Tapping Into The Creative Process…Part II          

Lynne Calaway

Prose with poetic flair float slowly before your eyes —distinct, and succinct and almost touchable before evaporating in thin air. Waves of rhythmic beats flood your senses with notes of tracks you’ve yet to write then, suddenly, fade into silence.  Do you wait…confidently believing that, like homemade soup simmering on low—when a piece is ready, it’s ready—or dive right in with a laptop or keyboard to see what happens and lay groundwork for what can?  Are you someone who shares your work as you go or only after it’s finished, and what needs to happen for you to decide it is, indeed, finished?  Do you take an original inspiration and polish it up or regard it simply as a source of usable parts?  Our creative process encompasses many considerations, evolves over time and is as unique and individualized as we are, not matter who we are…

Miles Davis, musician, “Venus de Milo” & “A Kind of Blue”, revealed that he wrote just one note at a time and allowed his music to simply “emerge” and when performing, if he played a “bad” note that a “good” note played immediately after would always correct it.  Baulking at the label given him of “jazz” musician, he warned musicians that such labels limited what their music could be as well as implied something already existed to which it could be compared.  He added that he didn’t “play” music, the notes he played were not the notes that were there but notes that weren’t and that through his constant experimentation with, and manipulation of, those notes he “created” music and a musical style that was indefinable.

Ed Sheeran, musician, whose hits include “Eyes Closed” & “Perfect”, often shares that he ascribes to the 10,000 Hour Rule (a concept formulated by Malcom Gladwell, Canadian journalist and author): that it takes at least 10,000 hours of practice to achieve “expertise”.  He, therefore, stresses the importance of writing every day and that you should anticipate—even embrace—that you’ll write [crappy] songs in the beginning and feels it’s imperative to get “bad” ones out of your system to make way for the good ones.  Ed uses the analogy of a running faucet: in the beginning it flows with dirty water but allowed to run long enough, it reaches a point where the water [the creative work] is clear. 

Pearl Cleage, playwright, novelist & poet, “Things I should have Told My Daughter: Lies, Lessons & Love Affairs” & “Other Reasons to Riot” first starts her novels in long hand on a yellow legal pad.  Highly disciplined, she likes to start promptly at 11 a.m., and always listens to music but only music she’s familiar with so as not to become distracted by focusing on the new sounds.   She admits to using very long sentences when writing her novels (joking that unlike with her Tony Award-winning plays, live actors need time to catch their breath) and believes that one can write an entire paragraph, even a chapter, in one long sentence if you are diligent about your punctuation. Pearl reads everything she writes aloud requiring that her works always have a rhythmic beat. 

Danielle Steel, romance novelist, Flying Angels, revealed that her books are about things that “hurt or scare us” and that her inspirations simply fall “out of the sky”, i.e., a newspaper article or having heard of someone’s personal experience.  She says she then writes a ton of notes and begins “getting to know” the characters, which can be a six-month process itself before she even gets to the plot and admits to writing approximately 20 hours a day.  Danielle says she never writes to please but only to get the stories out of her head and admits she still composes her novels on the $20.00 junk-store typewriter purchased while in college because its slowness allows her time to better process each word. 

Former Beatle, Paul McCartney, whose songs included “She Loves Me” and “Yesterday”, admits to starting songs with little more than a note and that his creative “method” is not having a method.  He reveals that he first connects with a musical key first, then an idea, then maybe the first verse to see where that leads him.  He develops a “skeleton”, then allows the melody and lyrics to manifest as he goes, stating that revisions are a rarity.  He has shared that the Beatles’ groundbreaking hit, “She Loves You”, was written in only 3 hours.  Paul said he’d often write entire songs in his head and, when questioned about his fear of forgetting the lyrics, would respond that if he couldn’t remember the song, neither would the audience. 

The Creative Process …   Part I     

Lynne Calaway

A look at the creative process of  Taylor Swift, Maya Angelou, J.K. Rowling and other very creative individuals

Prose with poetic flair float slowly before your eyes —distinct, and succinct and almost touchable before evaporating in thin air or waves of rhythmic beats flood your senses with notes of tracks you’ve yet to write then, suddenly, fade into silence.  Do you wait…confidently believing that, like homemade soup simmering on low—when a piece is ready, it’s ready—or dive right in with a laptop or keyboard to see what happens and lay groundwork for what can?  Are you someone who shares your work as you go or only after it’s finished, and what needs to happen for you to decide it is, indeed, finished?  Do you take an original inspiration and polish it up or regard it simply as a source of usable parts?  Our creative process encompasses many considerations, evolves over time and is as unique and individualized as we are, not matter who we are…

Maya Angelou, poet, humanitarian, who shared with the world Still I Rise & I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings would arrive at 6:00 a.m. at a reserved hotel room near her own home from which she’d requested that all pictures and other decorations be removed toting her favorite bottle of sherry.  Only the ashtrays were to remain, however, for the cannabis she’d also bring with her.  She would lay on the fully made bed, thumbing her bible and dictionary waiting for inspiration and would remain there until something came to her.  And like Truman Capote, Maya Angelou would write horizontally from her secreted hotel room every day for over 40 years.

Shake It Off & Bad Blood singer & songwriter, Taylor Swift, casts her approach into three basic categories:  1) Quill (inspired by reading classics like English poet & novelist Charlotte Bronte, the early 19^th century poet who was influenced by Shakespeare), 2) Fountain Pen, which has current influences like her latest heartbreak, and 3) Glitter Pen: carefree and frivolous, letting it make sense later and keeps her music very personal as evidenced by her catalog of “break-up songs”.  Taylor admits to a habit of using phrases that people often use in everyday conversation and writes thinking not about how popular the song may or may not be with her fans but about that one person she’s writing about and what that person will think once they hear the song.

J.K. Rowling, writer of the Harry Potter collection, believes in generating copious notes with ideas and phrases knowing that she will never allow those ideas to come to light.  She advises that, like herself, it may take you a while to discover your niche but once you have, become an avid reader of that genre to understand what good writing looks like.  Her approach is that she personally relates to her characters; the heroine Hermione, for example, she admits is reflective of her own teenage insecurities and coming of age.   She advises that you must actually embrace criticism in order to produce good work. 

John Legend, singer & songwriter, whose billboard hits included All of Me & Ordinary People, goes full steam ahead:  3 to 5 hours of sitting in a room, from theme to hook then building from there:  seeking “amazing” for everything he writes.  Whether “amazing” comes first time through or whether he has to keep going back, he starts with an idea and always focuses on “saying something [that resonates] in a song” …“to tell a story that connects” and likes to start with a title first.

Ray Bradbury, novelist & screen writer of Something Wicked This Way Comes and Fahrenheit 451, believed a “writer’s block” means you’re doing the wrong thing: that you’re writing for “an audience” or you’re writing what you feel will sell.  He advised that that’s when you stop and, just as he once did after writing over 200 pages, start all over again; write about something else—write, instead, from the heart: things you love, things you fear, things you hate, even vague memories.  He also encouraged the technique of word association, just filling up a page of random words that pop into your head to help you see your true self, the self from which to write.

What ignites your creative spark?

Lynne Calaway

I believe that some of our best poems (pieces that we are pleased with) are often borne of feelings from opposite ends of a sort of emotional spectrum and, when tapped into, release what looks like, sounds like a soulful–maybe even a powerful–piece.  What is it for you?

Maybe it’s the quiet pleasure of  the changing leaves of fall or the joy of your first child.  Maybe it’s the blahs on a rainy afternoon or coping with an unfathomable loss, I believe that if we want to write more–share more–it’s important to understand what emotions have us powering up the laptop or pulling out  pen and paper to let the prose flow.

One way to recognize what  ignites your creative spark, if you haven’t already, is to read the pieces you’ve written over time (yep..you’ll need to dig ’em out) to see what patterns emerge as you remember what you were experiencing or feeling  at the time.

If you tend to write while wearing your rose-colored glasses, your pieces will reflect that and, maybe, that’s your niche.  For me, I probably won’t do a lot of poems about butterflies, rainbows or unicorns unless the unicorn, while chasing a butterfly, trips over the aforementioned rainbow and gores some innocent bystander–hey, accidents happen!

Getting in touch with the types of emotions that ignite your creative spark will help your focus, giving you more time to actually write rather than wasting your time trying to force a poem when you’re not “feeling” it.

Just  jot down your thoughts when you’re in the “zone”–a few sentences or, sometimes, even just a few words, then revisit and tweak it over time, and I believe you’ll start see your poem “writing itself”!