The Curious Creative: Week 48

Time Constraints

This is the forty-eighth installment of The Curious Creative, weekly 10-minute writing exercises for busy individuals interested in exploring their creativity. For the complete rationale, click here. 

My Thoughts:

In his book, Cartooning Philosophy and Practice, Ivan Brunetti leads budding cartoonists through a drawing exercise in which students are constrained by time limits. The exercise goes as follows. Fold a piece of paper into quarters. In the top left quarter, first draw a castle for two minutes; next, in the top right quarter, draw one for one minute; in the bottom left, draw one for 30 seconds; and in the bottom right, end by drawing a castle for 15 seconds.

Through this exercise, Brunetti shows that somehow, in each of these time constraints, one figures out how to fit what’s necessary into his/her drawing. He also demonstrates that a lot of thinking and planning ahead of time is not necessary or helpful. Whereas beginning artists might stare at a blank page with unlimited time feeling like they don’t know how to draw a castle, a ticking clock pushes them to do it without thinking (and discover they can!).

If you are a visual artist, this is a great exercise to try for your Curious Creative exercise this week. If you are a writer, you can adapt this activity to the written word by following the steps below.

Your Turn!

1. Choose a family photograph. 

2. Fold a piece of paper into quarters.

3. Set your timer to 5 minutes. In the top left quarter, write a description of the photo for 5 minutes.

4. In the top right quarter, describe the same photo in 2 minutes.

5. In the bottom left, describe it in 30 seconds. 

6. In the bottom right quarter, describe the photo in 15 seconds. 

How did you do? Were you able to keep your hand moving the whole time, without pausing too much to think? Did your descriptions, as they got shorter, narrow in on a certain aspect of the photo, such as a specific person, what people were thinking, or the emotional relationship(s) between family members? Did your final 15-second description consist of the most important “lines and shapes” of that photograph? In other words, did it boil down that moment to its essence?

To encourage each other and grow a community of Curious Creatives, sign in from a google account so you can share your creation in the comment box below. Also, if you subscribe to this blog (submit your email address in the "Follow this Site by Email" box to the right), you will get an email update whenever a new exercise is added. Thanks for playing!

Inspired by: Ivan Brunetti’s Cartooning Philosophy and Practice (Yale University Press, 2011).

The Curious Creative: Week 47

Index Card Portraits

This is the forty-seventh installment of The Curious Creative, weekly 10-minute writing exercises for busy individuals interested in exploring their creativity. For the complete rationale, click here. 

My Thoughts:

One of the best ways to get into the writing mindset for me is to draw. It quiets and calms my mind-chatter, but it also centers me into my physical body and presence. It’s possible that engaging in any right-brained activity would help one access another creative activity- dancing to write, drawing to dance, etc. Personally, I drew a lot as a little kid and am not sure which came first – writing or drawing. But to this day, I place a lot of importance on the act of physically holding a pencil and channeling images or words through my arm, that this physical act is a completely necessary first step in anything I create.

Lynda Barry, cartoonist and creativity teacher, swears on this as well. In her book, Syllabus: Notes from an Accidental Professor, she writes “The trick seems to be this: Consider the drawing as a side effect of something else: a certain state of mind that come about when we gaze with open attention.” In the course she teaches at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, “What It Is: manually shifting the image,” her students write, draw, paint and cartoon entirely by hand. In this week’s exercise, we are going to try an assignment she gives her students a few times each semester.

Your Turn!

1. Take a stack of index cards and a drawing pencil. Go to a public place.

2. With whatever time you have, whether it is 10 or 45 minutes, draw people, one on each index card. 

3. Try not to get caught up on perfection, details, or verisimilitude. Rather than spending 45 minutes drawing one perfect portrait, it’s better to draw a handful of portraits, rudimentary ones like those you drew as a child. Draw characters out of simple shapes (circles, triangles, squares) with minimal features. Barry calls them “quick and workable alternative[s] to stick figures with a lot more soul.”

4. Later, ink them in with a black pen. You can also fill them in with watercolor or colored pencils.

5. The purpose of this exercise is purely to exercise your creative muscles, but something surprising might appear on your paper. You might end up using one of these images as inspiration for a future art or writing project.

How did you do? Did you keep your hand in motion the whole time? Were you able to turn your language-brain off and not think too much as you drew? Did anything original appear? Could any of these characters be inspiration for a story?

To encourage each other and grow a community of Curious Creatives, sign in from a google account so you can share your creation in the comment box below. Also, if you subscribe to this blog (submit your email address in the "Follow this Site by Email" box to the right), you will get an email update whenever a new exercise is added. Thanks for playing!

Inspired by: Linda Barry’s Syllabus: Notes from an Accidental Professor (Drawn & Quarterly, 2014)

The Curious Creative: Week 46

First Lines

This is the forty-sixth installment of The Curious Creative, weekly 10-minute writing exercises for busy individuals interested in exploring their creativity. For the complete rationale, click here. 

My Thoughts:

Poets & Writers magazine has a column called “Page One: Where New and Noteworthy Books Begins.” It consists of 10-15 first lines from recently published books of fiction, poetry, and memoir. I am often introduced to great contemporary reads through this column, when I take a chance on a book because its first line struck me.

At a writer’s salon I recently attended, one of the prompts was to write as many first lines for a short story or a novel as we could in ten minutes. I asked if they needed be ones from books already written that we could recall, or if we were to invent ones of our own. The answer was the latter.

But I think there’s merit in collecting first lines from already published books.

I can’t help but think that part of creative play is collecting and gleaning beautiful things, that sometimes this is a necessary step in the writing process. For this week’s Curious Creative exercise, you will both glean and create interesting first lines.

Your Turn!

1. The first step is to pull a handful of books off your bookshelf and open them to their first pages. Record about five favorite first lines. Here are mine:

The shell collector was scrubbing limpets at his sink when he heard the water taxi come scraping over the reef.

The Shell Collector, Anthony Doerr

How angry am I?

The Woman Upstairs, Claire Messud

Six days ago, a man blew himself up by the side of a road in northern Wisconsin.

Leviathan, Paul Aster

He is flying.

The Aviator’s Wife, Melanie Benjamin

Notice that some are punchy and succinct, some throw you into the middle of a story enticing you to stick around to find out what’s next, and some ask questions.

2. Now set the timer for 10 minutes and write as many first lines of your own. Any topic. Any style. Go for variety. Try some starting off in the middle of an action. Try some that ask a question.

3. If you have the time, the obvious next step, of course, is to take your favorite of these first lines and keep writing! 

How did you do? Did you notice effective strategies in the already published first lines? Did you create any of your own that would entice a reader to pick up your story and keep reading?

To encourage each other and grow a community of Curious Creatives, sign in from a google account so you can share your creation in the comment box below. Also, if you subscribe to this blog (submit your email address in the "Follow this Site by Email" box to the right), you will get an email update whenever a new exercise is added. Thanks for playing!

The Curious Creative: Week 45

Moved by a Famous Photograph

This is the forty-fifth installment of The Curious Creative, weekly 10-minute writing exercises for busy individuals interested in exploring their creativity. For the complete rationale, click here. 

My Thoughts: 

The other day, I came across this photograph of former President Obama leaning over so a little African American boy could feel his hair. Boys at school had told the boy that he had the same hair as the president and so he was curious. He told this to the president, and without hesitation, Obama leaned over so the boy could see for himself. I was particularly moved by the little boy’s facial expression in this moment- as if his eyes were asking incredulously, “Could it really be?”

I had seen this photo before, but something about seeing it again in this new moment, perhaps with all that has happened in our country since it was taken, struck a chord. As a writer, I pay attention to moments like these. Why did I feel moved? What exactly was happening in the photo? And how did it relate to what was happening to me?

In this week’s exercise, you will begin with the feeling of being moved by a famous photograph, and you will use writing to uncover exactly what inspired this feeling.  Once you circle around enough details in the photograph, you will come across what exactly struck the chord, and when you do, you will run with it!

Your Turn!

1. Find a photograph that moves you emotionally – one you’ve come across in the news or pop culture, not one from your own life. If nothing comes to mind, peruse Life Magazine’s most iconic photos. 

2. Write about what you see. Describe the body language and facial expressions of the main figures. What are they wearing? Who stands in the sidelines? What are their expressions? Imagine what happened several hours before this photo was taken and what happened later that evening. Write possible dialogue that took place when the photo was taken. Who was standing outside the frame?

3. Chances are, because you were moved emotionally when you first saw the photo, something you write in this brainstorming stage will strike the same chord. When it does, narrow in on that detail and run with it. If it is something about the facial expression of a certain figure, write his internal thoughts. Write what he later spoke of to his friends that night. Write what he was thinking that morning when he got dressed.

4. To further this exercise, shape this freewriting into a poem. Cross out all the preliminary writing (what you wrote before you found what struck the emotional chord), and revise what remains. Add just enough details to clue the reader in on what is happening. Then make cuts so the writing is concise and succinct (less repetitive as feverish brainstorming can often be). 

How did you do? Once you found something that struck a chord, did your writing quicken? Did you tap into that same feeling, perhaps uncover its source, and achieve some kind of understanding or catharsis? Does the finished product have the potential to move the reader to feel the same emotion?

To encourage each other and grow a community of Curious Creatives, sign in from a google account so you can share your creation in the comment box below. Also, if you subscribe to this blog (submit your email address in the "Follow this Site by Email" box to the right), you will get an email update whenever a new exercise is added. Thanks for playing!