How learning your craft helps your creativity

May252012
0 Comments

The subconscious mind is pretty amazing–and not a little bit mysterious. On my way to work this morning, it rose up, tapped me on the metaphorical shoulder, and said, “You know you have a fundamental problem with your Work in Progress, don’t you?”

Bolt of lightning time. Yeah, I’m working on a second draft/rewrite, but I realized the protagonist doesn’t have a significant source of struggle within himself, and that’s something I need/want. Of course there’s an antagonist, but I’d like to see that, at the end of the novel, he’s gained insight into himself.

I turned to research. I’m curious about this phenomenon of the subconscious mind. I found an interesting article, “Creativity, chance and the role of the unconscious in the creation of original literature and art,” that sheds some light on it. [Harle, Rob. 2011. "Creativity, chance and the role of the unconscious in the creation of original literature and art." Technoetic Arts: A Journal Of Speculative Research 8, no. 3: 311-322. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed May 25, 2012).] In the process, I discovered yet another reason (and a scientifically based one!) why writers should thoroughly learn their craft.

Harle’s point is that chance plays an important part in the creative process, and he explores this concept through analysis of Surrealist and computer-generated poetry. Fascinating stuff, really, but this section really grabbed my attention: “I contend that Breton and colleagues were doing nothing more or less than creative artists, writers and scientists have always done and continue to do today. That is, the technical aspect of the discpline is throughly learnt; then by relaxing the hold on the conscious mind, shifting down the scale from logic-high-focus to dreamy-low-focus and quelling premeditated ideas of what should be, inspirationis given a chance to manifest itself. Also, ‘chance association’ of disparate ideas (which is perhaps inspiration itself), like genetic mutations, sometimes results in new, deeply imaginative, unique creations.”

Learning to write, internalizing the process, frees up your subconscious to move on to the “dreamy-low-focus” that Harle describes as daydreaming. Creative solutions to problems, he says, occur at the opposite end of the spectrum from the alert and logical state. When I had this inspiration, I was driving to work, listening to a story on NPR. Not focused on logic, just taking in information and letting my mind wander.

I haven’t addressed his concept of chance; log on to your local library and seek out this article if you’re interested. The take-away from the article is that stressing over plot details isn’t always the way to go. Your subconscious mind works it out for you. But the way to improve the associations your mind makes in the creative process are based on learning your craft.

 

 

Posted by aether in writing

The Solution to Procrastination

May032012
0 Comments

“Life is what happens when you’re not writing.” I don’t know if that’s a real quote or if I just made it up in my head. I hope it’s not a real quote because I don’t want to bash a perfectly good aphorism. It’s what popped into my head a bit ago while cleaning up after our old and intentionally incontinent cat (probably in protest for her two younger siblings, but I digress). I think the implication of such a statement is that life is somehow separate from writing, that we stand outside our writing.

I’ve been feeling really guilty lately that I haven’t worked on my Work in Progress in nigh on to two months. Actually that’s not entirely true. I profess not to believe in guilt. To be honest I’m annoyed I haven’t finished the rewrite of the book. Regardless, I’ve thought of a way to cut myself some slack.

I realized we don’t stand outside our writing. People say, “Writing is my life.” If that’s true, what you’re really saying is “My life is my writing.” Whatever comes out of us, out of our subconscious minds and deep hidden recesses, injected into the flesh of a notebook with the syringe that is the fountain pen or tattooed onto virtual skin through the action of manipulating keys, is based in our feelings and beliefs and experiences.

“Oh, Donna,” I hear you saying, “You are so amazingly profound to have discovered this secret eluding humankind for eons.”

I’m nodding sagely. What I acknowledged about my writing today is my psyche has been temporarily diverted to a decision I’m trying to make about my future—get a master’s degree or a certificate or certification classes, and in what field? (AKA What do I want to be when I grow up?) My writing self isn’t on hiatus, though. She’s taking notes. She’s doing research. She’s storing up these thoughts and emotions and processes and details for my future writing.

Obviously it won’t directly correlate. It’s not a one-to-one correspondence, like when people ask, “Where do you get your ideas?” The answer to that one is, “Um, I live.” I don’t plan to write about a woman’s midlife crisis and journey of self-discovery. Although I suppose I could. But you just know (if you’ve read my books) she’d run into a sorcerer masquerading as her personal trainer who’s on the lam from a secret society of Cthulhu-worshipping Baptist preachers intent on subverting the foundations of the world as we know it.

What I’m saying to myself—and you, if you’re feeling guilty about not writing—is chalk it up to experience. Dry spells happen, events intervene. It’s all fodder for the creative mind. Don’t use it as an excuse to quit writing. Because you know you can’t ever stop. Not really.

Not if your life is your writing.

Posted by aether in writing

Digging up 1940 relatives

Apr092012
0 Comments

As an oft-times genealogical researcher, I was thrilled when the 1940 census was released. The actual records themselves showed up online in a remarkably rapid fashion, but the indexes take much longer. Ancestry.com has helpfully provided three ways to access these records until those indexes are available. [Note: Delaware and Nevada census indexes for 1940 are already available.] The first is the typical search–flipping through each page of the census until you find your ancestor. Very time-consuming, but somewhat zen as well. To me, anyway. The second way is by knowing what street  your ancestor lived on. The third way is using the enumeration district number from the 1930 census to locate the residence in 1940.

I decided to track down some of my ancestors living in 1940, as an illustration of these methods. It was still time-consuming. I went through at least 5 of my ancestors and 3 or 4 of my friends’ before finally finding someone. I was struck by the frequency with which my people moved around. Just because they lived somewhere in 1930 didn’t mean they’d still be there in 1940. Usually I found the street and house, but someone else was living there.

The ancestor I finally had success in locating is named Herbert Barnes, my great-great grandfather. Technically he’s a “junior,” as his father was also Herbert Barnes. He was a coal miner, born in Lancashire, England. His father and both grandfathers were also coal miners. According to his naturalization papers, he was missing both hands and an eye. Everyone I tell this to asks how he could be a coal miner with such a disability; I suspect coal mining was the cause of this, and maybe part of why he came to America–to escape a life that would maim him. But that’s a story for another day.

The key to a quick search in the 1940 census is knowing where the family member lived in that year. I knew Herbert was living with his daughter in 1930 on Beulah Avenue, according to the census, and a Chattanooga, Tennessee, city directory listed him at the same address in 1941. His death certificate recorded it as his address in 1944.

Ancestry.com, in their helpful guide to researching the 1940 census, recommends looking up the address on Google Maps, and figuring out the cross streets. I did that, and found a photo in street view of the house where he lived and died. More importantly, it showed the cross streets. [Note: I find it helpful to search this in another window, so I can refer back to it as necessary.]

Armed with the knowledge of his address (5410 Beulah Ave., Chattanooga, Tennessee) and of the cross streets (W. 54th St. and W. 55th St.), I started to look at the census itself.

This image shows the three methods I mentioned earlier. Since I knew where he was in 1930, I could’ve chosen that method, but wanted to try out the cross streets method first. The image on the left also shows the choices I made, including choosing the cross streets. This resulted in two enumeration districts to look through. In heavily populated areas such as cities, enumeration districts are anywhere from 14 to 50 pages to go through, much quicker than in some rural areas that cover a larger area.

I was thrilled to locate him, there on Beulah Avenue with his daughter Lyda L. Barnes Butler, his son-in-law and his grandchildren. His wife Elizabeth died five years earlier.

I hope this brief demonstration inspires you to look for your relatives in the 1940 census.

 

Posted by aether in genealogy

Winter Brain Finds Many Excuses

Mar012012
0 Comments

Winter brain has gotten me. I am so not in the mood to work on my work-in-progress, Revival. I’m not sure what prompted it, but I was suddenly seized by a long-dormant desire to research my family tree. See, I was bitten by the genealogy bug years and years ago. My first published work was in Genealogical Helper, on using computers in genealogy. My research even inspired my first novel, Second Death. [Actually I do know what prompted it. I got an email from Ancestry.com that the 1930 census was free for a week.]

I made a huge breakthrough last night, but let me back up a little and tell you what’s so intrigued me about the story.

Old Stone Church, Ringgold, Catoosa County, Georgia

My great-grandfather was a man named George Washington Roach. He died in Cleveland, Tennessee, in 1946. He was born in Catoosa, Georgia, in 1880. Despite those towns being in separate states, the distance is only something less than 30 miles. I knew from his death certificate that his father was named Jim, and from census records found his full name was James D. Roach.James D. Roach was born in 1862 in Georgia and, like his son, died in Tennessee, near Cleveland in a place called McDonald. The intriguing thing to me about him is that he seemed to be alone from a young age. In the 1870 census, at age 8, he is living with a family not named Roach. The head of household is a woman named Martha Banfield, and includes an older couple, Christopher Nations and his wife. The key here to me is what happened in the year James was born.

Georgia voted to leave the United States on January 19, 1861. Fighting occurred primarily on the coast through 1862. In August 1863, the Chickamauga campaign began, and the Siege of Chattanooga followed in September. This battle happened about 20 miles from where James and his family lived.

One of the untold stories (or at least I haven’t located those stories) of the American Civil War is what happened to the children orphaned by the conflict. James’ father, James H. Roach, was alive in 1860, but I can find no trace of him after that census, at least not without going to Georgia myself. And then his 8 year old son turns up in the same area living with another family. I’ve always thought James H. must have died in the war, whether as a soldier or a civilian I don’t know. I’ve been researching the family he lived with and the neighbors, trying to pierce the veil of history and find out what happened. Ten years later he appears in the census, again in the same area, as a servant of another family. A book on the county tells that James H.’s father David (born in 1800) was “killed by bushwhackers” during the Civil War.

Last night I made the discovery that James D.’s uncle Stephen lived next door to him in both censuses. I don’t know why Stephen didn’t take him in, although it’s possible James D.’s mother remarried and lost another husband during the 8 years he was growing up.

It’s easy to get caught up in the research, stretching the line back, finding connections, and forget that these were real people with joys and sorrows and frustrations. What was it like for a young boy to live around so much fighting and death? A Confederate hospital was located at nearby Catoosa Springs. Did his father die in such a hospital? What kind of mark did that conflict leave on his psyche?

I don’t feel all this research is wasted. The reflections on family and their lives plant seeds for future stories.

Maybe Winter Brain is doing me a favor after all.

What’s your winter brain up to? Share in the comments below.

Posted by in genealogy, writing

Adventures with TweetAdder

Jan272012
0 Comments

I love Twitter. I’m just gonna come right out and say that up front. Criticizing Twitter has become a cliché: “Who wants to read what people had for lunch?” Anyone making that criticism is outing themselves that they don’t really use Twitter. Every day I read an amazing array of cool tidbits, vignettes of life and links I’d never have found on my own from people all over the planet.

I primarily tweet from the viewpoint of an author. Every author who’s the least bit interested in promotion of her or his book needs a Twitter presence. But I’ll confess, acquiring followers isn’t the easiest thing in the world. Following is a voluntary process, and you can’t go around forcing people to join, even though you suspect they’d be very interested in what you have to say or write. That’s where TweetAdder comes in.

TweetAdder is a program that automates the process of acquiring Twitter followers. I read about it in Jon F. Merz‘s book How to Really Sell Ebooks, in which he devotes at least a chapter to implementing the program. (I really appreciate that about Jon’s book, the step by step detailed instructions rather than vague platitudes about how great the product is.)

I was a little skeptical at first. What TweetAdder does for you is grab lists of people who follow people you specify and automate the process of following them. For example, since I’ve written a steampunk book, I wanted to engage the followers of Gail Carriger and Cherie Priest. The theory, obviously, is that if you follow someone, they will very often follow you back. TweetAdder manages the grunt work, unfollowing people who don’t follow you back within three days (or whatever time period you specify), and maintaining that vital ratio of followers to people you’re following.

At first the idea struck me as somewhat sleazy. But when I thought about it, I realized that I’m just tapping into people who share common interests. I’m selecting people to market to based on their reading preferences (presumably that’s why they follow the people they do). I’ve gone from a couple of hundred followers to 1,085 in about six weeks’ time.

Here’s the challenge, though. Nobody wants to read a constant barrage of spam, requesting they buy my book. As Jon F. Merz stresses, Twitter is about relationships. You have to interact with your followers as if they’re people (since, y’know, they are). Engaging in 140 characters on a regular basis is difficult for me, particularly when I’m at work. I’ve tried posting interesting historical trivia related to the research I did for The Source of Lightning, and links to fascinating items found on the American Memory site. I’m still experimenting. Occasionally I get retweets. Sometimes I even get into conversations. Which is really what Twitter is all about.

Do you have experience with TweetAdder? Thoughts about Twitter marketing? Share in the comments below.

Posted by in Marketing
« Older Entries