Biting off more than I can chew

I've been writing this blog for only a few weeks now and I'm already slowing down. I keep creating more work than I an handle. It's not that I start things I can't or don't want to finish, I start ten things when there's only time in the day for three. Then I'm faced with juggling them around, doing a half assed job on them or letting some of them slip through my fingers.

Look at this Jack Of Arts logo I made for this blog and count the number of things this poor guy is doing. Everything from sword fighting, writing and flutes to keeping one eye on the stars. I didn't have room to include family, community work, finding time to just lay low and sleep. (Maybe ol' Jack, he don't need no sleep)

Everyone's got a busy day but I don't need to keep heaping it on myself voluntarily. So in the spirit of that, I'm going to slack off on this blog before I get too deeply engaged. The time I spend writing needs to be employed on getting my fiction boiling over. I don't have the same freedom I did on retreat so I find myself putting it off and that's not right.

I'll continue to post stuff I want to share, but I guess for the time being, I need to set it aside and get serious about finishing my latest fiction opus, making the Narnia flute, creating beautiful jewelry, making videos to tell the stories on my flutes, keeping fit, enjoying the company of my wife and still keeping one eye on the stars.

I'd like to leave you with the suggestion that every once in a while you take the time to look up at the stars, too.

Post Traumatic Perfectionist Syndrome

I always feel a self imposed daily pressure to succeed as though I'm in competition with myself.

Aren't you already successful, you may ask? Yeah, well, there's the rub. I never feel it, like I'm being chased to do, do, and do more. I don't think I read enough. Do I contribute to my community enough? Did I really do all I can for the grandsons? Will this story be a flop? Etc.etc.etc.

Why can't I just do? What drives me to need to go one better than my yesterday's self and then feel badly if I don't? After all, just getting through a day's work isn't so easy. Why would I queer that by suggesting it isn't enough? It has to shine like a well polished floor and reflect back perfection or else. I finished a pendant yesterday. It was good and the client will love it. But I could see flaws. Doesn't that prove I'm not very good? So I spend countless, unpaid hours, smoothing and correcting imperfections that can only be seen through a magnifying glass.

So today, I'm anxious. I look at my unfinished chapters, the flute I'm trying to finish and wonder if I'll ever be able to get it right. 

Pain and imagination don't mix

Last weekend an old spinal injury flared up and I've been in some serious pain all week. This used to be frequent but not for the past several years and I had forgotten how exhausting chronic pain is. Pain itself I can handle, but living with it just wears a body down and saps my creative ability.

We all say, "as long as I'm laid up I can get stuff around the house done". But I can't think clearly through a cloud of managed pain, even after the codeine has taken off the edge.I don't have the patience to just wait it out for a few days. So I end up in mindless pursuit of TV, daydreams and idle net-surfing.

To me, this is prison. I've survived cancer, broken bones and major surgery but when my brain takes a break, I'm a soul lost at sea in search of a horizon.

I better see land soon or I'm going to swim for it!

I wish I had time to write!

You wouldn't believe how often we hear that in response to learning we are writers, as if all it required was a few noise free moments. You don't hear that when someone says they build furniture or sculpt or design aircraft. They might suggest that it's a skill they'd like to learn but never that, if only for the odd hour here and there, they too could be an aerodynamics engineer.

Why does everyone feel that because we are all literate enough to put words on a page that it makes us all writers? Shouldn't we set the bar for writing a bit higher? What with blogging and tweets, self publishing and copy writing software the situation has gotten worse. There's even a project where you write a novel in a month. Simply smother as much paper with ink as you possibly can in 30 days and - voila, there's a novel. How in the world did 30 days of constant writing ever equate to a novel? What happens to structure, editing, character development and story? Oh, never mind, that'll all sort itself out later. As long as we can string a sentence together, we're a writer!

But when I read Mark Twain and Douglas Adams and Jane Austen I know what a crappy writer I am. How can those people put together their ideas and sentences so well while I struggle to be mediocre? That makes me work all the harder to create colorful and vibrant prose and on occasion I even succeed with the odd phrase. But not without toil and trial and retrial. Certainly not by accident or just hoping good stuff will bubble up from the millions of words I type.

So when some lawyer or doctor says, "you're lucky you have time to write", I take the condescending slap on the chin and refrain from replying, "Yes, I wish I had the time to practice medicine. But something always comes up."

Hello! You're on the air...

My 17 year old grandson just started an internship at a local radio station. For a goof with his friends they pulled up at the McDonalds drive thru and when asked over the speaker what he'd like, he said "Good evening, this is Brandon Tracey of WKLT, and you're live on our air at your window. If you can answer this question, then you are eligible to give away one free burger. Who was the president of the United States before President Obama?"

"Um... George Bush?" The girl replied.

"That is correct! Congratulations, you can give me, Brandon Tracey, a free burger."

Three grungy teens pulled up to the window and the bewildered girl gave him a free burger.

After I stopped laughing at this story, I wasn't sure what to make of it. Was this a confused individual? Maybe an indication of how low the bar is set for McDonalds employees? Or was I hearing a ringing endorsement of the level of cognitive thinking coming out of our local school system?

One thing was clear, Brandon has a career in broadcasting ahead of him should he pursue it.

Be what you make of your world...not what your world makes of you

Being cut loose from responsibility, expectation and familiarity on my recent writing retreat made me realize something: most people live to work, I work to live.

What I mean by that is that the job, the work experience and the lifestyle that it affords, is the framework that most people build their lives around. With 40 plus hours working, a long commute, accompanying stress and only 2 weeks off a year forces us to hustle around the fringes to live a 'life' filled with toys and distractions to help us forget the day we've had. If you're lucky, you like your job. For some the job is their lives, consuming their day, their thoughts and their relationships. If their work and world clash the job comes first.

I've always put living first and work second. That's not to say that I haven't spent my share of years struggling with bills, kids and possible failure. But I have always taken a path that allowed me to make creative choices in my work that matched my life both in temperament and pace.

I deliberately chose to work alone and not to build a business, even though all my peers had done so. I wanted no employees, no growth trajectory, no overhead. Of course, this meant no expensive wine, no monster home, no exotic vacations. I couldn't care less. A modest rural home and a healthy family suit me fine and when I travel it is inside my imagination (I dare anyone to find a cheaper vacation!).

These past two weeks of unfettered imagination in a world of my invention reminded me that I created a life that asks of me only what I ask of myself. Now that there are no kids in the house and life is quiet, this is the time to reclaim and build on that.

Gun Violence in America is Beyond Imagination

I've been struggling with gun violence in this country for many years. I've tried to understand the many perspectives of gun ownership from hunters and firing range enthusiasts to collectors and hoarders who fear for their lives. I'm still learning.

I'm not about to start a tirade on the issue here. This blog is about creative thinking and imagination and how I try to apply it in my life.

As a creative person, I have tried to think of fresh doorways into the discussion and common ground for all sides to start from. A sense of humor is lost on life and death issues, irony and satire can't function in a debate crammed full of hyperbole, and agreeing on the basic facts is impossible when there is so much misinformation and obfuscation that most people don't have a clue what the actual facts are.

As a political person who has been in elected office, run campaigns and knocked on doors to debate social and environmental issues for years, I know how to discuss contentious subjects with people. But this one has me baffled. There is an unbreachable gulf between them what's for and them what's agin. The only thing that sparks the debate is when people die - and even that isn't enough to create change, it just throws chaos back into the mix.

I pride myself on my ability to think outside the proverbial box but this box is so tightly sealed no one can see out. This means that thousands upon thousands more Americans will die before any action to change will ever be taken.

That in itself should unsettle the imagination of every American citizen.

When do the satellites turn green?

My host in Easton told me of her first drive through Boston. She had to ask for directions and was told "Go down two satellites and take a right. Then you go through a flashing satellites when you get to a rotary..." and so on.

She spent the longest time looking for Sputnik or at least a Direct TV dish.

Noncomforming Use

Anyone who has seen one of my flutes will know I'm a nonconformist. Anyone who meets me in person can see I'm a nonconformist.

It seems a contradiction to be a shy and somewhat solitary person and to be nonconforming enough to stick out like crazy. I don't want to be different, I simply won't  be one of the crowd. Maybe that's the same thing but it is visceral and I have a hard time refusing it. In grammar school I had a "John Lennon" cap that no one else would have put on their heads. In middle school I wore my brother's navy issue shirts and huge bell bottom whites. It wasn't that I didn't fit in - I stood out. I still wear unusual clothes, go barefoot and sit alone to write in a crowded bar.

Same goes for my writing, my flutes and other creative expressions. I write books using a popular genre to capture an audience and then take them in a new direction once I have them. My flutes are a wild tangle of artwork mixed with precision and music. I read quantum physics so I can redefine gravity. Living my quiet, fairly asocial life would not suit most but gives me great comfort.

Many people call this part of an artistic temperament. A nonconforming gene? I may look at the world through an off kilter lens but why would that demand of me that I appear out of place? Typically an intensely creative person ignores their outer shell letting the physical world wash over them with whatever comes along and leaving them somewhat disoriented and disheveled. Me? I run in the opposite direction from whatever is deemed popular and decide for myself all the things that most others let society choose for them.


In many ways, it has defined my life, in others, I've struggled to fit in. The older I get, the easier it becomes to accept the strange along with the good fortunes and I look forward to what quietly crazy square peg I'll be tempted to hammer next.

Homeward Bound

I think I'm done here. This afternoon I rounded out the structure of my stories and realized I've accomplished as much as this retreat can offer. Certainly, staying on and delving into the writing wouldn't hurt, but the isolated concentration that I've been immersed in these past 2 weeks has run its course. It's time to go home and mow the lawn, pet the dogs and, most importantly, snuggle up to my wife.

New England October is rolling in with cold nights, slashing rain and leaves exploding in bright colors before tumbling from the trees. Summer's lush, long, warm days and chirping cicadas help me forget the impending seasonal change that brings the dark frozen branches of winter. But as soon as it gets cold, I start counting the days when spring will throw buds back on the trees and bring the birds home.

I survive by sticking my cold feet in the stove and focusing on my creative projects. The work I got done these past two weeks will be the backbone of my winter's writing while I wait longingly to hear the peepers in the creek. 

When a writer takes a nap...he's working

After so much pacing and talking to myself and rearranging files, ideas and chapters, I finally have 3 stories that all hang together and still have their own tale to tell. I'm now ready to really focus on the writing itself.

It is strange how much of a writer's work is spent in thought with no visible signs of productive activity. When I was a flutist and musician, my day was consumed by practice and honing. When I sat at the piano to compose, I would fiddle with motifs and musical concepts and listen as they came together. In metal art, a concept is hammered into the silver and there, through a thousand blows, the idea is formed, raised and revealed.

Writing is words and words are a direct expression of thought. For the abstract writer to shape those words, we must first shape the thoughts in our minds. While putting those words to paper in a creative and well constructed way can be a difficult task in itself, just forming complex stories in my mind takes a lot of concentration and real work, too.

I've been here in this ivory tower for 9 days now and have been sweating day and night to form and build this story. I take breaks to teach 3 students, I've spent maybe 90 minutes a day with online TV and spent time getting to know the library director. The remainder of my day and restless nights is spent in pursuit of coherent fiction. When I exercise, cook, stare at my page, rework a scene, I'm chasing down ideas, plot and character.

Is it worth it? What becomes of it when it's done? Does it end in a drawer along with the others that amounted to zilch? Get published and read by a small but content cadre of readers. Maybe it goes on to rip a new one on the bestseller list. I guess that's not the point for the creative thinker. We do what we do because we're driven to do it, regardless of any potential use. Kind of like the theoretical physicist who makes a breakthrough in scientific comprehension. Someone else will find a use whether a bomb, a heat source or delicious cheese dip.

All I can be sure of is that if it stays in my head, I'll go mad.

There's one in every town...

Yesterday afternoon, the library hosted a concert in the garden of the Queset House that featured the Sharon Concert Band. A really good orchestra that put on a good show of concert faves and a few unusual pieces as well. The weather was perfect, popcorn was free and wine and beer were available. Couldn't ask for more on a Sunday afternoon.

Halfway through, the next door neighbor started mowing his lawn on the other side of a thin line of trees to deliberately disrupt the concert. It turns out, he has a gripe with the town and vents his frustrations in completely inappropriate and infantile ways. Ruining a concert for 100 people had no connection to his issue but this wasn't his first childish act and certainly wouldn't be his last. Fortunately, an audience members with a cool head walked over and succeeded in getting him to stop where the library staff knew that their involvement would only make it worse.

It is amazing and incomprehensible how grown people can act in such a way yet, if you think about it, we all know someone like this in our town.

And we wonder why we can't find peace and consenus in a world full of confusion.

Countdown to Stupid...

This is a reprint from my SF blog "planckscaleblog". If you want to read more, click on the link on the right column. Enjoy!


If life was like the movies, in order to capture all the bombers in the world, Homeland Security would only need to track the sale of large digital timers that beep a red countdown to zero before the blast goes off. There could only be a couple of reliable companies for this product so the feds only need follow their sales and our problems with terrorism are over.

In movies, SF, thrillers, and mysteries are all guilty of overusing this corny and really outdated device. "The explosives are ready, Bob, but I haven't finished designing the oversized timer." Give us a break. Even bombs strapped to chests have these stupid clocks on them like a bomber has to let their victims know how many seconds they have left.

Here's a SF twist. What if we all wore digital countdown devices wired to our quantum biorhythms that told us when we are going to die? Imagine it starting at 90 years and beeping it's way along. You start smoking and it drops a couple of years. Cancer? Suddenly you have 5 years. Go into chemo, it adds another three.

You're walking home and it drops to 10 minutes. Realizing you're 10 minutes from home, you imagine a killer is waiting there. You cell 911 and tell the cops to meet you there. On your way there, you get hit by a bus and die on the way to the hospital on the 10 minute mark.

Would it convince us to live healthier lives? Not likely. No more than the disconnect Americans seem to have between gun violence to guns.

A day off.

I’m on my way to visit friends overnight in Boston. I'm stuck on the plot line of the story I'm doing and hopd the break may free the jam. Sometimes I can overthink an idea and need to get some kind of Google Earth type perspective. Not that drawing back is easy. This series of stories has a common subplot and backstory threaded through the whole thing which makes it tough to create a separate story line for each chapter that incorporates everything.

It's great when the right story idea comes to me. But when it doesn't...my mind constantly circles around like a shark smelling blood but unable to find the meat.

I guess it isn't a day off after all.

Day 7: Starting to fall apart

Emotionally, fine. Spirit? Doing great. Social and mental state? Two thumbs up. Physically? I'm crumbling like old blue cheese.

Who'd have thought that my limited exercise and couch potato lifestyle could be that important that I can't change it for 2 weeks.
My usual recipe:
- 5 mins of stretches I learned for fencing.
- Stir in 10-15 minutes of aerobic running, jumping and other foolish looking "on the spot" activities.
- Bake for 10-15 minutes under intense target practice, Foil blade and footwork.
Serve with lots of water.

Nothing too intense or demanding. So I get here and first thing I find out is the 3 three bears must have lived here - only baby bear went off to college and they converted his room into a study. The bed is hard as a board (no good for a side sleeper like me) and the sofa is too soft (a no no for anyone with a bad back), and  as I say, the just right bed got sold on Craigslist. I do night one on Papa bear's stone slab and I opted for the sofa thereafter.

Second change is I go walking a couple of miles a day instead of my usual bounce and stretch. Seemed okay. I'm waking up a bit stiff but nothing a fifth of Stoli and a mouthful of pills can't cure (Kidding! Geez...) Toss in the fact that I'm on my tush all day long, instead of standing as I usually do at my bench and I was up at 1am this morning screeching like a teenager with serious growing pains - the one thing I do recall viscerally from my wasted youth.

My back, legs and neck are so sore that a massage therapist would take one look and quit their job thinking hello PhD dissertation - goodbye trenches.

I did take a ladleful of Tylenol and stretched out on the old bear's Tempurpedic granite doz-o-matic. Things are better but it's 5am. I better create a writing table I can stand at and get my ass running again.

Otherwise, I'll be going home curled up in a fetal position and shipped COD.

The clock ticks on without me

Being in this isolated bubble on my retreat, I'm losing all track of time. Not that I can't tell when it's day or night, morning or dusk. It's just that I don't have a connection to any schedule so I've broken free of the whirring of the clock.

After 2 days of struggling to find a new plot line for an episode, I started writing it all out yesterday. In between I ate, wrote, took a nap, wrote, struggled with words and ideas and went to bed around 10 after a nice chat with my wife. I was up again by 2am reassembling chapters and creating storyboards to pace the plot. By 4 I was ready to sleep and then up again at 8. I have a writer's group meeting with 2 of my students at 10 and then I'm clock free for another 24 hours. I haven't left the building in about 40 hours.

I'll go for a nice walk today and maybe have lunch at the local restaurant, which I hear is terrific. Then I'll settle back in to my rooms to rattle around with my thoughts for who knows how long. Speaking of which....I better get downstairs. My students will be here any minute and I shouldn't be late!

Teaching Creative Writing

The Queset House Library - where we meet.

I started my writing group yesterday morning. They are 3 women, all retired teachers (more may come as the week goes on). One, 84 years old, wants to write memoirs about friends she's known to preserve her still sharp memory of the 1930's. Another, in her 60's, is a Revolutionary War enthusiast and re-enactor and has a rough draft of a novel that bridges modern day and the late 1700's. The third is a fairly new grandmother and wants to create picture books. Talk about three different points on the compass. My work is cut out for the next 2 weeks even if no one else shows up.

The creative challenge for me is to tap the passion of why they want to write. One of the biggest problems for new writers is "finding the time" which usually means finding energy and patience to get down to it. Everyone finds time for what is most important to them, even if it's just watching television.

So I set them each a task to start with, a method to find the heart of their stories and get their imaginations stirred up. Every day I hope to send them away with homework that is just a bit more demanding than the day before so that by the end of our time together, they will working hard without even realizing it.

It may take all the imagination I have to make that happen but that's always the fun part for me.

Sounds of Silence

It was a very strange feeling. As soon as I got on the bus last Friday to come on my 2 week artist retreat, the world instantly fell silent. I waved goodbye to Meredith through the window and my inner voice took over telling me that for 2 weeks there would be no distraction, no talking, no input but the tempo of my thoughts and feelings. It was incredibly calming.

Not that I don't talk with people and Skype my wife. It's just that the whole world I inhabit for 2 weeks has no outside influence. I'm in a bubble where I know no one, have no responsibilities or chores save looking aftr my creature comforts and expressing my thoughts through my writing.

While getting the tour of Queset House, where I occupy the 3rd floor of an empty mansion, I couldn't help feeling a bit like Jack Torrance in The Shining when he toured the Overlook Hotel. Right now there isn't anyone else in the place and the chandeliers are burning brightly on the first floor. I was told there are ghosts here but I think I'm the ghost in this machine. I trip down the servant's stairs onto the street for a morning walk before settling down to writing and pacing and thinking and molding my ideas into a cohesive story.

The quiet solitude is the gift that the Ames Free Library has given me to make this happen.

Living in 1860

Today has been interesting in many ways. Let me describe just one: The Civil War encampment that unfolded on the front lawn of my new temporary home.

A fairly large assembly of dedicated people have recreated costumes, a camp and music down to the buttons, original rifles and drills. I was out front this evening under the stars listening to the banjo pluck, the washboard and spoons rattle and the old man singin' some 200 year old American tunes. All in front of the backdrop of candlelit tents and costumed ladies. It was very nice.

What strikes me most strongly under the petticoats, antique furniture and smell of tallow is just how important this is to these people to bring a bygone era to life. If I relate it to creativity, their dedication to detail calls on a creative intuition about the culture they are immersed in like any historian writing fiction or fact. Right down to the hand stitching. They aren't recreating battles or particular events, just setting the scene and breathing life into it.

For a couple of minutes today they brought me into their dream and it was magic.

Artist-in-Residence for 2 weeks!

I'm headed off on an adventure tomorrow to spend two weeks as "artist in residence" at the Ames library in Easton, Massachusetts. I'm not taking a car so I'll be isolated in the north end of town without a lot of the usual amenities around. Doesn't bother me. I don't leave the house for days as it is.

I'll be hosting a daily creative writing group and working entirely on my book (no flutes, no chasing, no dogs, no pub trivia...) the rest of the time. Working with new writers is a mixed bag. It's not that the writing or ideas are good or bad. The problems run deepest when a writer can't take constructive criticism or want to change anything they've written. Since nine tenths of writing is rewriting, that can be a problem.

Wish me luck! I'll send notes from the road.

Cool house I get to stay in.

The Modern Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde

It's 4:30 in the morning.
I just had a dream where scientists created a DNA strand that could be accessed through the subconscious mind. I don't even know what that means. However, this strand could alter the host's DNA through an hypnotic or dream state.

I still don't know what that means. In the real world, the science of DNA altering is becoming a reality where strands can be clipped with the accuracy of fixing one misspelled word in a multi-volume encyclopedia set. This could stop a cancer growth or, well, start one.

So taking off from there, imagine my virtual DNA strand implanted in the mind and altered through subconscious thought. Perhaps it could change behavior, or release hormones to imbue physical or mental strength. Would it be able to cure MS or other diseases by dreaming it so? Could it change someone temporarily and then dream them back?

Sounds a bit Jekyll and Hyde - which was a dream that Robert Louis Stevenson had one bad night before he wrote it into a book.

Death by Creativity

Today I'm back at the bench trying to get a flute out the door before I go away on a two week retreat (more on that later). This is the "Magic Flute" telling the story of Mozart's opera. It should have been in the hands of it's new owner weeks ago but it had a baffling problem: no matter how solid the padding was, no matter that the tone holes had no leaks, the low notes were weak and unresponsive.

Without going into the long procession of tests key by key down the flute, it turned out that it was suffering from a case of too much creativity. You see, chasing and repoussè are hard on the silver. The process pounds, bends, shapes and distorts the metal to create all the images that tell the flute's story. By the time I got finished, each cup had gone from being round with a flat top (which seats a pad nicely) to misshapen and uneven. This, we surmised, must be allowing enough air to escape so the flute wouldn't play.

That won't do. A flute that looks fabulous but doesn't play is not a flute - it's a statue and a waste of space. In the end, I replaced 7 cups. I soldered the chased tops of the originals onto new perfectly round ones. This made them less of a padding nightmare, making Meredith much happier, saved all the original artwork, making me happy, and reclaiming the beautiful resonant sound of the flute, to make us all happy.

Today I'll buff up the body so it sparkles like new (which it is), we'll run it through a couple of last minute tests and then call up the patient owner so she can come and claim her flute.

Building a Castle

Every fiction writer has to create a set for their characters to live and their action to take place. Most choose real places which are already mapped out and have the added advantage of being familiar to readers. If I mention the great pyramids beyond the city skyline, you know you're in Cairo.

For those of us stupid enough to take you to a place beyond human experience, then we face the task of not only building a reality for our adventure, but also to make it familiar to you when you read it. If Giza is on the horizon we can't have you straddling the pumice moons of Ix, now can we?

Where I'll be living for the foreseeable future....

I've used real cities, cruise ships, refitted submarines and space fleets lost in deep space to tell my stories. Each  time, I got so familiar with the surrounding that I could walk them blindfolded. During the writing of a mystery set in Chicago, my wife and I went there to see the places I'd written about. I'd studied maps and travel books (long before there was an internet) so thoroughly, I navigated the streets as if it were my home town even though I'd never been there before. Shocked the hell out of us both.

The task I face this time is inventing a city from thin air. I need a real place, but it can't be somewhere anyone has been: an urban 'anywhere USA'. I took a Mapquest street map of a real city neighborhood, reversed it, stretched it out, deleted a couple of interstate exits, etc. and then renamed all the major streets.

That was just the first step. Time to populate it with buildings and schools and churches and housing projects - the backdrop to things that happen. I can't make these places up as I go along: the Hotel Grenadine can't be on Staple Street one day and Lexicon the next.

So here I am building schools and housing projects like a regular town planner. Where is the 'downtown' in this place and what is the median income? Are there homeless? Where is the wealth and historic center? Is there a factory or business core here, or is the city center elsewhere? I've named all the surrounding neighborhoods, too, and know exactly how what streets to take where the traffic is lightest.

Once I have this down, like I know my own craggy face, I can drop my hero in watch him run wild. Oh yeah...I better give him some other people to play with.

Lego as an Artform

I took yesterday off (gasp!) and built a Lego fortress for my grandson. He has all sorts of prefab kits with robots, cars and reconstructions of his favorite TV shows. But once the model fell apart, he has no idea what to do with the loose bits.

Me? I'm a recovering Legoholic. The sound of pawing through the plastic bricks is as comforting as a crackling fire on a winter's day and stimulating as chocolate. As a kid, I built any and everything from Lego.

Lego c1960s

There were no kits modeled after popular movies and TV. We thought stuff up and designed it on the fly. Once a friend and I decided to use every piece that we'd collected on one giant creation. It took two long days to built a castle that filled a table top and rose two feet in the air complete with towers, drawbridge, moat, dragons and catapults. (We were both well over 30 yrs old at the time)

Getting together with a 12 year old nephew to play Legos many years ago I asked, "What should we build?" He instantly hauled out a handful of instruction book Lego projects from the Millennium Falcon to Pirates of the Caribbean.  "No no no. Let's make something up. You tell me what you want and we'll do it." My brother worried that his son preferred organized models and we should stick to the instructions. "That's no fun," I replied. They both looked dubious.

 

Over the next hour or so we built a glorious pirate ship with a high poop deck, three masts, cannon hatches with cannon at the ready, sailors on deck and trimmed to sail. She was fully 2 feet stem to stern and 3 high to the crows nest. Neither Liam nor his father could fathom how I got from a pile of bits and bobs to this amazing creation without any help.

Lego sets now

We often say that kids are losing their sense of imagination and creativity because video games and toys are giving them everything pre-made. I'm not sure that's the case, although I've bemoaned it myself at times. Creative kids will be creative, no matter what they start with. Prearranged models and games only make it easier for the others to enjoy the same stuff a bit more. 

For those of us on the weird track, all these special kits just give us a wider variety of shapes and pieces to invent from.

"Where do you get your ideas"

That's the big question every fiction writer gets asked---constantly. At least once during every classroom visit, at every reading and every time you meet someone who read your stuff. My mother, Janet Lunn, a popular Canadian children's writer for 50 years, still doesn't know how to answer it. "Under a rock", "In the back garden", "From my imagination", "Thin air" all get tried but never satisfy. We've laughed together in exasperation at not being able to answer a question about something that comes naturally to us both.

I recently read "How The Mind Works" where the cognitive scientist Steven Pinker's posits the foundation of human brain development as entirely the result of Darwinian natural selection. For the most part it is fascinating anthropological sociology. But when he touches on creativity, he speaks only to basic human intuitiveness stating that we're all creative simply because each of us can figure out why the light goes out when the fridge door closes [my example]. He points out, rightly, that the distance between Einstein and a simpleton is minuscule compared to either from a chimpanzee. School teachers insist that we're all creative because we can splash paint on paper in ways that no one else might. Neither of these explains why some people create original thought from nothing while others can not.

I can't explain it, either. I've raised 5 children and none of them shares this, no matter how hard and long I've tried to nurture it. They see the world from a literal plane and original conceptual invention is beyond them, as it is for the majority of humanity.

In the end we may never understand what sparks creativity. The best anecdote I have for how baffling it is comes from a comment my mother made while editing my book "The Aquanauts". Referring to a particular science fiction concept I'd created, she asked in all seriousness, "Where did you get that idea?"

Took me completely by surprise. "Someone left it on the doorstep," I replied. 

I think I hear a sandwich calling my name...

Today I'm facing a blank page on several fronts  - supposedly the artist's biggest nightmare. I just finished reinventing my website, a batch of custom jewelry and some subcontracting work. Now I have an open road in front of me with 3 big blank walls looking for fresh paint.

The first is designing a flute that depicts the Chronicles of Narnia on the keys. Daunting enough if there was only one story to tell but the adventures of C.S.Lewis's fantasy span 7 books! How do I render that down to 20 images in silver? I could just highlight characters or scenes, but that's not 'telling a story on a flute'. So there's challenge number one before I even get close to any actual drawing.

The second blank page is the adventure story serial I'm trying to create and write - that I've had to put aside for months while I took care of other things. These stories are about exlpoits of an unusual superhero - a Real Life Super Hero (this is a real thing - google it). So, not only am I trying to create a whole world for my character, I'm also trying to invent a sub-genre of the superhero realm. How's that for a writer's block challenge!

Number three: this blog. I just set myself up to require a new piece of writing every day of the week. If that don't stress a body out, tell me what does.

I'm fortunate in that I've never had serious writer's block [knock knock). Probably because I've had too many diverse projects whizzing around my brain at the same time and jump from one to the other when I get stuck. But creative inspiration doesn't come at the turn of a tap and here I am this a.m. looking at my screen and wondering if I should clean the bathroom or scroll through Facebook.

He Wishes For The Cloths Of Heaven

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,

Enwrought with golden and silver light,

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

Of night and light and the half-light,

I would spread the cloths under your feet:

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

                                    William Butler Yeats

I discovered this poem when I was 12 or 13 and it spoke to me so clearly that has been my mantra ever since. Inside my addled noodle, all I really have is my imagination and dreams to offer the world, my family and my friends.

As I sail perilously close to 60 and look over my shoulder in my wake, I see that my dreams were always my Pole Star guiding me through life on my terms. I dreamt of flutes and stories and art free from conventional constraints and raised a family with imagination and love.

These pages won't focus on one topic or part of my life. Instead, I'll share what makes up the most important part of my day: my ideas, dreams and crazy thoughts. The stuff that makes me come alive.

So, if you'll tread softly, please come in.