creativity

Expression and creativity in a world without a soul

Here is an inspiring post from writer, photographer, and observer of nature, Michael Graeme. His blog is always worth a visit!
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The Rivendale Review

“The arts put man at the centre of the universe, whether he belongs there or not. Military science, on the other hand, treats man as garbage – and his children, and his cities, too. Military science is probably right about the contemptibility of man in the vastness of the universe. Still – I deny that contemptibility, and I beg you to deny it, through the creation of appreciation of art.”

Kurt Vonnegut -1970

Unless you’re already some sort of celebrity, it’s a well established fact the arts are no way to make a living. But what they do for the ordinary Joe and Joanna, is make living meaningful, or even just bearable. It brings each of us back to the centre of our universe. It may be there is nothing to life and death, nor anything beyond it, and all our stories to the contrary are wishful thinking. But…

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Retread #7: Gardening is Like Writing (and vice versa)

We’re still in the throes of painting the living room, after living with ugliness for nearly 27 years. (More than a quarter century!) The project has finally reached the actual painting stage, after weeks of surface prep. (Painting Secret #1: Surface prep takes way longer than painting, especially in old houses). So I’m still mining old posts. This one is from October 2013.

While cleaning up the debris from a recent windstorm [in October 2013], I thought, “This is sort of like editing — removing elements that obscure the beauties of the garden, analogous to deleting superfluous prose that obscures the niceties of plot and character.”

So are there other similarities [between gardening and writing]?

Scads of them: both are acts of creation, both involve a certain artistry, faith, hope, hard work and luck. Different types of gardens (herb, vegetable, rose, and rock gardens, for example) are analogous to fiction genres such as mystery, fantasy, and romance. Planning and planting a garden is very like starting to write a novel. There is an intention, but the conclusion is by no means guaranteed. Bad weather and the gardener’s lack of skill can prevent a happy outcome; in writing, the same results from the writer’s lack of skill and consequent lapse in enthusiasm. The metaphors of pruning and weeding as editing are obvious.

The difference is that a garden consists of living things. A failed garden is not a barren one; it’s just taken over by opportunistic plants, a.k.a. weeds. A failed novel is just a static text file or unvisited pile of paper. (The paper may eventually turn into a kind of compost heap, but that’s another issue).

That’s the most important difference between the two, I think. A gardener works in the whirl of the natural world. Weather, bugs, birds, deer, squirrels and raccoons leave their marks. Plants grow with incredible vigor or die unexpectedly. The garden changes in ways unintended by the gardener. Out there, I know I am not working alone.

In the writing room, there’s just me and my imagination. If I don’t spin something up from the black well, there is no progress. Yes, sometimes my characters have wills of their own. Sometimes dialogue writes itself. Sometimes the plot goes off in an unexpected direction. Writing in the white heat of obsession is an amazing experience. But I have to be present and willing to work, or nothing happens.

Gardening is real. There is nothing more real than dirt under the fingernails and the scent of lilies on a July evening. Virtual gardening is an impossibility; you have to get away from the screen. And writing, I’m coming to realize, is the same, for me anyway. In order to create original, long-form prose, I need hours of off-screen time, but achieving it is a lot harder than stepping out the door and picking up a spade, rake or set of clippers. I don’t know how to kindle the spark of obsession that makes writing the first priority.

Then there’s the question of success. Can a writer claim to be successful if no one reads or appreciates their work? I don’t think so. But I don’t care what anyone thinks of my garden. People do say nice things about it, and I like that, but if no one saw it or commented on it, I wouldn’t care. As long as I see beauty there at regular intervals, and healthy plants going through their annual cycles, I know I have success as a gardener. But in the absence of positive signals from others about my writing, it’s really hard to convince myself that I’m a good writer. And there is no simple way to elicit those positive signals. If you give someone a basket of vine-ripened, homegrown tomatoes, they are apt to thank you and praise your generosity. A 500 page novel, on the other hand, is a gift that demands [the receiver’s time and attention], and [it] does not always result in squeals of delight.

I was a gardener before I became a writer, and I will be a gardener as long as I am physically able, but I’m not sure I’ll always be a writer. The garden wins in the end.

Now, in 2019, I no longer believe that a piece of writing is nothing more than marks on paper or electronic blips on a screen. Writing is spun out of the writer’s brain, heart, and spirit, just as plants come from soil, water, and sunlight. Until the words are written down they are intangible, but no less organic for that. The marks and blips are only the medium.

And in 2013 I forgot to mention how well the physical aspect of gardening complements writing. It gets me away from the desk and computer, outside into Nature, and makes me pay attention to flowers, scents, and creatures. The exercise I get from gardening isn’t like a gym workout or going for a run. It’s incidental to the main activity, which may be raking leaves, shovelling compost, hefting the 20 kg sack of magic dust, holding a balanced position while tying a string to a stake, or bending and straightening in order to weed, plant, or just check on what’s going on.

While I’m in the garden, the writing part of my brain enters an inactive but receptive state in which new ideas can emerge without any pressure to crank out words. The trick, of course, is to remember them, but that’s easily done by means of a grubby little notebook and pencil stub in the pocket.

For me, gardening and writing are the perfect combination. Summer is prime time for gardening, and winter is ideal for writing. Dormant ideas can mature while I weed and deadhead, to grow and bloom in the dark time of the year.

manuscript and notebook She Who Comes Forth work in progress

Seeds and Notes

Ever since midsummer, I’ve been saving seeds. First, the dark blue delphinium finished its first flush of bloom and formed seed pods on the single stalk I didn’t cut down. Then the aconite “Stainless Steel,” which goes dormant soon after it finishes blooming. This year it produced some seeds before checking out, so I saved a few. Then the irresistible chunky seeds of the mysterious and beautiful cerinthe “Pride of Gibraltar.” I made sure to retrieve a few before they fell (I’m anticipating random seedlings to pop up soon; the problem is they don’t always survive the winter). Last week I cut the plants down and shook out the remaining seeds onto a white cloth. Now I have more than enough to keep this intriguing plant going in my garden.

I even squeezed out some tomato seeds and kept them and their attached pulp sitting around in a jar, supposedly fermenting, a supposedly necessary process. I’m pretty sure the seeds I grew this year’s tomato plants from were ones I dried and packaged several years ago, without any fermentation. We’ll see if the new ones are viable when spring rolls around again.

I collected various other seeds in my garden and elsewhere. Libertia peregrinans, for example — a plant I’ve lusted after for years but haven’t managed to find in commerce. Last summer I encountered some in a boulevard planting and nabbed a single seed pod. And I bought a packet of seeds of our native Pacific Coast Irises while touring a notable local garden. These two plants will be new to me, so both a challenge and (maybe) a thrill.

I’m actually of mixed minds about saving seeds. Putting them in labelled envelopes is only a beginning, not a completion. Saving seeds means I can grow an annual again next year, or grow more perennials if I want to. They do peter out or meet with misfortunes, so it’s reassuring to know I have a handful of their descendants safe in an envelope.

But seeds in an envelope don’t turn into plants all by themselves. Unless I remember them at the correct time of year and expose them to conditions that will cause them to germinate, they’ll just sit in their envelopes until they lose their viability. Turning seeds into plants means rounding up suitable containers and soil mix, putting the seeds on or in the soil, and exposing them to light (or not) at the optimal temperature for germination. And germination is only the beginning. Tiny seedlings need a lot of attention if they’re not to expire from damping off, drying out, or lack of adequate light. And that’s while they’re still in their first little pot in the house. Further operations are needed before a mature, healthy plant is added to the garden.

Story ideas in notebooks are like saved seeds. Just as the seeds are unrealized potential until planted in damp earth, the ideas are dead scribbles until they are unpacked and spun out in words. The seeds I gathered will be safe in their envelopes and repurposed pill bottles until next spring, but I will use the dark time of year to revisit and ponder my story ideas, eventually setting pen to paper to begin the process of creation. The requirements for success are more nebulous than those for growing plants. Time and stillness, the right music, an overheard remark, the light falling through the window at the perfect angle, the caprices of mood and mind. Maybe something will come of these conjunctions — ideas that will bloom and bear fruit in the form of stories, or even another novel. Maybe.

Obsession is the Wellspring

Last Wednesday evening, Victoria artist and writer Robert Amos spoke to members of the Victoria Writers’ Society about his joyful obsession with Finnegan’s Wake, James Joyce’s mystifying novel which has flummoxed countless readers and spawned innumerable academic dissertations. An eloquent speaker, Mr. Amos described the beginnings of his preoccupation with Joyce’s novel and how it eventually flowered into a wealth of creative works, including a handwritten short-line transcription of Finnegan’s Wake, calligraphic quotations from it on painted paper, and wonderful calligraphy scrolls in the tradition of that art as practiced in Asia.

Robert Amos has also recorded himself reading Finnegan’s Wake in its entirety — twice. He emphasized that the work was really an enormously long poem, rooted in the oral tradition, and therefore best comprehended by listening rather than reading from a text. He recommended that writers try moving their words from one creative medium to another — from printed text to calligraphy, or to music. This deepens one’s appreciation of them and transforms them into new works.

Listening to Mr. Amos reading from Finnegan’s Wake and describing its incredible complexity, I kept thinking that if Joyce were a new author in the present day, he would have the devil of a time finding a publisher willing to take a chance on this work. I expressed this opinion during the question period following the talk, and no one disagreed.

So what did I take away from this informative and entertaining talk? Reinforcement for my belief that writers would do well to resist the compulsion to distort or truncate their works solely for the purpose of making them fit a formula or a set of rules propounded on behalf of the legendary tired, overworked editor who needs to get through the slush pile before night falls on the wicked.

I’m not advocating sloppy writing here. Prose must be honed, sharpened and polished like the best of Damocles’ swords. And if one wants to be published by a “real” publisher, it goes without saying that one must play by the rules set out for the willing and submissive author. But for those whose works don’t seem to fit any mold, there are other avenues now. It is no longer a choice between The Rules Writers Must Obey and the pile of manuscripts slowly turning into cellulose fragments in the fabled bottom drawer. Now there is self-publishing on the internet, including Smashwords, that great salon des refuses in the electronic ether. Making this project happen seems to be the obsession of its founder, Mark Coker, a tireless advocate for electronic self-publishing.

Obsession — that’s the other thing I was reminded of by Robert Amos — creative obsession, not the pathological kind (although who knows where one becomes the other). In my experience, almost any worthwhile creative work is fueled by some sort of irrational compulsion. Writing that is compelled in this way is far easier than that which is done under external pressures such as deadlines or obligations. Note that I don’t say that such writing is better, only that it flows more easily. At some point the writer has to go back and revise, again and again. But writing a first draft in a state of happy obsession produces raw material for revision far more readily than anything else. It’s the opposite of writer’s block — one can’t wait to get back to it, stealing time from work to scribble down snatches of dialogue, losing track of conversations while visualizing a new scene. Aside from anything else, this state is a deeply joyous one. It is, however, difficult to share with others. The experience of creative obsession is most often solitary. The thing to be shared, eventually, is the finished work, and in this I’ve always thought that visual artists and artisans have an advantage over us writers. It is far easier to ask someone to admire a painting or hand-knitted sweater than a 100,000 word novel. “Wow, that sure is a big pile of paper!” isn’t quite the reaction you want.

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Elements and Transformations