inspiration

4 Completely Scientific Ways To Know If Your Content Is Compelling

by

This post by Jennifer Miller originally appeared on Fast Company’s Co.Create on 9/23/14.

What makes for compelling art? Any creator who has given half a thought to paying the rent, or achieving immortality, has considered what makes art sell. We know that the notion of quality–the idea that “the best” art and marketing and media reaches the most people–is insufficient to explain what gives some creations mass appeal. So why do people–large number of people–find books, ads, movies and art works compelling? How can we know, ahead of time, what will pique our curiosity and sustain our interest? Jim Davies, an associate professor at Carleton University’s Institute of Cognitive Science and director of the Science of Imagination Laboratory wanted to find out. The result is a theory of compellingness, outlined in his book Riveted: The Science of Why Jokes Make Us Laugh, Movies Make Us Cry, and Religion Makes Us Feel One with the Universe.

Davies’s entry point into what makes art riveting, however, did not start with an analysis of best-seller lists or top-40 charts. He came to the question of compellingness through the one thing in human experience that has inspired passionate feelings (good and bad) in the majority of the world’s population: religion. “Unless a religion is compelling in some way, it’s not going to take off,” he says. “Religion has explanations, stories, rituals, and that all caters to our basic psychological proclivities.” Today, he says, we treat old religions, like the Greek myths, as though they are works of art. “Those were stories that people wholeheartedly believed. Even an atheist can look at stories from Bible and admit that they’re good stories.” So what makes religion, and its compelling counterpart, art, truly riveting? And what impact will that have on the way we create and consume culture?

 

Click here to read the full post on Co.Create.

 

How to Appropriate by Not Really Trying: An Author’s Guide to Writing Socially Marginalized Communities in Romance

by

This post by Heidi Cullinan originally appeared on her blog on 9/23/14.

I hate to start a post with a dictionary definition, but this topic needs every card laid out on the table. Let’s begin with the beginning. Appropriation is the act of using something that doesn’t belong to you as if it does.

Authors do this hourly. It’s practically our job: we’re professional pretenders. In my published career alone, I’ve appropriated more than I have time to list, but let’s tick off a few. Long-distance truck drivers. Pawn shop owners. Ballet dancers. Football players. Poker players. Italians.

Drag queens. Practitioners of BDSM. Persons with OCD and autism. Transgender women. Gay men.

Some of these things are not like the other. If a poker player reads Double Blind and feels I got something wrong, their personal injury goes no deeper than annoyance, possibly with a side order of irritation. The same goes for the truck drivers and football players and Italian families. None of these groups currently experience deep prejudice. If I screw up when I borrow them for my work, the egg is on my face alone, and they have every right to call me on it. They will do this from a position of if not privilege, at least a confidence in their semi-comfortable place in our common culture.

If I misrepresent the groups italicized above, matters change quickly. Every group listed have been significantly marginalized by the societies in which they exist, and by simply declaring themselves part of that community, the members experience prejudice, social stigma, and often outright abuse. If I screw up when writing about these groups, not only do I have egg on my face, I contribute further harm and insult to persons already bearing a full plate of social struggle. If they simply hear about it happening, that’s bad enough. But if they purchase my book to see themselves represented in a positive way, and I slap them in the face? That’s bad. That’s very, very bad.

 

Click here to read the full post on Heidi Cullinan’s blog.

 

Want to Successfully Publish? First, Are You a “Real” Writer?

by

This post by Kristen Lamb originally appeared on her blog on 9/15/14.

For many writers (me included), we don’t start off with the confidence to yell to the world, “I’m going to be a professional author!” Heck, I wrote a 178,000 word “novel” and still didn’t believe I was a writer. Later, I had over a year and a half of consistent blogging under my belt, multiple short stories, and newbie novels that had been at least good enough to win prestigious contests and yet….

I was not a “real writer.”

Schrödinger Writer? If you put a writer in an office at a keyboard, is the writer alive or dead (real or fake) until the book is published?

 

We’ve Come a LONG Way, Baby

The literary landscape has shifted dramatically. More avenues of publishing have opened and become appealing, thus this silly question of, “Are we a real writer?” holds far less power. Believe it or not, when I began blogging, I dedicated countless posts to answering this very question. In retrospect, I did it for me as much as for others.

I’ve always asserted that we are what we do. What is our primary career focus (beyond a necessary day job)? The second we sit at a keyboard and write, we are writers. Yet, as my first “novel” glaringly illustrates, we might not yet be a “good writer.”

 

Click here to read the full post on Kristen Lamb’s blog.

 

The Inspiration Drought

by

This post by Ed Finn originally appeared on Slate/Future Tense on 9/16/14.

Why our science fiction needs new dreams.

This piece is part of Future Tense, a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University. On Thursday, Oct. 2, Future Tense will host an event in Washington, D.C., on science fiction and public policy, inspired by the new anthology Hieroglyph: Stories & Visions for a Better Future. For more information on the event and to RSVP, visit the New America website; for more on Hieroglyph, visit the website of ASU’s Project Hieroglyph.

Why are all our narratives about the future 50 years old? We seem to be recycling big ideas as if we live in an inspiration drought. We’ve retooled Star Trek so many times, it’s starting to look like one of those 1957 Chevrolets still cruising the streets of Havana.

One reason is that writing about the near future is hard to do convincingly. Imagining life 10 or 20 years down the road requires placing the same big bets that science fiction always makes (in the future, we will all wear matching leotards!) but provides an incredibly short runway to get from now to then.

Storytellers can play it safe by depending on tropes that we have already been trained to expect: In the future people will use phasers and doors will swish open with a satisfying noise. We make a comfortable nest of assumptions and “rules,” allowing everyone to get on with the tale of young love or the hero’s journey.

 

Click here to read the full article on Slate/Future Tense.

 

On Death and Writing

by

This post by Ksenia Anske originally appeared on her blog on 9/6/14.

I have blogged about death before. When Philip Seymour Hoffman died (here is that post), and when I came across a man on the highway who was hit by a truck minutes ago and died (here is that post), and when I was hit by a truck and didn’t die but woke up in the hospital with a bloody face and half of my body bruised black (here is THAT post).

Joan Rivers died 2 days ago, and multiple tweets about it made me look her up. Yes, I have heard her name. No, I didn’t really know who she was. It took for her to die, for me to discover her. Her biting wit, which I immediately fell in love with, and her heritage. Turns out, she was born to Russian parents. I was wondering what was so appealing to me in her humor. It’s the sharp unapologetic truth and the stabbing hilariousness and the bitter charm that I have in my blood, yet am still afraid to let go. Thank you, Joan, for showing me that I can. You told me that I can say what I think, through comedy. What would I have done without you dying? You can punch me in the face from comedic heaven for saying this, because you must be the queen of it now. I’m convinced of it.

 

Click here to read the full post on Ksenia Anske’s blog.

 

Creativity Creep

by

This editorial by Joshua Rothman originally appeared on The New Yorker on 9/2/14.

Every culture elects some central virtues, and creativity is one of ours. In fact, right now, we’re living through a creativity boom. Few qualities are more sought after, few skills more envied. Everyone wants to be more creative—how else, we think, can we become fully realized people?

Creativity is now a literary genre unto itself: every year, more and more creativity books promise to teach creativity to the uncreative. A tower of them has risen on my desk—Ed Catmull and Amy Wallace’s “Creativity, Inc.”; Philip Petit’s “Creativity: The Perfect Crime”—each aiming to “unleash,” “unblock,” or “start the flow” of creativity at home, in the arts, or at work. Work-based creativity, especially, is a growth area. In “Creativity on Demand,” one of the business-minded books, the creativity guru Michael Gelb reports on a 2010 survey conducted by I.B.M.’s Institute for Business Values, which asked fifteen hundred chief executives what they valued in their employees. “Although ‘execution’ and ‘engagement’ continue to be highly valued,” Gelb reports, “the CEOs had a new number-one priority: creativity,” which is now seen as “the key to successful leadership in an increasingly complex world.” Meanwhile, at the other end of the spectrum, Julia Cameron’s best-selling “The Artist’s Way” proposes creativity as a path to personal, even spiritual fulfillment: “The heart of creativity is an experience of the mystical union,” Cameron writes. “The heart of the mystical union is an experience of creativity.” It’s a measure of creativity’s appeal that we look to it to solve such a wide range of problems. Creativity has become, for many of us, the missing piece in a life that seems routinized, claustrophobic, and frivolous.

How did we come to care so much about creativity? The language surrounding it, of unleashing, unlocking, awakening, developing, flowing, and so on, makes it sound like an organic and primordial part of ourselves which we must set free—something with which it’s natural to be preoccupied. But it wasn’t always so; people didn’t always care so much about, or even think in terms of, creativity.

 

Click here to read the full editorial on The New Yorker.

 

Stephen King, the Threat That Hangs Over All Writers

by

This post by Jessica Aspen originally appeared on her site on 8/21/14.

I’ve started writing ghost stories. Gothic romances of vulnerable heroines, desperate heroes, and scary haunted ghosts. I have an extensive reading background in Gothic romance and I love it, so it’s easy for me to create the spooky house, the dark and stormy night, and the hero who might be a threat.

What isn’t so easy for me was writing the ghost. But luckily I have my own ghost lurking behind me, Stephen King. Not that my little haunted holiday romance is anything like Stephen King’s writing. It’s not. Not at all. Don’t pick it up thinking it is. But more to the point, Stephen King is what scares me.

I’m so terrified of him that I’ve never even read one of his fiction books. Just the idea of reading Cujo or Pet Cemetery makes my palms tingle and my knees weak. I know I won’t sleep. I know I’ll be afraid to even turn off the light.

 

Click here to read the full post on Jessica Aspen’s site.

 

Confessions of a Bad Writer Gone Good

by

This post by Julia Scott originally appeared on The Huffington Post on 9/2/14.

There is a certain kind of bad writing that occurs when you are between the ages of 16 and 24 and have an audience of one. ‘Self-indulgent’ doesn’t begin to describe it, and in fact to do so would minimize the intense feeling of urgency of budding writers of a certain age who feel called to bear witness to our years of transition. From falling in love to falling apart, the themes are big and the feelings are bigger. It’s all so overwhelming. The only way to get a grip on the given moment – to slow it down long enough to see it pass — is to write it.

I want to experience LIFE viscerally, but at the same time step back and think about it all.

That’s a line from a journal entry I wrote as a trembling, sensitive 19-year old on the eve of my 20th birthday, rediscovered nearly 15 years later whilst looking through the diary pages of my sad, anxious year abroad in Paris. The ink was green on yellowed stationary, and as I read it, I remembered walking the streets of that indifferent city as a virginal college junior — the dank wetness of winter, the diesel fumes, the existential fear of failure that leveled me for hours on my thin cot in the drafty boarding house I shared with a hundred other women, run by nuns.

 

Click here to read the full post on The Huffington Post.

 

DON'T Do What You Love

by

This post by Rachel Nabors originally appeared on Medium on 8/19/14.

I don’t like advice like “Do what you love and the money will follow.” Not because it isn’t true, but because it’s a monkey’s paw: it’s true under the right circumstances with the right people, and for everyone else, it’s just bad advice.

I used to make comics for a living (these comics, right here), and I gave out similar advice and professed similar goals: If I just tried hard enough, I’d make it doing what I love, making comics for a living. If anyone was less successful then I was, well, they must not have been trying hard enough.

To an extent it worked! I won awards, had hordes of fan girls, a weekly syndicated web comic I got paid for (very well by comic industry standards, too). I thought I was doing great doing what I love.

And then it all ended.

I needed surgery.

And I didn’t have health insurance.

Almost overnight the series shut down. My fans and friends ran a Herculean donation effort for me, but it wasn’t enough. I quit comics and went into web development, something I’d enjoyed doing to support my web comics presence, but I wouldn’t say I loved it. Not then.

 

Life after surgery.

 

Click here to read the full post on Medium.

 

How to Write a Book or Blog (The 6 Danger Stages You Need To Overcome)

by

This post by Ali Luke originally appeared on Write to Done on 7/24/14.

You’ve probably had the experience of starting a novel or blog with great intentions…

…only to find that, a few months later, you’ve barely made any progress.

Maybe you started strong but lost momentum.

Maybe you jumped ahead when you should’ve paused.

Or maybe you got discouraged and gave up.

And you wonder: how to write a book (or blog).

I’ve coached many writers in workshop groups over the past few years, and I’ve noticed that there are six key stages when projects often stall or go wrong.

Here’s what to watch out for.

 

Danger Stage #1: Once You’ve Got a Great Idea

Let’s say you’ve got a new idea you’re excited about. Perhaps it’s a great premise for a novel, a topic for a blog, or a prompt you want to work on for a short story.

Writers tend to make one of two mistakes here:

They jump straight in, full of enthusiasm, without planning. They make a great start, and might get a few chapters into the novel or a few posts into a blog…but then they get stuck.

They wait – and wait – until the “perfect moment” to begin actually writing. They put off starting until they’ve got past family commitments and a busy spell at work…or they read about their chosen field of writing without getting any words down on paper.

 

Click here to read the full post on Write to Done.

 

Five Great Ways To Combat Writer’s Block

by

This post by blurb staff originally appeared on blurb on 8/8/14.

You’re sitting at your computer, staring at a blank document. You’re poised in front of your notebook, but can’t seem to move your pen. Sound familiar? Writer’s block strikes again. But you don’t have to suffer for long. Great writers throughout the years have faced this problem and come up with clever tricks to get the words flowing again. If you’re having trouble getting your writing project finished (or started) here is some advice to get you going.

1) Just start typing or writing
It really doesn’t matter what you’re saying, as long as you’re saying something. Simply typing the same word over and over again, the simple motion of typing with your fingers, can force your brain to come up with something clever eventually.

“What I try to do is write. I may write for two weeks ‘the cat sat on the mat, that is that, not a rat.’ And it might be just the most boring and awful stuff. But I try. When I’m writing, I write. And then it’s as if the muse is convinced that I’m serious and says, ‘Okay. Okay. I’ll come.’” — Maya Angelou

Even drawing or doodling—just moving your pen around on paper—can set your imagination going. Consider writing captions for your drawings, word bubbles for pictures of people talking, anything and everything that simply gets words on paper.

 

2) Pretend you’re writing for yourself

 

Click here to read the full post on blurb.

 

14 Books That Change When You Reread Them Later in Life

by

This post by Andrea Romano originally appeared on Mashable on 8/17/14.

As you get older, you start seeing the world a little differently — the same goes for the books you read.

Whether it was a book you were forced to read in sophomore English class or your favorite childhood novel, some literary classics have a strange way of changing when we revisit them as adults. For better or worse, things just can’t stay the same.

You may find yourself rereading these familiar titles a little differently once you’ve started writing your own life chapters. It’s funny what a little life experience can do.

 

1. Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

When you’re 15, you totally understand Holden Caulfield’s angst and isolation. However, reread this literary classic in your thirties and you start to roll your eyes every time this protagonist calls someone a “phony.”

 

2. The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein

The heartwarming story of the self-sacrificing tree that gave everything it had to provide for the boy it loved becomes a slightly sad and disturbing story when you gain a more worldly perspective. As the boy takes more and more from the tree in the story, you start to think, “how about some quid pro quo?”

 

Click here to read the full post on Mashable.

 

Ten Things You Should Know About HP Lovecraft

by

This post by Sian Cain originally appeared on The Guardian Books Blog on 8/20/14.

Howard Phillips Lovecraft was born on this day in 1890. We celebrate his birthday with 10 titbits about the father of weird and wonderful horror

1. Both his mother and father were separately committed to the same mental institution

Winfield Scott Lovecraft was committed to Butler Hospital after being diagnosed with psychosis when HP Lovecraft was only three years old. He died in 1898, when HP was eight. To this day, rumours persist that Winfield had syphilis, but neither HP nor his mother ever displayed symptoms.

Sarah Susan Phillips Lovecraft was later committed to Butler in 1919. She remained in close correspondence with her son for two years, until she died of complications after surgery.

 

2. He wanted to be a professional astronomer but never finished high school

As a sickly child, Lovecraft only attended school sporadically and was essentially self-educated. He was drawn to astronomy and chemistry, and the writings of gothic authors such as Edgar Allan Poe. Due to what he termed a “nervous breakdown”, Lovecraft never finished high school and instead only dabbled informally in his passions.

 

3. He rarely went out in public during daylight

 

Click here to read the full post on The Guardian Books Blog.

 

Pursuing the Creative Muse

by

This post by J. Cafesin originally appeared on the Cafe 42 blog on 2/18/14.

How do you get good at anything?
Practice.

How do you get great?
Obsession—Practice most all the time.

Pick any famous author, artist, musician, and they’ll all have obsession in common. And while we, the public, enjoy the fruits of their creative labor, those closest to these individuals were/are generally left wanting.

Charles Schulz, creator of the Peanuts comic strip, “was an indifferent and often inattentive father and husband.”

Rod Serling, of Twilight Zone fame, “worked 12 hours a day seven days a week, [and] his wife, Carol, tended to their daughters, Jodi and Anne.”

Adrienne Armstrong, wife of Billy Joe Armstrong of Greenday said of her husband after the release of the album American Idiot, “I think it challenged us to a new level, pushed us pretty far, the farthest I ever want to go.”

The creatives above are all men. All married and all had/have children.

Now let’s explore a few famous women.

 

Click here to read the full post on the Cafe 42 blog.

 

Why Write?

by

This post by Cathy Fyock originally appeared on The Working Writer’s Club on 8/14/14.

Getting clear on the purpose for your writing is one of the significant hurdles to getting your book completed. If you don’t know how you’ll use your book in your business, you may miss the mark or fail to leverage the full value of your authorship.
By being clear on how your book will benefit you and your business, you’ll find that you can justify the necessary time to write it. You’ll also find that identifying your purpose will provide fuel for your motivation and drive.

Look at the list below and determine which of these benefits of writing a book will fuel your motivation for getting your book completed. And, be sure to add to this blog by commenting [beneath the original post, here] on the benefits you plan to derive (or are currently receiving) from authorship.

To give to prospects as a “calling card”

To help sell your professional services

To establish your credibility

To gain media exposure

 

Click here to read the full post, which includes MANY more specific reasons for writing and publishing, on The Working Writer’s Club.