Eneh Akpan Writes: Creativity

Showing posts with label Creativity. Show all posts

Friday, June 7, 2019

Rime of The Block

I'm a character with a unique talent,
I'm a scrivener of a special kind.
I script every writer's torment
On the tablet of their confused mind.

I stifle the musings of the muse;
I dehydrate the juice of its issues
I throw a wrench in the wheel
Mess up inspiration's reverie.

I wipe the walls of memory clean
Throw sand in the eye of creativity
I type trash on their laptop screen
Bleed bilge the length of their sheets.

I have a way with words they don't
I wring them out till cadence is lost.
I send them away on literary vacation
Yet prey on them with a restless condition.

I am the silence of the muse,
I am the pent-up flow of the juice,
I am the blank page on their manuscript,
The fixed cursor on their computer screen.

Akpan

Tuesday, May 21, 2019

A Printed Page

A printed page
May provoke an image
That shuts the muse in a cage.

A blank page
Is like a 12 gauge
That blasts to hell strains of blockade.

A printed page
Is like spent carnage,
An overstuffed, loud cottage.

A blank page
Is a cabin center-staged
On a vast, lonely acreage.

A printed page
Is loaded carriage
That gives the creativity stoppage.

A blank page
Crackles with a 1,000 voltage
That shocks the muse out its blockage.

Akpan

Thursday, September 17, 2015

How to Hold Off an Idea Until It's Ready

I’d compare holding off an idea to the moment just before the needle pierces the skin in a hospital ward. The recipient is tensed up for the critical impact while the hypo, clasped between the trained fingers of a nurse cuts the air as it makes its way for the disinfected spot. A unique tingle comes over that part of the body as it waits for cold steel, hungry for blood to break skin and introduce its fluid into the bloodstream.

There comes a time when you know you are going to create something: a poem, a song, a story or even a project as tasking as a novel. I’m talking about those times when the idea presents itself to the mind as an impossible-to-make-out image, a piece of incomplete thought and you can’t readily settle on how it’s going to turn out. Here’s what you can to do to prevent yourself from ruining a great idea and end up burnt out.

Keep a Notebook or Sheet of Paper

Scribble bits and pieces of thoughts and phrases which you think have a connection with the idea at hand. You never know which of these nuggets will spark a flame and maybe become the first line of your story/poem. Jot down entire lines and sentences, from your readings if they so much as inspire creative thinking. Sometimes, a snippet from a billboard ad could be the seedbed for your idea.

Keep an Open Mind

Vague as this tip sounds; it is a really important step in cleaning up your mind and ridding it of leftovers from past write-ups. You can actually choke on a good idea while trying to force the pattern of a previous creation on it. Allow the idea free rein for as long as is required for it to ripen.

Play With the Idea

Don’t start the actual writing, yet. But do write it in your mind. Try a free association of the most persistent phrases—those expressions that keep recurring in flashes and seem to be the handle of the overall idea. By doing this you keep from trying to force it and also, get a better grip of the frame of the entire composition, at the same time. Richard Wilbur waited fourteen years while jotting down phrases before he committed his pen to paper to write his poem, The Mind-Reader.

Talk to Yourself

Do it aloud or silently. Talk around the idea; talk about its vagueness, how it squirrels away just before you can wrap your fingers around its essence. Ponder what style of writing it could turn out to be; if it is something fresh and unique or if it’s your regular thing. Brood over the theme (if you’ve figured it out), go deep and feel the weight of the inspiration which presented the idea and try to make yourself at home within it.

Take Long Walks

Here’s one surefire weapon you can use to tackle the edginess that accompanies the waiting period. Shorten the wait with walks and talks, is a saying you ought to give a try. Go on long strolls, if you can find the time and place. Take that time to tinker with the idea, turning it this way and that while you search for the key that unlocks the door and sends you reeling into the heart of your next creation.

Let the Initial Emotion Cool Off

Above all, try not to write in the heat of emotion. You stand a chance of muddling up the waters and scaring away dinner. Your emotions can totally blind you and make everything you write look awesome. A few weeks or months after your so-called spectacular write-up then you reread the work you have so wonderfully created and Ouch! *Palm over face.*

A good fisherman knows how to tease the fish; when to cast his net; when to reel in his catch; and especially, when to hold off from upsetting the net. Now go and do likewise.

This article is actually a product of waiting. The idea popped into my mind around the month of April while I was doing NaPoWriMo but I kept putting the moment of actual writing off; kept waiting for the idea to blossom and produce fruit. I can’t tell you the thrill wasn’t worth the wait. And that’s the reason I believe that waiting is a game to the trained mind. Waiting is a writer’s game.

Keep your pens bleeding!

Akpan

Tuesday, March 17, 2015

7 Myths About Random Writing

A lot of stuff has been said about random writing (or intuitive writing) and not a few borders on the process involved in the form. How is the style of writing done?; why do people use it or why should they?; who needs its seemingly rich resourcefulness?

If you have a desire to delve deeper into this form of writing check here and here. In this post, I'll limit myself to unraveling misconceptions folks have managed to build around the fine art of random writing.

1. Random Writing is Freewriting

Find out more about freewriting here. While a writer may on occasion, practice freewriting to pull himself out of a rut so he can get on with the actual writing project, folks who foray into random writing know what they're up against. This isn't about turning out the trash clogging the flow; it's about turning on the flow in spite of the trash. It is the project.

2. Random Writing is For Writers Who Are Blocked

Of course, it is a surefire cure for the block but legendary writers like Ray Bradbury for example, will tell you that 99.9% of the stuff they churn out is straight from their mind to paper. According to these accomplished writers, this is something you do everyday, every time you scribble. Besides keeping the block in check, plying this route will keep your juice fired up all day.

3. Random Writing is For Poets/Lyricists

Nope. And not just for writers of the short form of fiction, either. Writers like Stephen King have penned 1,000 page tomes by getting lost in their subconscious.

It comes through much practice.

4. Random Writing is Being Lazy

Yes indeed, if your goal is to write an instruction manual. Writers who affect writing randomly understand the physical and emotional involvement it requires. And while it might look like an excuse to fill up time in your study, writing in this fashion demands dredging deep into your psyche and calling out stuff that ain't.

5. Random Writing is Wishing For the Moon

Yes it is. But you are wishing because there is a guarantee you are going to get not just any moon but a full moon. Probably, if you have not been doing a whole lot of writing in and out of the zone, it becomes impossible to grasp this level of creativity. And that's why, this is especially true if you're new to this trade, you MUST write everyday. You're training yourself to sync with your deeper self at a snap because that's where the good stuff are.

6. Random Writing is Premeditated Writing

You have to read a lot so you can write a lot. Remember, GIGO? But with random writing, you don't have to study an instruction manual, memorize some vital points before you spill your guts on the page. That ain't writing intuitively which is putting your pen to paper and letting your thoughts, untainted by needless edits, flow directly to the page.

7. Random Writing is Always a PeRfect JOB

If that means you never have to revise your work then you're wrong. Bypassing your mind helps you to contact the real self and leads to honing your writing style. With intuitive writing, you are creating the real stuff. Keep this at the back of your mind at all times. “Much of the stuff you create will be bilge but the rest... it will save your life.”

Random writing or intuitive writing is the purest approach to creating words because it translates your thoughts in its purest form to the page, totally shutting out interference from your mind. No wonder the great writer, Ray Bradbury sketched it with these two words, “DON'T THINK.”

You should try it sometime, you'll never write any other way if you do. I guarantee it.

Keep your pens bleeding.

Akpan

Saturday, April 19, 2014

Day 19: Oddball

streetartutopia.com

Rules are broken

To create an access into fresh token.

As curiosity conveys us across the threshold, we see

The law of creativity

Is without constraints.

And the workspace of ingenuity

Is a whole yard of opportunity and space.

When the individual violates a code of conduct,

And by that simple act experiences release,

We discover the significance of being the oddball

In the instruction’s insufficiency.

Thus, is life itself a reinventing of a process

Which conceals its expression in subtle evasiveness.

Eventually, things by all accounts, adverse

Contribute their part to recreate our universe,

By consistently etching prints of originality,

Like a picture painted with oil on canvas,

On an individual’s bold divergent thinking.

Akpan

Thursday, March 13, 2014

3 Ways Music Can Plug the Creative Flow

Writers have penned elaborately regarding the sway of music in art. Songs have a tendency to dredge up inspiration from the depths and drag it screaming and kicking to the surface of the conscious mind; they can shoot the artist in a heartbeat, straight up into the zone. I’m not going to dwell much on that even though it’s right up my alley.

I’d like to tell you the idea for this article came whole and intact but it did not. If I hadn’t been dragging my heels, what you are reading would be in a slightly different shape than what obtains. I guess it worked out for the best. I’ve had time to figure out there are several lists kicking around on the internet with reference to songs that boost creativity.

So I backpedaled and decided instead to talk about how music can actually stall the creative process.

“Crank up the Volume”

How far should a writer take the advice, “crank up the volume” during writing sessions? Besides the fact that sometimes you need the music turned down so the mind can better express itself in the comparative silence, working in a relatively noisy environment can make a naturally pleasant sound unbearably raucous and harsh like the situation in a henhouse.

Obeying the age-old advice may mean not getting any meaningful work done at all. Sometimes, plugging in earphones might help otherwise, it only makes it worse cause it brings the cacophony home to your eardrums and you’re the worse for it.

“I Like that Sound”

Remember the time you had your head buried deep in something and some tune came up on the radio and you just had to put the business on hold until the song played itself out? Have you had that happen to you while writing? It’s okay to listen to songs that call up memories. Those probably help you write better or to discover something to write about. But if all they do is make you stop and listen until the tune fades out, you’ll be better off saving those soundtracks for when the writings done. Singing along for a while might release the tension and nobody’s against that.

“Don’t Play that Song”

Some songs turn you on and some major in the opposite. It’s not wise to seek inspiration in the latter. You might spend the whole day in your writing room scowling at your sound system and that really ain’t going to get you any closer to your daily word quota. The moment you feel you have to tolerate the music; you ain’t vibin’ any longer and that’s when the muse takes his leave. You might as well call the whole deal off. If a tune plunges you down in the dumps, gives your flow the hiccups or creates the impression of a car engine making a squeaking noise then your inspiration wouldn’t jive with it, either. Whack the deadbeat.

There are several ways music ushers an artist into the presence of the muse but you must watch out for these three cause they can reverse the outcome of the influence and plug the creative flow, instead.

Keep your pen bleeding!

Akpan

Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Is Intuition A Synonym For Talent?

In an article I wrote and posted on my blog (this blog), I gave the impression that talent and intuition were two of a pair. It served its purpose in the context I applied it and it's probably okay to use it in that sense on an informal basis or in spoken language. This post isn't really about setting records straight if anything, I think it leans more towards drawing a line between these two human qualities for the purpose of understanding and education. Is intuition a synonym for talent? Either way you look at it we're still going to come out on a side that shows why sometimes, one can't quite exist without the other.

First of course, comes the definitions.

Intuition is the ability to acquire knowledge without inference or the use of reason.^[1] The word intuition comes from Latin verb intueri which is usually translated as to look inside or to contemplate. —Wikipedia

Another dictionary calls it Instinctive knowing; immediate apprehension.

Talent means the skill that someone has quite naturally to do something that is hard. Someone who has talent is able to do something without trying hard.

There is intuition and there is talent and the definitions above try to distinguish one from the other and yet, inadvertently create a subtle connection between the two subjects.

A persistent attitude is necessary in gaining mastery in both areas. One has to be mildly obsessed while engaging his/her talent to become something of an expert and even so before he is able to max the moments of instant total cognition. These two are abilities and while being consistently intuitive can be called a talent, it appears that intuition of itself though an ability does not interpret as talent.

Let's say you possess a skill to get at immediate apprehension naturally probably, of something you had no chance in hell of knowing you might be accused of possessing intuitive talent. It comes easy enough without much effort on your part. Talent remains talent and suffice it to say that not all special or natural abilities lean heavily on intuition (though being intuitive might help get the job done better). Having a burst of intuition once every hundred years is not talent. Such individual is probably better off considered lucky.

Keep your pen bleeding!

Akpan

Sunday, August 26, 2012

5 Mistakes to Avoid When Writing A Story

Story is about story. And no character is indispensable.

If you can remember these two rules, you will hurt fewer people in your art of story writing. Writing a story sometimes, is like telling on people. However, how the writer handles sensitive situations and, on the other hand, delivers a wonderful story into our bosom is an attestation to the storyteller’s mastery of human emotions.

For every writer, at some point, the bulk of the worry shifts from how to write a story to how to write a story and not hurt people. I think what I have here is a fair bargain if the only thing you yield is your time.

1. Randomly Selecting Names for Your Characters –

For the love of God, do not pick names associated with your locale. In deference to people’s feelings and if you honor your integrity as a writer. Nobody would like to read about their obituaries or scenes describing their termination in the hands of some monstrosity in your story.

If you write horror like I do, do not slaughter your neighbors in your story if you want to live to tell another story.

2. Duplicating Sexual Characteristics –

I started typing How to Write a Story and not Worry about Hurting People as the title of this post and then opted for the one you now have, instead. The basic idea the former title represented is still the bottom line of this post.

Injecting the personal experience into your stories means you can’t not talk about people you meet each day. In the special cases where your story involves embarrassing scenes, which you can’t afford to toss out because it is relevant to the flow of story, here’s one positive step you should take: change the gender of the real people when adding them into the story. It’s one sure-fire method of loosening the impact of discomfort on the real people recreated in your story.

3. Using the Original Setting –

Unless you’re writing a personal essay or a memoir (which, in any case demands that every rambling around other people’s private business be severely curtailed), you don’t have to reproduce the original setting of incidence as your fictional geography.

The month of June had me buried up to my elbows in a writing challenge I set up for myself. I called it NaShoWriMo and challenged myself to write 30 short fiction in 30 days. I think I came off with about 30,000 words in all. Much of what came out was crap but I guess I can live with that. The stories were all drafts, anyway. Now, here’s the real whopper; I can tick off the fingers of my left hand those occasions I mentioned Nigeria in those whacky thirtysome short stories (and I assure you those fingers are not more than five).

I write speculative fiction with emphasis on horror. And since I couldn’t predict how my fellow countrymen would buy into the idea if I murdered them over and over again in my stories, I improvised. If that sounds loco to you, I won’t argue.

Nevertheless, keep in mind that where you choose as the setting for your stories matter. People who live in those places might react. For better or worse. The accent is on worse.

4. Tinkering with Peculiar Personality Traits –

Everybody in the neighborhood knows Papa Jones loves fingering his prick after five or six beers. And here you are a young fine writer, writing a pretty good short story about an aged protagonist who exhibits traits similar to Papa Jones’. The irony of the whole business is that Papa Jones’ son is the local law.

If you’re lucky, you might end up with a broken jaw. On other hand . . . they don’t exactly build those lock-up cells for nothing, do they?

It’s best to focus on story. Leave off any explicit description that might earn deserved chastisement. And ‘thou shalt not get paid for your stories in cuffs and blows.’ That’s in the Bible, Egyptians, chapter ten.

5. Choice of Genre –

You really have to take special care when you pick a genre to write in. Many people don’t care if the story gets a happy ending or not. The genre you select can make the difference between like or dislike for your work.

Writing for yourself is still the best approach to writing terrific stories. The story is always your story whether people accept it or not.

Write for yourself!

Let your pen bleed.

Akpan

Saturday, October 16, 2010

It's Electric. Boogie. Wooogie

Talent is like electricity. We don't understand electricity. We use it.

Maya Angelou.

If we wanted to take some time to study the phenomenon of the electric current before we fed our household gadgets with its magical juices, we just might never get around to using it.

For some of us based in Lagos, Nigeria or any parts of planet earth, where power supply brings you the worst kind of drama-where power's on the other side of erratic, any research in that quarter is absolutely forbidden. Take as example, a fellow trapped in a relative environment takes his chances, he tries to understand the flow of current, the technicality behind the stuff. He works himself to a rust researching and researching.

The odds are 99 to 1.

Several years after our guy is six feet under, he'll still be wishing the lights had stayed on 'just a few moments longer'.

'Just a little longer'. Could regret evoke a richer melancholy streak? I doubt it.

We don't have to go through this guy's traumas to unravel the mystery called talent. We are sure to come off exhausted and burned out. And, we still wouldn't experience the thrills of creativity. It's the worst kind of defeat. Inspiration is an unstable quantity-unpredictable but it is not changeable. It only stays this long and then it fizzles away.

Understanding your talent is grabbing at it every chance you get.

We all got potential. A measure of ability. A capacity to be inventive and so little time to ravel the functionalities. Experience teaches. It’s all in the long haul. A way to be on first name basis with our creativeness is to be constantly creative; we have to keep having a go at it. And soon enough we would have a feel of our habitat.

The zone is where we go to understand the muse. To enter the zone, we strip ourselves of mutual tensions and accept our gifts for what they are: gifts. You know how sickening it feels to have somebody scrutinize your present to them. Guess what? You are doing it to yourself.

The everyday little activities we perform, when we bring our heart to it and make out time to be creative in that, reveals a little bit of our talent. It is the mystery we are within.

The core of the individual’s characteristics is revealed in his talent(s).

Talent trapped exclusively in pods of spectacular art is not pure talent and consequently, unbeneficial to the talented.

Our lives, the daily chores that define us are often the channels for personal and artistic eruptions.

Bleed your soul’s juice. Charge up a world gone to hell in a hand basket.

Akpan