How to Cook Up New Stuff

From an article in Vogue on the design of a pocketbook:
"To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk."

I agree about the pile of junk, whether it's tangible junk or odds and ends of ideas and memories. I think we all have a good imagination, and when we sit and play with junk, that natural inventiveness kicks in.


If you like this post, please bookmark it on del.icio.us, share it on StumbleUpon, vote for it on Digg. Thanks so much.

Shut Up and Make the Movies?

Woody Allen thinks it's better not to think about one's creativity.

He summed up this philosophy in an interview on NPR: "Shut up and make the movies."

I can see his point. At the same time, I find the subject of how-to-enhance-creativity fascinating, and some of the things I've learned from my reading and discussions have helped me.

I also know it's possible to avoid "making the movies" by reading about the process instead, or reading one's own press. Out of fear of that, I've read fewer of the classic books about writing than I otherwise might have. As is so often true, it's a matter of each individual finding her/his balance.

What has your experience been with finding this balance?

I find that my perfect ratio shifts quite a bit from time to time. And that discussion with my weekly writing group and on this blog are currently the right amount of talk for me.

I don't plan to shut up.


If you like this post, please bookmark it on del.icio.us, share it on StumbleUpon, vote for it on Digg. Thanks so much.

An Inspiring Movie

Please see Juno. The movie.

It's full of characters who speak their minds--and so interestingly. Especially the leading lass, 16 year old pregnant Juno.

Also her father, who at a key moment says: "Freedom is not a choice that the world encourages." (I think I have that right. I wasn't taking notes.) This movie encourages honesty, of the gutsy rather than the petty kind.

If you see it, I'd love to hear here what you think.


If you like this post, please bookmark it on del.icio.us, share it on StumbleUpon, vote for it on Digg. Thanks so much.

Fake It Until You Make It

A few blocks from my office a venerable Krispy Kreme doughnut store shows off its bakery through a large interior window. You can watch the whole process of doughnut creation while you're throwing down a few with a cup of coffee.

Yesterday my office partner Carrie came in and suggested that we get a Krispy Kreme-type device installed in our office doors. Each morning as we pass through the doorways we would be showered and frosted with confidence, as if it were the sugaring stage of doughnut manufacture.

One could argue that this would create only an exterior coating.

My answer to that is the familiar saying:
Fake it until you make it.

Confident behavior is treated like confidence by the outside world. When that happens, real confidence grows. It's also true that what's applied to the outside starts, after a while, to sink in.

Anyone who has ever eaten a Krispy Kreme doughnut knows that they taste pretty sweet all the way through.



If you like this post, please bookmark it on del.icio.us, share it on StumbleUpon, vote for it on Digg. Thanks so much.

The Cross-Over Book

Alexis de Tocqueville, who observed and judged American character and life in the first half of the nineteenth century, had some critical things to say about the literary styles that succeed among the people of a democracy.


"As the time they can devote to letters is very short, they seek to make the best use of the whole of it. They prefer books which may be easily procured, quickly read, and which require no learned researches to be understood.... Above all, they must have what is unexpected and new. They require strong and rapid emotions, startling passages, truths or errors brilliant enough to rouse them up and to plunge them at once, as if by violence, into the midst of the subject....

"Style will frequently be fantastic, incorrect, over-burdened, and loose, almost always vehement and bold. Authors will aim at rapidity of execution more than at perfection of detail. Small productions will be more common than bulky books; there will be more wit than erudition, more imagination than profundity; and literary performances will bear marks of an untutored and rude vigor of thought, frequently of great variety and singular fecundity. The object of authors will be to astonish rather than to please, and to stir the passions more than to charm the taste."


The kind of bold that he's describing is not what I want from myself or the writers I read.

Unfortunately, de Tocqueville has a pretty good grasp of the kind of choices that the largest number of readers and publishers are still making in this country.

And that makes it very tempting to try to write to that audience.

Truly bold, however, may be doing one's own work without regard to that pressure. For me, it is to revise in a way aimed at satisfying my own standards and at the same time attempting to be accessible to readers in a hurry who are looking for a good time.

Not so easy. That's why for me the process takes so long.

It's because I'm "trying to serve two masters." That's supposed to be impossible, but I don't believe it. There's almost always one book on the bestseller lists that is complex and beautiful, even as it retains its "rude" American vigor. This is what's known in the trade as "the crossover book."

That's the slot I'm aiming for, the one that Tocqueville didn't mention.



If you like this post, please bookmark it on del.icio.us, share it on StumbleUpon, vote for it on Digg. Thanks so much.

A Daily Mini-Meditation on Creative Courage

I find that writing every day about creative courage is firing up my own imagination and gumption. The act of scanning the world for wisdom on this subject--and then focusing on it for the time I'm writing about it--is driving the lesson home for me. I have a lot less hesitation about plunging into projects, less procrastination, than once was the case.

So here's a suggestion: one that will likely be useful for you and others. Comment regularly here on the subject of creative courage, boldness, passion, imagination, or any variation that suits you. The act of doing it can act as a a mini-meditation that fires up your brain, inspiring both you and your readers here.


If you like this post, please bookmark it on del.icio.us, share it on StumbleUpon, vote for it on Digg. Thanks so much.

No Time to Waste

This afternoon at 2:34 p.m. I will achieve the age of 59. This is a significant number because of its proximity to 60, the official beginning of very late middle age. (Old begins at 80, as we all know.)

One might think that the shortage of time would "put the pressure on," and that that would be an unpleasant feeling.

I'm finding--for today, at least--that it does put the pressure on and that that feels good.

I don't want to waste another second with any of the following
TIME-WASTERS:
*busy work
*kidding myself
*guilt
*rationalizing
*things I "might as well" do
*being too lazy to get up and get what I need

Part Two of My Birthday Wisdom> Some months ago, I chose an overall rule of thumb to guide my decisions, an idea suggested by life maximizing guru Judith Wright. After some thought, I decided on: I am living my life as my best self.

This morning I realized that I need a new one. My test drive of the old one turned up one problem. It didn't answer the question: Why? Why live my life as my best self?

My new guiding line: I unhesitatingly, joyfully, serenely go after the best results, the highest good.

That may seem to be a small matter of wording. But for me the change adds the motivation needed to do the exercise, work on the book, develop the idea, make the needed effort and enjoy the process.


If you like this post, please bookmark it on del.icio.us, share it on StumbleUpon, vote for it on Digg. Thanks so much.

Passion

"You can argue with somebody who says, I know this and I know that. But you can't argue with passion." Film director Tim Burton in Esquire

"Nothing good has ever been done ironically." David Granger, editor-in-chief of Esquire.


If you like this post, please bookmark it on del.icio.us, share it on StumbleUpon, vote for it on Digg. Thanks so much.

Refresh Your Creativity At Lunch

I tend to have "my regular" order at every lunch spot near my office: a veggie plate at the K&W cafeteria, a calzone at Vic's, a veggie-on-sunflower sandwich at Logan's, the tunafish at the snack bar at the Federal Building next door, etc.

While I do enjoy these little traditions, it's nice to startle the senses occasionally with something new. So last week at the Museum of the American Indian in Washington, I ate at the cafe which serves only traditional Native American food, with different serving areas for different regional styles. For example, the Northern Woodlands area was offering cornmeal crusted frog legs, which appeared to be very popular (dish on right). The tamales (tamals, they were labeled) of the South American Indians were cooked and served in corn husks. The smoked squash and raisin dish was excellent. The pine nut and rosemary tart was terrific. There must have been 50 exotic-to-me items available that day. The cocoa guinea hen I will have next time.

This was a super-refresher of the tastebuds. But I find that simply eating something different at the local beanery is enough to give me a slightly new view of the possibilities in life.


If you like this post, please bookmark it on del.icio.us, share it on StumbleUpon, vote for it on Digg. Thanks so much.

Adding a Flourish

I like the idea of making activities and places interesting that don't "have to be." For example, our culture pretty much expects us to tack up something appealing on our walls. But we're off the hook when it comes to decorating ceilings. Here are some particularly noteworthy ceilings I saw in D.C. last week.

The first two of these are both at the Museum of the American Indian; the other two are Union (train) Station and the oddly shaped ceiling of my funky old hotel room near George Washington U. Of these two last you can probably tell which is which.

I once shared a house with a woman who decorated the walls and ceiling of her bedroom with floral sheets. On the walls the fabric was tacked down smooth like wall paper. For the ceiling, she attached only the corners of the additional sheets and left them loose enough that the centers billowed and swooped downward a couple of feet. She was an art professor at Meredith College. Her room was otherworldly.





If you like this post, please bookmark it on del.icio.us, share it on StumbleUpon, vote for it on Digg. Thanks so much.

My (Upcoming) Year of Cutting Loose

My New Year's Decision of three days ago is bearing its first startling fruit.

That resolve, you may recall, is to follow the will of God.

Just now at my dentist's office I felt an intimation of what that will is for me today. I was breathing nitrous when I sensed this, so you may find the guidance suspect, but I don't.

First a bit of background that regular readers likely already know: I have what I ever refer to as "a touch of OCD," or obsessive compulsive disorder. It's not the hand-washing kind that is the most well-known. I'm mainly what's called a pure obsessive, and my specialty is (has been) scrupulosity: anxiety about the possibility of doing something wrong. I worry about accidentally poisoning or infecting people, burning their buildings down, or worst of all: saying the wrong thing.

I have also, for years, literally "kept tabs on myself" in a niggling guilt-ridden manner that would make Dicken's Uriah Heep look like a benevolent god. My personal ledger sheet, always in my pocketbook, tracks how much time I've spent on every project this week and how much exercise of what sort and how much I've read French and how much I'm behind on everything, etc. And there are rewards and penalties attached. Enough said.

This afternoon in the dental chair when I sucked in some anxiety-relieving gas and, for a change, relaxed, here's what God-within-me had to say:

Toss the Ledger Book.

Did you hear that satisfying ripping sound when I paused after typing the foregoing sentence? That was the end of the ledger; its shreds are in the recycling bin.

There was a second part to the wisdom I received, and it arrived in the words of Jamie Foxx when he accepted his Oscar for best actor in the movie Ray. I'm spelling his line the way I heard it, the way he made a point of pronouncing it, in the Southern accent of his youth and mine. Foxx quoted his grandmother whom he credited with teaching him to act. She told him:

"'Ack like you got some sense.'"

This is my new plan. Instead of tracking myself, I'll make reasonable choices in the moment and hope for the best.

This is pretty much what I reported my therapist advising me a couple of months ago. He said get rid of your superego, your values will guide you. Since then I'd been feeling a significant falling-away of the weird charge attached to my "requirements."

Now I've tossed them. Not just for the day, but at least for the year. Even if I get quite nervous about this a few days or weeks from now, I will stay unfettered and unledgered at least until the end of 2008. Then I'll see if I've become someone who misses deadlines, has weak core muscles, and a dwindling grasp of French. Or if,on the other hand, something interesting and peaceful emerges. I have great hopes for this. (At the same time, I do mean to continue taking my medication.)

If you like this post, please bookmark it on del.icio.us, share it on StumbleUpon, vote for it on Digg. Thanks so much.

Bhutto at a Raleigh Drugstore

Here's the story of my chance meeting with Benazir Bhutto, and my farewell to her, which appeared in my local paper the Raleigh News & Observer the day after her death. She was one courageous human, and showed that it's possible to be bold and graceful at the same time.



My Personal Prime Minister

One midmorning some years ago, while waiting at the Eckerd prescription counter in Cameron Village, I had a pleasant chat with Benazir Bhutto.

I'd been in line a few minutes when I heard behind me a South Asian accent and turned to look.

"Afroz!" I said. I knew him: a Hindi-Urdu professor at N.C. State University, Afroz Taj. He greeted me, then turned to a woman whom I hadn't noticed. She seemed so petite and delicate, but then I had on heels. What I noted of her Pakistani dress was layer on layer of fabric, shades of blue and plum, wrapped around her shoulders and over her hair.

I heard him introducing us, but was only half-listening. I didn't expect to recognize the name, or get it right. It would surely be long, delivered high-speed and accented.

I did hear. Her name landed on my brain the same instant I recognized her face, famous and beautiful, though a bit blotchy without makeup, and tired.

I fell all over myself greeting her. I didn't know much about her, but enough: She was a woman who had gotten herself elected leader of a Muslim nation. And she'd led with such feminine grace and style. When I first watched her from afar in the late 1980s, I thought, "This is what great power can look like in a woman who accepts it as natural, who is strong without having to appear hardened."

She seemed touched and pleased by my effusions. I don't remember a word she said to me.

Thursday, as most of the world knows, she was assassinated during a campaign rally in her bid to regain leadership. She had barely escaped death in previous attempts on her life, and I had feared for her.

Star power, controlled

Living in Dubai in 2002, Bhutto had come to town to give a talk at N.C. State University. Immediately after the drugstore meeting, I rushed back to my office and began strewing e-mail in every direction. My friends replied with messages that, in essence, said: In Raleigh? At Eckerd? Are you kidding?

That afternoon, I drove to campus with a copy of my novel set in India. I inscribed it to Bhutto, leaving it with a journalism professor who promised to get it to her.

That evening, the auditorium was packed. Bhutto came to the lectern in a manner I've seen evangelist Billy Graham use -- with modest bearing, unmistakable star power understated, subordinated to a larger cause. Her speech assumed a fair amount of knowledge of Pakistani politics, infused with a level of detail that's the stuff of C-SPAN. Most strikingly, she responded to a question sympathetic to current Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf by telling the audience that Musharraf "is a dictator."

She spoke little of her personal experience, but as she talked, a mesmerizing mini-drama was taking place between her and her head scarf. Diaphanous and white, it wouldn't stay put. Again and again, she'd gracefully pull it forward, then syrup-slow it would slide back, exposing ever more of her black, black hair. It was as though she traveled back and forth as we watched, between Muslim head-covering and the world of bare-headed freewheeling women.

A note from Dubai

In the weeks after her visit, I searched out her autobiography, and, of course, Googled her. I read how she was held in a cell with her mother while her father, overthrown prime minister, was executed by the Pakistani military. The man who brought them his wedding ring said the prisoner died a peaceful death. Bhutto questioned how peaceful a hanging could be.

I read, too, that she had been widely accused of financial corruption on a massive scale, and some details gave one pause. She denied wrongdoing, saying the allegations were political weapons. I used to think I was a near-infallible judge of character, even on brief meeting. Then the cheerful computer guy who'd spent hours at my desk helping me was convicted of murder. Now I am slower to assume I know for sure. And, in the instance of Ms. Bhutto, I have a bias.

Months later, an e-mail arrived in my box with an "@emirates" address. Spam, I thought. Instead it was my own personal former head of state writing from the United Arab Emirates to say thank you for the book, she liked it very much. I was astonished to hear from her, had never had a moment's thought that I might.

As real as car keys

Years passed in which her political efforts remained quiet. Then she returned to the world stage.

When I learned she was considering co-leadership with Musharraf, I thought of e-mailing her: "You go, girl!" But given the cultural differences, that line could be entirely misunderstood. And I didn't feel informed enough to encourage any particular course of action.

What I do know is that I had a stake in this fight. I followed it, wanting not only peace in Pakistan -- and, by the way, freedom of scarf-decision, with all that that embodies -- I also hoped, futilely it turns out, my brave friend from the drugstore would be successful and safe.

Thus Benazir Bhutto brought the fight in Pakistan close, making it as real to me as my car keys. She was a woman who was about my age, someone with whom I had identified and talked in the most ordinary, everyday way.

I learned of her death while in Washington, D.C. I should not have been surprised, but I was and am. I send sympathies, most especially to her young daughter, and wish her spirit godspeed.


If you like this post, please bookmark it on del.icio.us, share it on StumbleUpon, vote for it on Digg. Thanks so much.

A Top Ten List for Success

Publisher and Editorial Director of SUCCESS magazine, Darren Hardy, offers the following advice on how to make 2008 your best year ever:

1. Decide to be Successful – Success is not a dream, hope or fantasy; it is a decision. Make the decision to change, improve and act on your ambitions.

2. Design your Best Year Yet – As an architect would design a skyscraper, write out the goals, plans and actions it will take to achieve the life you want to live.

3. Identify Your Passion - What are your unique interests, talents and gifts? Passion attracts success. Find what you love to do - you will never “work” again.

4. Program Yourself for Success – You will see, perceive, expect and create what you think about. To program your mind for success – read watch and listen to materials that will support your success.

5. Surround Yourself with Success - You are the combined average of the five people you hang around the most. Surround yourself with healthy, success-minded achievers.

6. Model Success - The best way to learn to be successful at anything is to find someone who is where you want to be and model their success habits.

7. Master the Fundamentals – Don’t complicate it. About a half a dozen things make up 90%+ of what it takes to be successful at anything. Keep it simple.

8. Get Fit - The mind cannot achieve what the body cannot perform. Your family, friends and career and future depend on your good health. Make it priority No. 1.

9. Remember What’s Important – At the end of the journey what will have mattered most will be your relationships – the people you love and those that love you. Make sure they are on your goal list for 2008.

10. Make a Difference – What do you want your life’s legacy to be? You have the power to make a positive difference – to a single person, a neighborhood, a community, a nation, the world. Realize that power in 2008.

Success magazine is for entrepreurs, small businesses, and home-based business people. That's us, because whatever your day job might be, if you're an artist, you're also an entrepreneur.


If you like this post, please bookmark it on del.icio.us, share it on StumbleUpon, vote for it on Digg. Thanks so much.

My New Year's Decision

My New Year's Decision this year, which I prefer to a NY Resolution, is simply this: follow the will of God.

I did this once before, in the year 2000, and that year I finished and got a nice contract for Sister India.

So this is a pragmatic thing. I don't know why I didn't think of doing it again before now.

You might ask how I know the will of God. Well, it's not hard. If I ask myself in the moment of any other decision what that will might be, it's usually a no-brainer.

The way I see God, though, doesn't quite fit any religion I know of. More like The Force, as in May the Force Be With You.

Whatever your decisions are for the New Year, I hope that The Force is also with you.

(I'll be back in my office tomorrow. I promise to catch up on my email then.)


If you like this post, please bookmark it on del.icio.us, share it on StumbleUpon, vote for it on Digg. Thanks so much.

Hogmanay

Just read that there's a holiday, in Scotland, I think, called Hogmanay. And it's today, last day of the year. The purpose of Hogmanay is to clean up after the old year, literally to clean house. Well, I've done a few things: unpacked my bags, anyway.

I do like the idea, and am somewhat inspired to bring new order. But it will take me a lot more than a day.

I expect it takes more than a day for everybody. Perhaps the purpose of the special day is to get us all inspired to start once again.

Happy Fresh Start to you.



If you like this post, please bookmark it on del.icio.us, share it on StumbleUpon, vote for it on Digg. Thanks so much.

Checking In

Still on the road, and at a borrowed computer which I have to give up in minutes. I'll be home again tomorrow. And will soon have much more to say--about Bhutto, fear, courage, our ongoing challenges.


If you like this post, please bookmark it on del.icio.us, share it on StumbleUpon, vote for it on Digg. Thanks so much.

About Benazir Bhutto

A story I wrote about my encounter with Benazir Bhutto was published today in my local paper, the Raleigh News & Observer. It's an essay and a loss I feel strongly about. I hope you'll read it. In any event, I say again here: I wish her spirit godspeed.


If you like this post, please bookmark it on del.icio.us, share it on StumbleUpon, vote for it on Digg. Thanks so much.

Cool D.C. Lodging

Well, I wasn't going to blog this week, but there's a computer online three steps outside my hotel door. I'm staying in a hotel in D.C. at the edge of Georgetown. I always find cheap digs, and this has led me to some novel experiences. This one is a delight.

The hotel is the Allen Lee, across the street from the GWU's fraternity and sorority houses. It looks like an old-fashioned dormitory itself. And I was fortunate enough to get the room that opens onto the lobby, (thus the computer outside my door.)

The room itself is the truly fun discovery. First, it is irregularly shaped, to put it mildly: it has 17 walls, the bathroom has ten. And the room extends away from the building like a pier, on a block that ends in a corner. So I have traffic passing on three sides. And sidewalk voices, etc. Not everyone would like it, to be sure. I find it to be like sleeping next to the ocean







If you like this post, please bookmark it on del.icio.us, share it on StumbleUpon, vote for it on Digg. Thanks so much.

The Eve of Good Things

Merry Christmas to you, if you're a celebrator of Christmas. Whatever you celebrate, I wish you well at this year's end. And I'll be back in action here just before the first of the year.


If you like this post, please bookmark it on del.icio.us, share it on StumbleUpon, vote for it on Digg. Thanks so much.

Flying Dude...and Holiday Fun

All over the world people are trying to figure out how humans can fly like flying squirrels.

This is not a joke. A New York Times article says that half a dozen organizations are doing serious work on this challenge--and a link to YouTube shows an astonishing demonstration. If you feel you're working on something risky and impossible, have a look at this guy sailing over snowy peaks and no-doubt-startled skiers while wearing a wing suit.

The wing suit is the basic equipment, and it looks both scifi-ish and a bit priestly. This suit ideally turns a person into a human glider. Which sort of puts my day to day risks in perspective.

Update from last night's party (I resolved in yesterday's post to party serenely through the holiday season, without necessarily being "on" all the time.)

Well, the party was elegant, terrific, and fun. Was I serene? I thought so. I later asked my psychologist husband, without explaining why, how things looked from the outside. He said, "Intense. I just figured you'd gone hypomanic" for the occasion.

That suits me just fine. Serene on the inside, festive on the outside.


If you like this post, please bookmark it on del.icio.us, share it on StumbleUpon, vote for it on Digg. Thanks so much.