The Witch's Brew- The Writer and the Living Dead, Part Two of Four

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds..."  Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Wile E. Coyote, Supergenius. I like the way it rolls out. Wile E. Coyote, Supergenius."  Wile E. Coyote

*****

Sometimes you just have to scrape them off the windshield.

Zombie writers.

The ones who shuffle mindlessly down the street with nowhere particular to go and the only word they can spell correctly is "hungry."

But they should have seen it coming.  This reporter saw it coming.  Writer's rear ends are getting much larger.

They drank the witch's brew, the one labeled "I don't have to leave this chair.  Google will save me."  So now they wander the literary streets wondering why their writing doesn't ring true.  Doesn't sound authentic.  Sounds kind of like it was made up.  Actually, it was made up.

Worse yet, Hemingway was right.  People that never leave their writer's chairs get kind of big on the back end.

"This is great," one zombie-ized writer told me.  "I can write stories that happen anywhere in the world.  I don't have to travel, I just use Google Earth."

She asked to remain anonymous, so I'm leaving her name out of this interview so I can blackmail her later.  I mean use it to advantage later.  I hope she doesn't read this.

"But do you truly get a feel for that country?"  I asked.   "Enough for your reader's to trust you?  To allow you the convincing narrative authority enabling them to suspend their disbelief and enter completely into your story?  And do you have to keep eating Doritos while we talk?  Don't they have a million calories per bag?"

She twirled a wild lock of red hair and smiled.

"Honey, most of my readers watch Keeping up with the Kardashians.  The rest of them actually don't believe Dancing with the Stars is rigged.  And I can eat all the Doritos I want, dear.  I just ordered the Brazilian Butt Makeover so calories don't count.  It said so on the infomercial."

"You don't seem to like your readers," I observed.  "You get all the information in your books from Google and infomercials.  Is that why you have a Ginsu knife as the murder weapon in one of your murder mysteries?"

"I love my readers.  My readers worship me."

"But you don't really go out and experience life so that you have something to share with them.  How can they trust you with matters of emotional truth if you don't really have a life?  You never seem to leave your computer chair.  Aren't you just recycling third party information?  Why don't you get up from your chair and see and smell the towns you're writing about and talk to the people you're writing about?"

She actually recoiled in her chair.  I felt terrible.  Clearly I'd reminded her of past experiences, where she actually saw her friends instead of Facebooked them.  Times when she actually walked city streets to know what they were like.  Those were the days when she knew the nuantial difference between the word "mean" as it was used in "mean city streets" and as a participating adjective in the movie title "Mean Girls."

I was about to apologize when I saw her on Facebook cutting and pasting conversations.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"Collecting dialogue for my next book," she said vaguely.

"You don't write your own dialogue?  You cut and paste it from Facebook conversations?  You have no feelings, no writer's heart.  You can't write about reality," I screamed,  "if your only reality comes from a computer monitor.  Dialogue should come from your created character's heart!"

Without looking up she said, "You get some good dialogue off of Twitter sometimes, but you've got to really look hard."

I left the interview with a journalistic epiphany- when zombie-ized writers throw themselves against the windshield of your life, this journalist says to just keep driving. 

Real Creative Juices- Part Four of Four

What type of music do you listen to before you write?  While you write?  Charles Gramlich, PhD. could write a book about this topic.  In fact, send any questions to him!

Why?  Because music changes your body chemistry.

It's the best way to kick in your creative juices.

It changes your blood chemistry, your brain chemistry and kicks your creative mind into gear.  Some researchers believe its a dopamine thing.   The following study linked the feeling of "chills" in listeners to music that really got them going:

"... the number of "chills" the participants got was correlated with the activation specifically in the nucleus accumbens, which suggests that the intense pleasure we get from them is due to dopamine signals in this area.

"The whole things shows that music can produce a nice increase in dopamine in the nucleus accumbens. Whether that's a "high", is another question. They couldn't really quantify what kind of a signal they were getting from the dopamine, other than that they got a significant change. Drugs like cocaine produce increases in dopamine in the nucleus accumbens of up to 300% of baseline, and drugs like meth can go even higher than that. Was intense pleasure when listening to music in the same category? Probably not. But that doesn't mean it doesn't feel good.

"The whole study gives us a nice biological basis for our physical responses to music, but it also raises questions. WHY have be evolved such that music effects us this way? What is the function? Is it just enhancement of emotion? If so, how does that work? Is it familiarity with the music, knowing that a part you like is coming up? Does it have anything to do with language and the tones which we utilize in our voices for things like language?

"We don't have these answers yet, but maybe someday we will. Until then, when you're listening to some great music and get the chills, you know what's happening."

Salimpoor VN, Benovoy M, Larcher K, Dagher A, & Zatorre RJ (2011). Anatomically distinct dopamine release during anticipation and experience of peak emotion to music. Nature neuroscience, 14 (2), 257-262 PMID: 21217764

You can find the complete write-up on this at: http://scientopia.org/blogs/scicurious/2011/01/31/this-is-your-brain-on-music/  

But it begs the question- can the pleasurable effects of music improve our creative writing?  Can music help us be more imaginative?  I believe it is absolutely the most effective method of ramping up the production of  our creative juices.  It's not just the pleasure.  It's the beat.  The beat gets us moving, gets us feeling, switches us over to the side of our brains that works with visual imagery.

Some writers complain that music distracts them from writing.  When I write, the rest of the world disappears.  I can feel music.  I can feel my mind and my body kick into gear.  And then I'm off to that other world.  The world where my story is the measure of reality.  The world where I forget white time it is, what day and month it is.  Music can't distract from that.

Stephen King uses music to get his creative juices going.  In his book on the craft of writing, he even gives us an overview of what he listens to when he writes.  He's still the King (no pun intended) of horror and, oddly enough, what he listens to seems to contribute to that.  He doesn't listen to a lot of Frank Sinatra when he writes.

And it's true- music not only jump-starts production of our creative juices, it can influence what type of writing we produce by influencing our brains.


Consider the following excerpt from a paper by Greg Mackay:

"...a study done by physicist Dr. Harvey Bird from Fairleigh Dickinson University and neurobiologist Dr. Gervasia Schreckenberg from Georgian Court College in Lakewood, NJ. Dr. Bird is very interested in the effects of sound and music on our bodies. I subsequently got a chance to meet Dr. Bird and discuss his work and his theories. He and Dr. Schreckenberg had teamed up to study the effects of music on laboratory mice. They subjected one group of mice to incessant voodoo drum beats, one group to Strauss waltzes and one group was kept in silence. The experiment used music played at low volume so that volume was not a cause for any behavioral changes observed. Over the period of the experiment, they tested the different groups to see how well they could run through a maze to get to their food. This was a measure of their cognitive ability - their ability to remember the maze over time.

Bird and Schreckenberg found that the group that listened to the voodoo music had a very difficult time with the maze that increased over time to the point where they were totally disoriented and unable to complete the maze. The other groups had no problem learning the maze, with an edge given to the mice listening to the waltz music. Even when the mice were given a break from the music for three weeks, the group that had previously listened to the voodoo music "still could not remember how to get to their food, while the others found it quickly with no problem," said Schreckenberg. 

So don't listen to voodoo music when you want to be creative.

Matter of fact, what music do you turn on when you want to get your creative juices flowing?

Real Creative Juices- Part Three of Four

Some writers think imagination is like the wind.  It comes, it goes, and we never know for sure when it's going to do either.

It's like getting in your car and waiting for it to turn on all by itself.  You'd be late for a lot of appointments if you went about it that way, wouldn't you?

How about if you remembered to turn the key, but you never put any gas in it?  It still wouldn't start.

Or maybe you let the air filter get gunked up with all sorts of crud.  But, you remembered to turn the key in the ignition and you also put gas in it.  It should still work okay, right?

No.

But wait, the brain is different.  It's not a car.  It's mystical.  It's not really connected to the body.  It just hangs out in a writer's head.

No.

Here's a few things to think about for those of you who want to look a little deeper into the creative process than most writers ever do.  The brain needs a lot of things, but it really uses a lot of sugar.  It needs blood flow. It really needs oxygen, too.  And sleep.

Your brain won't work right if you don't pay attention to those requirements at a bare minimum.

How creative are you when you're dead dog tired?  Remember all those stupid ideas for stories that sounded great until you re-examined them after a good night's sleep.  And ask a diabetic how their brain works when their sugar is off.  Here's two more:  try reducing the oxygen to the brain and see how you function or maybe the blood flow.  Wait, don't really do that.  Do I have to throw in my disclaimer again about don't try this at home?

Don't take me at my word.  Ask Google.  See what kind of results you get.

You're imagination is part of your brain.  Your brain is part of your body.

When writers think about ways to improve their creativity, they never think about how they treat their physical brain.  It's a very bad mistake.

And the cayenne?  It really gets the blood flowing.  Blood carries oxygen and sugar to the brain.  Your brain really likes that.  A happy brain makes it a lot easier to be creative.

Real Creative Juices- Part Two of Four

First, let's get the disclaimers out of the way.  

The part where I say, "This is what I do and why, and here are my experiences with this approach."  I'm not a doctor, so I'm not giving any of you medical advice.  I'm not asking you to try these juices.  I'm not asking your relatives or your children to try them.

Is it safe to talk yet?

No?

Okay, then I'm saying it outright.  Don't any of you try this.  You might be allergic to what's in this drink.  So don't do it.  The earth might be allergic to you drinking this.  Ask your doctor for medical advice before doing this, call the EPA and OSHA if you have any concerns it might hurt the environment and you might alert Homeland Security if you think drinking what I'm about to tell you might cause a mass panic.

We're clear on this, right?  Don't do this.  I do it.  Don't you do it.  Any of you.

What I do is take 1 teaspoon of cayenne pepper, and dissolve it in a cup of very warm water.  

One hour before I sit down to write, I stir it up again to make sure everything is dissolved.  Then I drink it pretty much straight down.  Sometimes it takes me two or three gulps, but I like to get it over with all at once.

Then I feel the heat.  My blood starts to flow.  My brain kicks in and asks what the hell I'm doing.

So what am I doing and why am I doing it?

There's a reason for it, see if you can guess what it is.

Sex and the Writer- Part Five of Five

Climax.

The big moment.

The heart pounding build-up where the tension is almost unbearable.

This is what they’re paying you for—to turn that unbearable tension into a successful climax.

If a writer can’t deliver, there’s no sense for a reader to climb into their reading bed.

If sexuality can teach a writer anything, it’s that a writer isn't worth reading unless they can deliver a climax that literally leaves their readers gasping.  It really is what they’re paying us for.

Are you up to it?

Are you committed to it?  Do you lust after it, are you obsessed with it, will you make the moves you know the reader needs and wants?

Or are you just writing for yourself?  If you are, why do you string them along?  They won’t be happy if you promise and don’t deliver.

You must always, always keep your partner in mind.

Who is your partner in this creative consummation?

Your reader.

If you forget them while you’re writing, you’re really just dancing in the dark.

And that’s only half as much fun.

Sex and the Writer- Part Four of Five

Obsession.

As in can't get enough.

As in can't be put back into the bottle.

As in the opposite of methodical planning.

As in the opposite of sterile writer workshops group  and group critiques.

Look around at the people in your writers group.  Are they obsessed with your story?  Has it taken them over so completely they can't sleep at night knowing it must be told but still isn't finished?  Or are their comments just playing to the "group dynamics?"  Take it a step further- are you obsessed with your story?  Because if you aren't, no one else will be either.

You might object that obsession can be unhealthy.  Over-focus to the point of counter-productive.  Sure that can happen.  It does happen.

But when darkness pushes daylight over the edge of the world, we can still see because Thomas Edison was obsessed with giving us the electric light.  When common people lived in misery during the Depression, John Steinbeck obsessed about their plight.  Because of that obsession, he went and worked  as a migrant laborer to personally experience their suffering.  This magnificent obsession gave us "The Grapes of Wrath."

The great world builders of literature like J.R.R. Tolkein and H.K. Rowling obsessed over their stories, their characters and their themes and now we have "The Lord of the Rings" and Harry Potter.

Obsession is the total focusing of all our energy and desire on one goal.

Margaret Mitchell's "Gone with the Wind" was a product of her personal obsession with finding a man who would love her like no woman had ever been loved before.

So take another lesson from sexuality.  

Write a story worth obsessing over.

If your story isn't worth obsessing over, write a story that is.

Sex and the Writer- Part Two of Five

You have to have it if you want to write.

It's hard to find because it's hiding somewhere between cliche and moral blindness.  But you have to have it.  You really have to want something.  You have to lust after someone or something in order for people to want to read what you write.  It's that simple.

Lust puts us in motion.  We have to move to get want we want.  We have to move to be interesting.

Lust keeps us focused.  

Really, you can only lust after one thing at a time.  Multi-tasking is a myth for writers.  A writer can "what if" their story to death.  What if this, what if that?  What if we just stay on point and tell the story?  But writers are creative.  After all, we're just making this stuff up.  So how do we keep the story on track?

Lust takes care of that.

Lust prioritizes.

Have you ever videotaped yourself while you're writing?  Do you  seem consumed with passion when you type?  Does your intensity threaten to melt your keyboard?

Or do you look boring?  Maybe you are bored.  Maybe you're writing the way you do when you you're having sex while watching television over your partner's shoulder.

Maybe you don't really love your story.  Maybe you aren't really obsessed with bringing your characters to life.  Maybe they aren't really your friends and lovers or enemies.

You could use a little lust in your writing life.

Your story could, too.

He Needs Your Help

Who is he?

You don't recognize him, do you?  You should.  All he's asking for is some recognition.

You grew up with him.  

What happened to him?  Oh my, you really are out of touch for a writer, aren't you?  He's a character in your latest book.  

I'm afraid you've fogotten the true source of your stories.  Let's try another test.

Recognize her?

Oh, no! 

How could you forget her?   She could use a little recognition, too.  She's a character in your first book.  The one that got you noticed.  The one that made everyone think you could write like the love child of Jane Austen and John Steinbeck.

No?  Still doesn't ring a bell?

Have you forgotten where all of your great characters and great stories can be found?  I was afraid of this, so I'll remind you but don't tell anyone else or they'll end up being great writers, too.

Your childhood. 

Keep it to yourself.  Every great story begins in your childhood.

Think about it.

Every great character is someone from your childhood all grown up.

Really think about it.  It will improve your writing.  But don't tell anyone I told you.

Scandal is Good for Creativity

I'm confessing- I'm the guy standing in line at the grocery store reading all the gossip magazines.  Scientifically speaking, writers are natural born busybodies.  And what better way to keep us wondering "what if..."

But here's my darkest secret- before it's print demise, I was the single greatest fan of the Weekly World News.  Now that it is available only online, I am still addicted.  It has such great headlines as "Bat Boy Found in Cave" and many other memorable news articles such as "Kim Kardashian's Butt Explodes."  Don't laugh- their stories are thoroughly researched.  In the interests of public service, they even have email alerts that will notify you whenever aliens land on earth.

You can see why my dream has always been to be a writer for this icon of creativity.

They tell you the things other news outlets don't.  Most of you probably don't know that a volcano erupted this week in Cleveland, Ohio or that Megan Fox is a man.  Or that L.A. real estate agents use predator drones to improve their business.

Also, in this week's issue, they unveil proof that not only does "Eating Causes Weight Gain," but also that "Yoga Causes Mental Illness."

So if you've got a bad case of writer's block or are desperately trying to kick start your creativity, go read the "Weekly World News."   It'll change your paradigm.