Fields of Light
Light reflects differently off near and faraway objects. It’s all about the light.
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Posts Tagged: creativity
Storytellers Just Want Connection
I’d stand in my doorway and watch lightning break in the thunderheads at the base of the mountain: threads of electricity flashing through the sky in the distance—instantaneous and then gone. Can I get an Instagram of this? I would wonder. How many people would like it? I knew it was bad. But I wasn’t […]
...moreThe Company Tub
If you have ever enjoyed playing an early Nintendo arcade game, chances are you’ve enjoyed the brain fruit Japanese game designer Shigeru Miyamoto grew while soaking in the company bathtub, Chris Kohler reports for WIRED. “At night when nobody was around, you could hang out there for a long time. It totally saved me,” Miyamoto said of the […]
...moreTaking on Your Shelf of Blank Notebooks
At Catapult, Rachel Vorona Cote takes readers down a path of struggle that far too many writers walk, but aren’t always able to talk about or understand. In “Black Books and Letting the Ink Dry,” Vorona Cote looks at the “paradox of the blank book”: The paradox of the blank book is this: It invites our most intimate scribbles […]
...moreJust Fail Your Best
Tim Falconer writes for Hazlitt on the psychological importance of failure: When you do what you’re good at exclusively, avoiding what you are bad at, you live in an evaluative world, one that’s full of judgement…. The danger is this becomes an inauthentic world, one that you don’t engage in for its own sake and […]
...moreUnlinking Mental Illness and Creativity
The idea that “mental illness is the heart of creativity” has persisted for decades. But this idea can negatively impact one’s ability to seek help that they truly need. At The Establishment, Sarah Bronson debunks the notion that treating mental illnesses like depression unilaterally has a negative impact on one’s ability to create: I recognize […]
...moreCreative Writers in Conversation
Over at The Towner, Amelia Gray talks to Catherine Lacey about the role of the self and place in fiction, the artist’s responsibility to culture, and creativity and productivity. Lacey says: “It’s our job, as awake humans, not just as writers, to consider things. Ugly, uncomfortable things and beautiful, terrifying things.”
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A Year in the Life: Deadlines, A Love Story
Deadlines make me crazy. They cause me anxiety, sleepless nights, and self-hatred, but they also make me work very hard, and to manage to always, somehow, so far, pull it off.
...morePen, Paper, and Prose
You can run on and on because writing by hand does that, makes your sentences long and serpentine, like a river whose ending you don’t see until you turn the last bend. Over at Read Her Like an Open Book, author Lily King describes her creative writing process and the reasons she handwrites her novels.
...moreCan Creativity Be Taught?
Is creativity something we are born with? Can it only be nurtured, or can it be taught? Scientist discuss this age-old question for PRI.
...moreIs Writing Art or Profession?
For those who start within the establishment, professional writing is likely to correspond to drudgery, and they’ll seek to escape it. For those on the outside looking in, it’s a mark of legitimacy. The reasons behind why writers write is arguably broken into two camps: for art and as a profession. Certainly neither is more […]
...moreWeekly Geekery
Using your English degree while coding. One foot in the real world, one foot in a story. A return to blogging? Or just marketing. Could robots be Renoir?
...moreOn Being Both an Editor and Writer
At Lit Hub, editor and author Jill Bialosky examines the ways in which writing and editing work themselves out in her mind. She writes in the early morning, before tackling anything else, and then goes to work critiquing the work of other authors: What happens when my early morning hours have extinguished and it is time to […]
...moreCreativity Builds Healthy Economies
Creativity is an essential component of a healthy economy, and Western nations are doing a terrible job of fostering intellectual creativity. Writers, artists, and thinkers are underpaid, as developed economies have given priority to a corporate model of shareholders and profits rather than innovation. Over at the New York Review of Books, Edmund S. Phelps explains that jumpstarting the […]
...moreWord of the Day: Mundificative
(n.); a cleansing medicine or preparation; (adj.) able to cleanse, especially a wound “Art begins in a wound, an imperfection—a wound inherent in the nature of life itself—and is an attempt either to live with the wound or to heal it.” –John Gardner, Grendel The idea of creative expression as a healing experience has been […]
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The Rumpus Interview with Bud Smith
Novelist Bud Smith talks about his new book, F-250, working construction and metalworking, finding writing after his friend’s death, and crashing his car over and over again.
...moreWalking Boosts Creativity
The next time you feel stuck with writer’s block, try taking a walk. A Stanford study has shown that walking increases creativity over simply sitting, even when walking indoors on a treadmill.
...moreCreativity and Mental Illness
Though I did not know it then, Adeline was not just a work of fiction, or an act of literary ventriloquism. It was my suicide note. Had I succeeded in taking my life, this would have been clear. At Lit Hub, Norah Vincent writes about the intensity of creating her Virginia Woolf novel Adeline, the […]
...moreWeekly Geekery
Stop worrying about Buzzfeed and worry about yourself. That moment when you realize the Internet has changed the way you write. The darker side of the Internet writing business. Your leaky attention is evidence of brilliance. Probably. Remembering that thing that you didn’t do. A search engine for the past.
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The Rumpus Interview with Richard Ford
Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist Richard Ford discusses his new book, Let Me Be Frank With You, how metaphor shapes our world, and why he doesn’t like the idea he has a battery to recharge.
...moreWeekly Geekery
When we fight about Buzzfeed. Your laptop will soon be more emotionally intelligent than most people. Printing out people. This is your creativity. This is your creativity on the Internet. Telegraphic literature.
...moreWeekly Geekery
The Internet will not save creators. Are you tired of reading about how Amazon is the Devil, yet? Good. Space Ship Two and Sir Walter Raleigh. Your refrigerator is freaking me out. Cory Doctorow explains art and the Internet to you. Jon Stewart, clickbait, and Slate.
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The Rumpus Interview with Lev Grossman
Lev Grossman discusses the challenges of writing a series, why his 20s were a lost decade, and his relationship with his readers.
...moreWord of the Day: Woofits
(n.); an unwell feeling, particularly in the head; a moody depression; c. 1918, from Nevil Shute’s The Rose and the Rainbow The archetype of the mad genius dates back to at least classical times, when Aristotle noted, “Those who have been eminent in philosophy, politics, poetry, and the arts have all had tendencies toward melancholia.” […]
...moreTake an #Artbreak
Busy week? Work stressing you out? Take five minutes out of your day for an #artbreak—a short burst of creativity to free up your mind. And if you like what you come up with, go ahead and share it on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter! Plumb will donate $1 to 826 National for every post tagged #artbreak, up […]
...moreThe Science of Creativity
For the Atlantic, Cody C. Delistrarty ponders whether a person can learn to be creative, or if he or she is simply born with the trait. Framing his essay on Mary Shelley and her writing process for Frankenstein, Delistrarty presents several prevailing theories, among them that an “openness to experience” is often crucial for an artist’s […]
...moreRacists Are Less Creative
Comparing cognitive tests like the Duncker Candle Problem against views of racial essentialism reveals that racists lack certain problem solving skills, reports Hazlitt: Creativity is fundamentally the ability to recombine old ideas, moving beyond preexisting categories in order to create things that are genuinely novel. And while racial essentialism has its advantages—allowing us to make […]
...moreIs Your City Killing Your Creativity?
Expensive cities are killing our creativity, argues Sarah Kendzior in an article for Al Jazeera. Not only is it very difficult for artists to make a basic living in artistic hubs such as New York, but some are pretty much being farmed out to teach creativity to the children of the wealthy, whatever they deem […]
...moreCreativity Uninhibited in the Dark
“Great artists and original thinkers often seem instinctually drawn to the darker hours,” writes Eric Jaffe in his article “Why Creativity Thrives in the Dark.” A recent study conducted by Anna Steidel and Lioba Werth shows that there’s a reason for this trend: “when the lights switch off, something in the brain switches on.” The […]
...moreCreative Contradictions
“My thoughts make cohesive sense to me, yet others sometimes feel that I am contradicting myself or switching positions. What is wrong with me?” On his website, Matthew Schuler writes about Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s book where he describes nine contradictory characteristics that are often found in creative people. Most creative people have a great deal of […]
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