assistance or amusement.  I’ve done this my whole life:  high school, college, work, theater, talent shows, and now the internet.  I’m the fool – in part because audiences are sympathetic to the difficulties and limitations of any artistic expression.  They appreciate watching one more person extend themselves out onto a limb.

I know my acting is below average, but I continue to act.

I’ve had very well-read writers tell me my writing skills are not very good, yet I write.

Creativity is about creating, creating in the face of the criticisms you absolutely know you will receive from yourself and others.

Does anything silence your creativity?  Did you used to enjoy acting?  Did you used to sing?  Did you used to write?  Did you used to take on higher profile positions and duties for the benefit of your community, even when you knew you’d receive more frequent scrutiny?

If at some point you stopped extending yourself for the potential pleasure or benefit of others, what made you run away from those creative and daring efforts?

If you show me any great artwork, I could probably find 10 critics who could explain 10 distinctly different valid (or at least valid-sounding) criticisms of that artwork. 

I remember writing a post about my admiration for the beauty and design of the Eiffel Tower.  I remember the post received a comment saying the Eiffel Tower was ugly.

If you agree, that for even the best of artworks, 10 critics could easily make scathing criticisms, then as a person, do you wish those artworks had never been created? 

Who do you want to support? 

The critics? 

Or the creators?

If, as Shakespeare said, “Brevity is the soul of wit,” then bravery may be its heart.

I’m going to keep creating things that are . . . imperfect.

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I should begin by saying I am not a particularly charitable person – as most people might define “charitable.”  Instead, I focus on finding specific people who might benefit from specific assets – and I try to put those people and/or things together.

When I heard about Kiva, I thought:  That’s a great idea.  People can help others in a significant way, without likely losing much money.

But it wasn’t until my family began using Kiva that I realized more of Kiva’s genius.

Look at these five pictures of individuals helped by Kiva.  And then I’ll tell you something surprising.

Not only did 4 of these entrepreneurs pay us back so far (the 5^th loan is still in effect), but we used the same loan money 5 different times to help 5 different enterprises.  Isn’t that amazing?

So, let’s say you think you’d like to help someone out with a $100 loan.  Unlike most charitable gifts, where you will never see that money again:  Using Kiva, not only will you likely get all the money you loaned back (almost 99% of loaned amounts are repaid), but also you can then turn around and help another person using the same $100 for the next loan.  How can that not make you smile?  We live in a magical era.

It is really not even accurate to suggest we’ve done anything “charitable,” because we’ve been paid back on all four previous loans.  So, we have not given up anything.  All we did was allow someone else to use money that would have otherwise just sat in the bank earning 0.1% interest.  How cool is that?

Anyway, I thought I’d share these finer points about the Kiva system so more people might understand some of Kiva’s uncommonly and unexpectedly good attributes.

http://www.kiva.org/start

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Kickstarter

I also want to share some admiration for Kickstarter, an online system that allows ordinary people to financially support individuals with creative aspirations.

Here are three new Kickstarter projects I think have merit.  So, I decided to support each of them.  If you click on any of the images, it will connect you to the project at Kickstarter.com.  All 3 of these projects are still being funded at the time this post is being published.  Only one of the 3 projects is sufficiently funded yet – meaning it will receive funding.  The other two could use more support – if you’re interested in helping these creative individuals:

My days of losing words: a photo book about chronic migraine

Tessel Jet Pack Backpack

Lucy and the Anvil

Fortunately, we live in a time when it’s possible for anyone to do some good, even while sitting at our keyboard, unable to sleep, in our pajamas, late at night.  

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For regular readers:  Thank you to the new email subscribers and for the kind feedback on recent (and old) posts.  Tonight, I get to watch a new SNL (with guest host Zach Galifianakis) with my oldest boy.  It’s a ritual for us, a time to laugh ourselves silly in the middle of the weekend.  Yay!

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How do I say these things as briefly as possible?

For Facebook users, I’ve connected this blog to Facebook.  If you like using Facebook as a newsfeed, you can add this blog’s updates by hitting the “Like” button in the sidebar.

In the coming weeks I plan to begin reading some of the posts I write here.  Why?  Because I think sometimes there is added value in hearing words – as the words are intended, both inflectionally and emotionally.  Whether or not there is much interest in hearing what could otherwise be read, please indulge me – because I think audible media is valuable.  Often, when I exercise, I am energized from the reading and recording work others have done.

Hopefully, I won’t disappoint too much.  I’ll do my best – just one more person in a world of billions of individuals.  Neil Gaiman wrote in his Sandman series:

“Everybody has a secret world inside of them.  I mean everybody.  All of the people in the whole world, I mean everybody — no matter how dull and boring they are on the outside.  Inside them they’ve all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds . . . Not just one world.  Hundreds of them.  Thousands, maybe.”  

Maybe Neil Gaiman is right.  I don’t know.  But his idea pleases me.  I am always hopeful for people, hopeful they will reveal their colorful worlds to others.

~ Mark

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In the coming days, I’ll publish new posts on these topics:

• Understanding more of what you want next

• Kiva and Kickstarter updates

• Habits of regularly sending out love, appreciation, and admiration

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The image atop this post is by the excellent photographer Megan McIsaac, who I have followed on Flickr for several years. © All rights reserved by Megan McIsaac.

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“Sexuality & Love in the Arts” began in 2006.  If you enjoy these posts and would like to read all of them in order, you can begin here.  When you’re done reading one, if you’d like to read the next one, click on the link in the lower right corner.  I wouldn’t keep writing if I didn’t perceive I was helping some people in significant ways.  If you ever have a question about a post, or life in general, I’ll be happy to give you one more opinion to weigh alongside many other opinions.  You can email me at snoopy_jump at yahoo.com (or contact me via Facebook).  And if you ever consider you received something good from any of this, then please consider doing something similarly good tfor others.  Fair enough?

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Writing is sometimes about communicating the who, what, where, when and why.  But writing should not be considered “the written delivery of information.”  Writing is more analogous to conversation – a process of listening to what people want to know and correctly figuring out how they want the information communicated.

If readers just wanted information delivery, they’d spend most of their time reading Wikipedia.  There’s nothing wrong with reading Wikipedia.  I do it most days.  But I don’t want to go on a date with Wikipedia.  I wouldn’t pay money to go sit in a dark room with a large bowl of popcorn to read Wikipedia for 2 hours.

“Better writing” does not always equal “more concise and clear communication.”  Writing, like making out, is more often about figuring out the moving wants of your audience and providing some of those things.

A recent popular post on WordPress was titled “Pixar’s 22 Rules of Storytelling.”  It was supposedly written by a story editor at Pixar.  Here is the post:

http://aerogrammestudio.com/2013/03/07/pixars-22-rules-of-storytelling/

There was nothing wrong with the ideas in the checklist.  But there may be something wrong with a mindset that tries to find “The 10 Commandments” of writing.  The pursuit of “the fewest number of things you must consider” is sometimes a destructive and unnecessary part of creating beautiful things.

With writing and reading, I don’t believe “shorter is always better.”  Fewer is not always better than more.  It may be misguided to try to find “the most concise list of writing cues.”  Would you be interested in finding a checklist that listed “the fastest ways to the most intense orgasm”?  While the list might be interesting to read, the desire to only achieve that pursuit may not be universal.  There are often many other diverse facets to physical intimacy.

There may be some absurdity in hoping to find any finite writing checklist that might help a writer become a better writer.  A good writing checklist for one writer might be a poor writing checklist for another kind of writer.

My advice for writers is to read any and all writing checklists, trying to find ideas, among the many, that might work for you.  A key to being a great writer is to be a constant reader.  Another key to being a great writer is to never stop trying to be a great writer.

A great romantic companion is usually not someone who “was a great romantic companion” in the past and who then hopes to lives off their past laurels.  By definition, a great romantic companion is someone who continues to attempt to be romantic.  As long as someone is alive, romance is neither finite nor past tense.

Similarly, to be a great writer, you never stop looking for ways to be a better writer.  It may be true that in the past “you were a great writer.”  But I’m always interested in the question of:  What are you now?

Growing up, I wasn’t a great athlete.  But over the years, I’ve probably played more basketball than most college players played through their college years.  This doesn’t make me a great athlete.  Rather, I’m a person who keeps playing, losing, and striving to win.

What are you now?

As readers, I think we ultimately continue reading a particular writer, because implied in everything they write, is our knowledge that the writer is smart – they have conversations we still want to hear.  As readers, we’re probably not primarily looking for perfect grammar, spelling, and punctuation.  We’re not simply looking for a story to deliver a central conflict, concise plot, and clever resolution.  To warrant our time as readers, ultimately the writer cannot disguise their levels of intelligence, knowledge, or wisdom.  There are no shortcuts to being a good writer.  Over time, the total effect of the words strung together will convey the writer’s insights, perspectives, knowledge, and intelligence.

Writing for real readers is not similar to writing for many of your school writing instructors.  Writing for your school instructor was like playing piano for your piano teacher – you learned the right notes, proper fingering, and many other essential qualities of meter, volume, and swing.  Writing for the real world is more analogous to playing a song for a live audience.  The reason you want to be a great student for your piano teacher is probably not so you can become a great student.  A reason to meet your piano teacher’s standards is so you can use those tools to please your next live audience as they want to be pleased.

Never stop reading checklists and articles about how to be a good writer.  It is silly to think there could be only 10 secret or key principles that will make a person a better writer.  The pursuit of being a better writer flows with the pursuit of always learning more.  It is very analogous to the pursuits of physical fitness flowing with the movements of regular exercise.

If you wanted to become a great dancer, would you hope to find a list of:  The Top 10 Things You Need To Know To Be A Great Dancer?  No, probably not.  To be a great dancer, you have to spend years dancing.  You dance to dance for yourself and others.  Similarly, you write to write for yourself and others.

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In the coming days, I will publish new posts on these topics:

Understanding Yourself:  What Do You Want Next?

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For Regular Readers:  Real life goes on, swirling and turning.  I had ACL reconstruction surgery last week and I’m in the full throes of spending several hours each day doing arduous physical therapies.  I’m doing unpleasant work to make my body as able as possible to play well with others.

The world of the asset classes continues to go crazy: dizzying.   Hold on tight.

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1)  Create something for the pleasure or benefit of yourself or others.

2)  Find someone else who is creating something for the pleasure or benefit of others.  Support their creativity.

3)  Rest and repeat.

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The image atop this post is by highcastle. © All rights reserved by highcastle.

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For regular readers:  On Kickstarter, here’s a creative project I support:

The project above seeks to preserve forest habitat, directly compensate low-income rubber farmers, and create beautiful shoes.  Pretty cool.  I love living in a world where we can so easily help others create positive, sustainable outcomes.

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One of the most effective ways to not address a “problem,”
is to deny there is a problem,
or to affirmatively believe they don’t have a problem.

The person with a “problem” does not always perceive they are running away from a problem.  Rather, they sometimes believe they are simply running away from peers who wrongly perceive they have a problem.

Ultimately, “problems” are not usually addressed unless an individual perceives and believes they have a problem.

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For regular readers:  Soon, I’ll be sharing some more good things that are happening for art lovers.  Also, I have not forgotten the upcoming post about “writing checklists.”

Thought of the day:  I don’t know if the world needs more love, more photographs, more drawings, or more songs, but I believe the world benefits from each and every kind, candid, and visible person fighting for the arts and for the humane treatment of everyone.

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“one cannot be in a vacuum.  We express our being by creating.  Creativity is a necessary sequel to being.”

   ~ Rollo May from his book “The Courage To Create.”

From the 1975 introduction and first chapter . . .

Courage is “essential for the creative act.”

“We are living at a time when one age is dying and the new age is not yet born.  We cannot doubt this as we look about us to see the radical changes  . . . To live with sensitivity in this age of limbo indeed requires courage.

A choice confronts us.  Shall we, as we feel our foundations shaking, withdraw in anxiety and panic?  Frightened by the loss of our familiar mooring places, shall we become paralyzed and cover our inaction with apathy?  If we do those things, we will have surrendered our chance to participate in the forming of the future.  We will have forfeited the distinctive characteristic of human beings – namely, to influence our evolution through our own awareness.  We will have capitulated to the blind juggernaut of history and lost the chance to mold the future into a society more equitable and humane . . .

Shall we consciously participate, on however small the scale, in the forming of the new society?  I hope our choice will be the latter, for I shall speak on that basis.

We are called upon to do something new, to confront no man’s land, to push into a forest where there are no well-worn paths and from which no one has returned to guide us.  This is what the existentialists call the anxiety of nothingness.  To live in the future means to leap into the unknown, and this requires a degree of courage for which there is no immediate precedent . . .”

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For regular readers:  I am happy.  I think it a great pleasure and privilege to be just one more participant in this era’s conversations.  I love great conversations.  If I had lived at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, I bet I would have loved talking about gas engines, newspapers, talkies, and social morals.  For me, it is very pleasant to have time to pay attention to and follow the forward edges of things.

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Well, it is clear you should focus on . . .

Wait a minute, it is not clear.  Not simple at all.  Simplification or reduction may not be the answer, no matter how many magazine articles suggest “simplicity” will somehow provide the solution you seek.

I have a theory that in order to be of good service to others, you should seek to learn as much as you can in as many areas as you can, with a spirit that never-seeks-to-end learning pursuits.

Life never ceases to present problems on new and diverse fronts, and one of the joys of being helpful is knowing solutions to diverse problems and not having to go backwards or stumble, not having to pay for assistance, and not doing any harm to yourself or others through actions in wrong directions or through inaction.

There is a great line of dialogue in Patrick Rothfuss’ book “The Wise Man’s Fear” in Chapter 89 “Losing The Light,” where Kvothe, a teen who is given adult responsibilities to lead a squad of soldiers, is challenged by some of the older soldiers.  They understand each of the soldiers’ skills, such as:  archery, swordsmanship, tracking, hunting, hand-to-hand combat, etc.  But they don’t understand why an “inexperienced” teen was placed in command over them.  They ask him what makes him special, and what’s his job. 

Kvothe replies, “It’s my job to know things.”

He’s communicating he was put in command because he knows many things most other people have not learned.

I think that’s a great concept to teach young people.  It’s not so important what specific major you choose.  It’s not critical for anyone to try to figure out an easier path where they don’t have to try to learn so much.

A better pursuit, for the future benefit of the people close to you, might be to define yourself as a person who will always continue to attempt to learn more, to be a viable resource to solve more and more potential problems that arise around you.

For young people . . .

When you get to university, you may discover this:  The students who are the brightest are not primarily the brightest because they learn the most from their classes and instructors.  More often, they are the brightest because they have gained enough education, wisdom, and experience to have already learned how to have taught themselves more than most of their peers by educating themselves in their surrounding libraries.  The university classes are not the core of their learning.  The classes are more often supplementary and compulsory when compared to the more frequent learning they regularly do on their own.  They teach themselves because that activity is a part of their self-definition.  They don’t pursue learning primarily because they are trying to meet some graduation requirement.  They pursue learning because they want to be a person who is more learned - more capable of being a person who more useful and less harmful.

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The image atop this post is of the painting by Donato Giancola for the first edition cover of “The Name Of The Wind.”  © All rights reserved by Donato Giancola.

http://www.donatoart.com/

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What questions cue your curiosity so much that it would be unpleasant to not pursue possible answers to those questions?

Maybe a good exercise, to learn more about yourself, is to make a list of all the questions you would still very much like to know more about.  Sometimes, the questions that still intrigue us are questions . . . read more

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“The Quality Of Mercy Is Not Strain’d”

It is not always important that an idea be “right” or “better;”
Rather, it is often good enough that an idea be thought-provoking and worth further consideration and debate.

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I Cannot Agree With Robert Frost

I did not choose paths because they were less traveled by;
Rather, when two roads have diverged in a wood, I’ve been boring by comparison
And taken the paths . . . read more

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What actions could you do that would have sufficient value and merit - even if no one ever saw or knew you did them? 

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TheInkBrain

I miss the http://theinkbrain.wordpress.com/ and look forward to the next post.  The care put into that website’s posts . . . read more

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Conversations With Images

I learned this week that I have conversations with pictures
And that I’ve always had conversations with pictures
Silently talking to the images in front of me
Talking to the artists
Talking to the past, past ideas, past perceptions, past priorities
Questioning their choices, the content, the boundaries, the limitations, the broken “rules”
These “conversations” have been important to me for decades, but I did not realize it until recently
Pictures have secretly, and not-so-secretly . . . read more

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What Is A Common Difference Between A Memoir And A Novel?

A memoir is more often about . . . read more

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Keys To Keeping Conversations Ongoing

I would like to be a better conversationalist, so I checked out these 7 books from the library yesterday, to see what I could learn:

I’ll let you know if I find ideas worth more consideration.  So far, in scanning the above books, I’ve come across advice like . . .

1)   Initiate conversations.  In a room, force yourself to have 3 or more conversations, if only for a minute or two.
2)  Don’t talk toward an objective; rather, be flexible and go toward the places where the other person wishes to go.
3)  Make each person feel individually valuable.
4)  How you say something, in demeanor and body language, is as important as what you say

All those ideas seem worthwhile.  But I should explain more specifically that I am not searching for ways to have more casual conversations.  I am not shy.  I have an ability to “work a room,” be clever, and make people laugh and feel genuinely good about themselves.  Rather, I want to know how to maintain conversations that people want to continue for years to come, maybe even for the rest of our lives.  That seems like a scholarly pursuit worth searching through the dustiest of books in the most unused portions of ancient libraries.

Here are some of the best ideas I have on this unending journey and search so far:

For a conversation to continue a long time, it helps when . . .

I)  The other person knows you sincerely perceive they are “more than good enough.”

II)  The other person knows the conversations will be pleasing more often than not.

III)  The other person understands the benefits of . . . read more

IV)  The other person has received . . . read more

V)  The other person has a reasonable expectation . . . read more

To keep a conversation ongoing, it often doesn’t matter how intelligent, clever, funny, or attractive you are.  Those characteristics, in some cases, may add value, but they may not be key or essential.

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When today I heard Roger Ebert died, I cried and cried.

The above image is the self-portrait he took the day before he knew his face would forever be different after having a portion of his jaw removed.  He thought it was important to remember what he looked like.

Before the internet, before there were literally thousands of reviews posted on every new film, Siskel and Ebert brought to our homes an intelligent discussion of film reviews and commentary.  I am forever in their debt for their work and advocacy – for setting a good example.  I am grateful for his consistent work

Ebert led by example.  He encouraged many writers, filmmakers, and artists – well-known and unknown.  How do I know this?  He once took time to leave me an encouraging comment on a review I wrote about a children’s book.  He grew up and was educated in an era when many people were interested in “the next great American novel.”  In recent years, he missed that era and wondered if many people were even still interested in novels and reading.

He used his love of reading, quality storytelling, and artistic craftsmanship in each of the new and broadest technological means:  newspapers, TV, cable syndication, internet, Twitter, film festivals, blogging, Amazon, on and on – always working toward bringing more attention and praise to artworks he thought merited more consideration.

He held his tongue and showed restraint when recently his peers voted Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” above his beloved “Citizen Kane.”  He did not think it was his job to be “the most right” or “the best.”  He would spar, jest, and play along with Siskel on such debates. 

When he couldn’t keep up with the pace of his work, he gave away his valuable forum to his colleagues, allowing “rogerebert.com” to bring more visibility to film critic peers he respected.

He used his limited time and energy, into his last days, working to bring more consideration to many, many great films, fellow artists, and other artworks.

Do you struggle with relationships?  Are you at ease in the company of others?  Or do you often look to get away from social situations, preferring to not have to parry through potential conversational swordplay.

Like many “educated” people, I come from competitive and intensive instructive environments, both at home and in school.

I have often been in teaching environments, whether in sports or academics, that consistently focused on identifying and pointing out weaknesses – in order to transform them into strengths.

I suspect most families are not as critical as mine.  I am neither proud nor ashamed of this distinction.  We are inherently hyper-critical.  That is who we are.  You name the topic, we’re critical:  grammar, vocabulary, spelling, punctuation, pitch, tempo, memorization, consistency, manners, reputation, weight, appearance, achievements, finances, careers, winning percentages . . . you name the area of criteria, we’re critical about it.

As a result, we’re “high-achievers.”  In my immediate family, the two dumbest people have doctorates, another was valedictorian of her class, and the brightest of our small group was salutatorian of her class.  Yes, hyper-criticism often leads to high achievement . . . but it also can often come with equally relentless social costs.

What is the best relationship advice someone gave me recently?

The advice I received was this:

One of the best things you can convey to others is:

“You are more than good enough.”

In reviewing your conversations, responses, vocabulary choices, body language, inflection, and demeanor:  Do you imply to others they are not good enough?  Is that the place from where you begin?  Or is your default starting point:  You are more than good enough.

I’m not suggesting you should always start from one place or the other.  But I encourage you to at least question from what default assumption should you begin?

And if you think you should begin from a place of either:  a) You’re not good enough, or b) I’m better than you – then:  How do you know?  And even if you think you’re correct, is that the best place from where to begin instruction or conversation?

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While I give high praise on this blog often, spending most of the time trying to bring more attention to things that are excellent (rather than spending time and energy criticizing things I perceive to be mediocre), I do that less often in my normal conversations.

To finish with a consistent tone to the ideas expressed in this post, tonight I watched the 2012 film “A Late Quartet.”  It is great.  I highly recommend it and give it 5 out of 5 stars.

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The photograph atop this post is by Carol Woolgar, one of my favorite photographers. © All rights reserved by Carol Woolgar.

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