One thing I never really learned how to do, was to be creative consistently. That might sound surprising given the degree of regularity this blog is updated, but to break the fourth wall for a moment, behind the scenes I write several posts for this blog at once. Those posts are then saved and scheduled. If I feel the topics are too similar then I will split those posts up over a period of time to ensure the topics remain reasonably diverse. This works best for me as my creativity comes in waves or bursts of energy that have their peaks and then fall into quiet contemplation sometimes for extended periods of time.
Trying to do something constantly, at the same pace, at the same level becomes repetitive and boring to me. My attention begins to deviate. Now whilst you can argue that this is a negative trait, I would counter that view. Despite my tendency to focus on the negatives in life, I can still find positives in most situations - I credit that mentality as part of the reason I've made it this far given the enormity of the negative experiences I have endured in life. I prefer to look at my deviating attention as something useful, a tool that I can employ when I write. It is useful for me to have this deviating attention because it allows me to accurately engage how captivating something is, and that can be very insightful.
I read a tweet someone wrote, on how they often find it difficult to return to their writing after they have left it for some time. Their point they were making was the difficulty they had in grasping the enormity of their work in a short period of time, catching up with the content, characters, context, and the plot they had devised in their mind as to where the story would go. While I can relate to this to an extent, I choose to look at this problem from another angle. I argue that for a writer it can be useful to break from their work for some time and return to it, because in that moment of return as a writer you get to experience your own work as a reader. If even you the writer struggle to connect with the work and follow the storyline and the characters, then your work needs a lot of revision. In the same way I view my deviating attention as being of merit when gauging how captivating the work will be, if I can't get so invested in it that I can focus on it and follow through to the end then how can I expect other people to do that either?
Therein lies the realisation of the necessity of "filler" - not just when writing but also in life. It's necessary to have periods of boredom in life for the simple fact that constant excitement would devalue its merit, and would desensitise our experience of it. Just as you need to feel cold to appreciate the warmth, or feel sad to appreciate happiness, you need to instil pace in your work, whatever that work may be. That pace has to match the energy of the moment and recognise that although consistency is important, constancy on the other hand is the worst thing you can achieve.
Abandoned Ideas
Every now and then I go through my hard drive and look at what's there. I have a folder where I keep my writing, the stories I have written and published, and backups of various blogs that I have created over the years. There's a folder in amongst these things which contains abandoned ideas. Those are snippets of works and ideas that I had came up with but never followed through on, either because I felt there was nowhere I could take it to, or because it felt like it wasn't enough of an idea to actually do something with it. This makes me think though, of how much artistic expression is lying somewhere forgotten about.
When you think about some of the greatest works of art, music, and literature, and the impact they have on our society and culture, and peoples' lives, it's interesting to think of the potential of a blank page. A pristine A4 page with nothing on it. Onto that page you can pour out your heart and soul in expression. A blank canvass is terrifying to some artists, a blank page can be paralysing to a writer, and a piano sitting idly can be the bane of existence to a composer when they have no vision, no motivation, or no inspiration to create. Yet all of these things are in themselves a thing of beauty, the potential they have, what they can give life to, all of this lies within them as much as it lies within you. Instead of looking at them with an empty mind and feeling fear, look to them as something eager, waiting, wanting you to engage. Often the biggest barrier to creation is the act of creation itself.
The best advice I was ever given as a writer came from my English teacher in high school and it was simple - never stop writing. Even if you have no idea what to write about, write anyway, write about anything at all even if you think it is pointless, stupid, or that it has no purpose, because the act in itself engages a part of your mind that starts to wake up when you call upon it. You'll write something stupid or empty that is meaningless and something you hate, but you'll realise how you could make it better, you'll think why it is bad and what could make it good, or you'll think how you can make it worse - which in itself can be useful to explore. Sometimes you have to make the worst before you can make the best. The first painting you ever did as a kid was probably a square box representing a house with a triangle for the roof on top. No-one is born with the ability of Picasso, Michelangelo, Shakespeare, et al. These are crafts and they must be honed. You will not lift a one-tonne-weight the first time you try. You must fall a thousand times before you can stand with true strength. Passion has to be realised, it doesn't come to you.
When you think about some of the greatest works of art, music, and literature, and the impact they have on our society and culture, and peoples' lives, it's interesting to think of the potential of a blank page. A pristine A4 page with nothing on it. Onto that page you can pour out your heart and soul in expression. A blank canvass is terrifying to some artists, a blank page can be paralysing to a writer, and a piano sitting idly can be the bane of existence to a composer when they have no vision, no motivation, or no inspiration to create. Yet all of these things are in themselves a thing of beauty, the potential they have, what they can give life to, all of this lies within them as much as it lies within you. Instead of looking at them with an empty mind and feeling fear, look to them as something eager, waiting, wanting you to engage. Often the biggest barrier to creation is the act of creation itself.
The best advice I was ever given as a writer came from my English teacher in high school and it was simple - never stop writing. Even if you have no idea what to write about, write anyway, write about anything at all even if you think it is pointless, stupid, or that it has no purpose, because the act in itself engages a part of your mind that starts to wake up when you call upon it. You'll write something stupid or empty that is meaningless and something you hate, but you'll realise how you could make it better, you'll think why it is bad and what could make it good, or you'll think how you can make it worse - which in itself can be useful to explore. Sometimes you have to make the worst before you can make the best. The first painting you ever did as a kid was probably a square box representing a house with a triangle for the roof on top. No-one is born with the ability of Picasso, Michelangelo, Shakespeare, et al. These are crafts and they must be honed. You will not lift a one-tonne-weight the first time you try. You must fall a thousand times before you can stand with true strength. Passion has to be realised, it doesn't come to you.
Memory
I don't know if I believe in destiny, the idea that where you end up is predetermined and that you have no control over the path. I don't like the idea that your choices don't mean anything, despite the fact that we are sand on the beach in comparison to the size of this Universe and the magnitude of our lives can't be that great. Despite all of this I do wonder whether destiny's sisters, the fates, do have a hand in our lives. The difference being that certain things will happen no matter what you do, but as opposed to the idea of A and B being set, instead A and Z are up to you, but B and C and D etc will happen at some point, and no matter what you do the Universe will compensate to ensure those fixed points still happen.
If I entertain this idea, it puts my mind into a reflective mentality, one that looks back rather than forward. If fate exists, I don't want to know what my fate is as I can't change that, but rather I'd like to know what impact my life thus far has had both on myself and on others. I'd like to look back at the things I have done and the people I have known and ask fate what I did, or how I helped or hindered those I was destined to meet and what impact I had on their lives.
There's a song by Dannii Minogue called Disremembrance and one of the lyrics is the question "If I forget myself, will you remember me?" - this is the question that enters my mind when looking back on my life. I look back to all the people I knew, and I realise that there are so many I cannot recall now. When I first left school I could recall the names of my classmates, but now when I look back on the classrooms I spent so much of my life sitting in, half of the seats are empty. I know someone sat in each seat, but I cannot recall who they were, what they looked like, not even a name. I do wonder how many people who knew me, have forgotten me.
Some people want to leave a legacy, they want to achieve great things in life and have their name known, or have statues built in their honour. I never really desired any of that. My curiosity is simply that. If people I knew have forgotten me, I would not lose heart, after all I can't remember so many. I do find the nature of memory fascinating, that in the moment something can be so important and so relevant that you know it back to front and inside out, yet as time progresses you can completely forget things. I've forgotten entire people - although to be fair I didn't know any of them outside of school so that probably plays a greater part in recollection, they had no connection to memories in my mind other than those of school and thus got dropped when that was no longer relevant. It would be very useful if we could consciously control this, deciding what to commit to permanent memory and what to let go of to make room for something else - although given the state of my closet and all the junk I have amassed it's probably a good thing I don't have conscious control of it, not that my mind is doing a better job given some of the things I remember which seem completely pointless.
If I entertain this idea, it puts my mind into a reflective mentality, one that looks back rather than forward. If fate exists, I don't want to know what my fate is as I can't change that, but rather I'd like to know what impact my life thus far has had both on myself and on others. I'd like to look back at the things I have done and the people I have known and ask fate what I did, or how I helped or hindered those I was destined to meet and what impact I had on their lives.
There's a song by Dannii Minogue called Disremembrance and one of the lyrics is the question "If I forget myself, will you remember me?" - this is the question that enters my mind when looking back on my life. I look back to all the people I knew, and I realise that there are so many I cannot recall now. When I first left school I could recall the names of my classmates, but now when I look back on the classrooms I spent so much of my life sitting in, half of the seats are empty. I know someone sat in each seat, but I cannot recall who they were, what they looked like, not even a name. I do wonder how many people who knew me, have forgotten me.
Some people want to leave a legacy, they want to achieve great things in life and have their name known, or have statues built in their honour. I never really desired any of that. My curiosity is simply that. If people I knew have forgotten me, I would not lose heart, after all I can't remember so many. I do find the nature of memory fascinating, that in the moment something can be so important and so relevant that you know it back to front and inside out, yet as time progresses you can completely forget things. I've forgotten entire people - although to be fair I didn't know any of them outside of school so that probably plays a greater part in recollection, they had no connection to memories in my mind other than those of school and thus got dropped when that was no longer relevant. It would be very useful if we could consciously control this, deciding what to commit to permanent memory and what to let go of to make room for something else - although given the state of my closet and all the junk I have amassed it's probably a good thing I don't have conscious control of it, not that my mind is doing a better job given some of the things I remember which seem completely pointless.
Conspiracy Theories
I love conspiracy theories. I find them entertaining, but also thought provoking. One of the arguments I often see people make against them is that they are complex and therefore can't be true. I find that belief fascinating, the idea that truth is always simple and that anything complicated is a lie. Of course when you word it that way you immediately realise the flaw in that logic, which takes you back to the theories people just don't want to consider as possible.
One of the reasons I like conspiracy theories is the idea of plausible deniability. This is a term typically used within the military, which basically requires the person you would most suspect to know the "truth" to be ignorant of it, so that their denial of it is plausible. For example the idea of Area 51 was often the focus of many conspiracy theories before it was officially acknowledged. During that time, successive Presidents of the USA denied its existence, and being the commander in chief one would assume that if it did exist, they would know. Now there's the doubt naturally about whether the President is telling you the truth but we can ignore that for the moment. There are ways and means of military bodies operating programmes that aren't the direct knowledge of the President. We know this from history as details emerge decades after specific military operations that we find out the administrations of the time never knew about.
Whether any of that is true doesn't really matter, after all the whole idea of a Conspiracy Theory is that someone else knows and you do not. Area 51 is the best example of a Conspiracy Theory that was held for decades, officially denied, discredited repeatedly, then eventually acknowledged as being something that actually exists. Pop culture has depicted Area 51 for decades in countless movies, games, and TV shows, but it wasn't until 2013 that the US government officially admitted it existed. You can speculate as to the true nature of its contents and the focus of the work that was carried out there, but regardless, it stands as an example of something that was theorized, claimed, discredited, then proven to be true.
Therein lies the entertainment value and the thought provoking element of Conspiracy Theories, that although the bulk of them seem far fetched and implausible, fact is often stranger than fiction and there have been some that have been true. The appeal therefore is the contemplation of the question "what if" and all it would entail. One other aspect that I like to consider is the idea "if it was true people would know" because that defence is perhaps the most laughable. That puts far too much confidence in other peoples' ability to stay informed. That and there is the fact that there is always a leak, someone somewhere will let something slip about the work they do - those leaks are often the origins of conspiracy theories, although granted they can become warped through Chinese whispers, part of the fun of entertaining conspiracy theories is to consider what the grain of truth is and where the whole thing started.
One of the reasons I like conspiracy theories is the idea of plausible deniability. This is a term typically used within the military, which basically requires the person you would most suspect to know the "truth" to be ignorant of it, so that their denial of it is plausible. For example the idea of Area 51 was often the focus of many conspiracy theories before it was officially acknowledged. During that time, successive Presidents of the USA denied its existence, and being the commander in chief one would assume that if it did exist, they would know. Now there's the doubt naturally about whether the President is telling you the truth but we can ignore that for the moment. There are ways and means of military bodies operating programmes that aren't the direct knowledge of the President. We know this from history as details emerge decades after specific military operations that we find out the administrations of the time never knew about.
Whether any of that is true doesn't really matter, after all the whole idea of a Conspiracy Theory is that someone else knows and you do not. Area 51 is the best example of a Conspiracy Theory that was held for decades, officially denied, discredited repeatedly, then eventually acknowledged as being something that actually exists. Pop culture has depicted Area 51 for decades in countless movies, games, and TV shows, but it wasn't until 2013 that the US government officially admitted it existed. You can speculate as to the true nature of its contents and the focus of the work that was carried out there, but regardless, it stands as an example of something that was theorized, claimed, discredited, then proven to be true.
Therein lies the entertainment value and the thought provoking element of Conspiracy Theories, that although the bulk of them seem far fetched and implausible, fact is often stranger than fiction and there have been some that have been true. The appeal therefore is the contemplation of the question "what if" and all it would entail. One other aspect that I like to consider is the idea "if it was true people would know" because that defence is perhaps the most laughable. That puts far too much confidence in other peoples' ability to stay informed. That and there is the fact that there is always a leak, someone somewhere will let something slip about the work they do - those leaks are often the origins of conspiracy theories, although granted they can become warped through Chinese whispers, part of the fun of entertaining conspiracy theories is to consider what the grain of truth is and where the whole thing started.
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