Category Archives: creativity

Listening pays off

06 Saturday Aug 2022

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Listening to novels, a thing I do while engaging in the tedium of hand quilting, has been instructive for a couple of reasons. The repetition of words stands out after a few hours of listening. One author uses the word “prodigious” as his go-to whenever there’s a lot of something to describe. Another author has his female characters biting a lip or chewing on a lip whenever he wants to show them being pensive.

When I say these word choices stand out after a few hours of listening, I really am listening for a quilting session that lasts about three hours. Note to hand quilters: If you choose a pattern with lots of curves, like the stencil pictured below, you will be quilting for a long, long, long time.

This stencil, about 8 inches by 14 inches, repeats over the queen-sized quilt I’ve been working on since January. It takes me about three hours to stitch one of these panels.

But I digress. I don’t bring up what amounts to a kind of writer’s tick because it represents a flaw in the books. A reader rather than a listener might not even notice. But once I noticed, it did prompt me to go back over my writing project to see what go-to words showed up in my copy. It turns out my characters, whenever they’re involved in difficult conversations are always “looking away” or “looking down” “closing her eyes.” Also there is breath holding and sighing. Oh, the sighing. So the next edit I’ll be searching for some words and phrases and seeing if I can change it up a little.

Regarding the stencil: You lay it down over the fabric and swipe a chalk pounce across it. The chalk penetrates where the lines are. I used Full Line Stencil but there are other manufacturers.

Prototyping and creativity

04 Thursday Aug 2022

Posted by in creativity, outdoors, Random, writing

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Sleeping in the van has made car camping easier, but since we’re talking about a mini-van rather than a slick Sprinter-type thing, it lacks a roof vent fan. Not wanting to open the windows and invite in the bugs on hot summer nights, I decided to make some window screens.

First thing I did was buy the wrong kind of screen, the kind of material used to make screens for house windows. Stiff. Unyielding. Must be kept flat or will kink up.

Second trip to the store, I bought soft mesh screen, the kind used in tents. Then I spent about a week trying to figure out how to attach it to the inside of the van. Soon I discovered I could attach it to the outside of the van with magnets, so I bought some extra strong magnets, sewed wide bias tape around the screen and inserted the magnets at the screen corners and midway along the edges. This worked about twice, but the neodymium magnets stuck to each other when the screen was not deployed and made storing the screens when we weren’t camping and deploying them when we were, a nightmare. Rare earth magnets really do not like to come away from each other.

I bought new screens, cut them to size, sewed bias tape around the edges to keep the mesh from fraying and then sewed in small wood dowels that sit in the door grooves and hold the screens in place. Magnets, not the rare-earth kind — hold the whole thing against the car. I keep them separately in a small bag. The screens wrap up neatly around the dowels when not in use. Deploying and storing just got simple.

The thing to remember about making things from scratch — whether it’s a work of fiction, a van window screen, or an original embroidery design — is that creativity is iterative. You start with an idea, you work on it. The flaws in your idea become apparent and you work to refine the design. It’s messy in the middle. But the only way to something better is through making something that’s going to end up in the trash.

Post script: There was also an unfortunate duct tape iteration, but I’d just as soon not go into detail…

Capturing summer sun

28 Thursday Jul 2022

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Oregon’s embarrassment of agricultural riches (cherries! grapes! hazelnuts! pears!) includes the most luscious blueberries anywhere ever. In order for July to feel right to me, there has to be some blueberry jam creation. This is a labor of sweaty joy, from the trip to the farmer’s market for a flat of blueberries, to the inspection of canning jars and the filling of the big pot for the water bath processing. Small-batch production takes a while. I can only do 3 pints/6 half pints at a time. This year, we rocked 9 pints and 30 half pints. Can a couple of sweets-loving people such as Craig and myself consume all that jam? No. These delicious reminders of Oregon bounty will migrate out to friends and family sometime in the winter when the skies are heavy and we all miss the sun.

Water bath canning isn’t difficult but its rules must be respected. If you haven’t tried it, check in with your local county extension office for guidelines. Oregon State University’s extension office is a good place to start. And if you want to check your local public library for good recipes and guidance on the topic, check the books out in later winter or early spring. By July, there’s a waiting list for the best books.

My recipe for blueberry lime jam comes from the standard Ball Blue Book Guide to Preserving. You can find the recipe online.

Ups, downs, etc.

26 Tuesday Jul 2022

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I stumbled on a couple of concepts that deserve mulling: performance goals vs. learning goals, described by Stanford University researcher Carol Dweck, and willpower as emotion, described by Michael Inzlicht, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto.

Dweck’s work notes that learning goals help us work beyond mistakes and failure while performance goals can stop us before our efforts can lead to improved outcomes.

Inzlicht’s research, or my understanding of it, suggests that willpower comes and goes, much like happiness, anger, etc.

This week, I’ll keep learning goals in mind, as I work on the things that have challenged me lately (writing a successful query letter to an agent, for example). Also this week, I’ll recognize that in the face of ebbing willpower (sometimes it’s really challenging to reach for the fizzy water and not the glass of wine), there are strategies to deploy and keep me on track until the willpower circles back around. In other words, not a failure of character, just the normal cycling of my feelings.

For help with the agent querying, I’m delving into the great advice of agent Janet Reid, whose web site is really helpful and whose Query Shark blog is harsh but good education.

Horse latitudes of writing

20 Wednesday Jul 2022

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I am becalmed. I know this spot from previous long writing projects. Nothing like the exciting beginning when the ideas cascade and occupy most of the mental bandwidth. Nothing like the surprise at the end when you type a sentence and as you look at it, it dawns on you that you have arrived at the denouement.

No. The mid-latitudes of a book force the writer to deal with the early creative decisions — in character development, plot, setting, voice — that now midway through reveal the many ways in which they constrain the story. It’s like building a box around yourself and hoping you have an exit strategy.

The horse latitudes describe a grim reality of sailors in the region 30 degrees north and south of the equator where the winds die to nothing and can stay that way for weeks on end. I have always hoped it was apocryphal, the story that New World explorers becalmed in this zone threw their horses overboard to conserve drinking water for the humans. It’s here where some of my best big creative ideas may need to be jettisoned to make the story better.

Me and my writer friends, we commiserate about this stage. We acknowledge the tedium. We affirm our dream to finish the project. We assign ourselves word counts. We don’t have to like every word. We just have to get the next sentence on the page.

I am at 33,000 words of a book that may go to 80,000, best guess. At first my excitement buoyed and carried me. Now it’s time to bring some discipline to my game, knowing from previous projects that creative winds will return.

Change is hard, strategies are required

01 Friday Jul 2022

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I like the strategies in “How to Change” by Katy Milkman, particularly because the University of Pennsylvania professor shares the research behind them. My previous blog noted one of those strategies, pairing something enjoyable with the less enjoyable habit currently under construction — Milkman calls this “temptation bundling”.

I used other techniques when I set a goal to take a monthlong break from drinking alcohol, like picking a start date connected to the beginning of the week and the beginning of a camping trip. Milkman calls this the “fresh start” effect. I also had a plan for meeting the moment in the day when I typically have a glass of wine in my hand.

But I decided not to use one of the book’s strategies, a punishment for failing to complete a goal. With this strategy people commit to a financial penalty for failing to follow through. I considered, then discarded the idea. I need encouragement, not fear of a negative outcome, to help me with goals.

This book doesn’t sugarcoat the fact that making changes is challenging. In much of the research that psychologists considered successful just 20 or 25 percent of subjects sustained change. That is humbling.

I don’t recall now if Milkman said much about this but for me taking a moment to let myself be gratified by the small steps I’ve taken — written my 1,000-word daily quota, spent my half hour weeding the garden, practiced my guitar, etc. — often fuels me for the next day and the next small steps.

Between the author and the reader

30 Thursday Jun 2022

Posted by in creativity, Random, reading, writing

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I haven’t been a fan of audio books, but listening to compelling stories reduces the tedious aspects of hand stitching a large quilt. (Yes, endless spirals. What was I thinking?) While half a dozen audio books have helped me make good progress. I’ve been surprised to learn that the voice reading the book has a significant effect on my appreciation of the story.

I don’t care for the person reading Gregg Hurwitz’s “Orphan X” series (a guilty pleasure I confess to). If I hadn’t read the first few books in the series I doubt I could have listened to the entire “Prodigal Son” while quilting. And I recently tried (and failed) to listen to Karen Joy Fowler’s The Jane Austen Book Club. The reader’s voice interfered so much with my ability to connect with the story that I gave it up after the third chapter.

Because Fowler is such a respected author, I began to wonder whether the insertion of someone else’s voice between me and the written page was having an impact on my sense of not just the quality of the narrative but also the nature of the characters.

Casting about for something else to listen to, I stumbled on Elizabeth Bear, thanks to author John Scalzi’s inimitable and wondrous blog Whatever. This time, rather than just jumping into the audio book, I read the first few chapters, using Amazon’s “Look inside” feature. Reassured that I liked the both the writing and the story, I turned to the audio version and found the voices fit the story for me.

I appreciate my local library making audio books available through the Hoopla digital streaming service. I absolutely do buy books, but can’t buy all the books all the time.

I’m listening to Bear’s “The Stone in the Skull” now and suspect that the actual purchasing of Bear books won’t be long in coming.

Listening to books has reinforced for me the notion that reading is an oddly private and intimate act between author and reader, two people who rarely meet, but find themselves drawn together in an inner invisible dance. While audio books draw me back to my otherwise tedious needlework, I prefer no intermediary between me and the page.

May my eyesight last until someone pulls the last book from my cold fingers.

A gifted sister

26 Tuesday Apr 2022

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Seven Cities of Gold: Wings, Artist Betsy James

My good friend Chris James and I have known each other 40 years, and while I knew he had a gifted sister — Betsy James, both an author and an artist — I hadn’t ever seen her work until we visited the Nedra Matteucci Gallery in Santa Fe this month. Goodness me.

I just felt drawn into her work, which captures a magical nexus of sky/land/humans. Oh and birds.

Then I checked her web site and now I’m pulled into her books. Currently reading “Roadsouls.” It’s still early days, but there is something a little Ursula-Le-Guin Earthsea-ish about this book.

Her webpage has some fine observations about creativity. I particularly liked this bit about tithing.

Steep learning curve

05 Saturday Feb 2022

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Want to know what’s really hard to hand stitch on a quilt? Tight circles.

This was a thing I might have guessed from my various adventures in embroidery. But I didn’t think about it when looking for a stencil to guide my quilt stitching. I have friends who are expert quilters that I could have checked in with. But I didn’t. Just forged ahead because I liked the swirly design.

This image shows about 9 inches by five inches of work. It took me three hours. I am making a queen-sized quilt. Hopefully I will get faster as I go.

Another thing I am learning. Quilting needles are freakishly tiny. You can embed them in your thumb (and all other nearby fingers) before you even halfway realize you are drawing blood. I guess I am now in the suffering for my craft mode.

First principles: Imperfection

08 Saturday Jan 2022

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Thanks, Google, for letting me know that I am reading “A Brief History of Time” on author Stephen Hawking’s birthday. And thanks for creating such a great animated video with Hawking narrating. One of the quotes: “One of the basic rules of the universe is that nothing is perfect. Perfection simply doesn’t exist. Without imperfection neither you nor I would exist.” What a stellar human.