post by Doris McCraw
How do you define your work? Do you ever feel like you are in a rut? I know I do. I am always trying to find ways to push myself and my creativity. As many of you know I love history and have written papers on various historic subjects. I also write haiku as a daily writing practice that is in its second year. Still, my work could become stilted and boring. I could become bored. For people who live for their creativity boredom can become a death knell.
Lately I have rethought my writing and how it makes me feel. I still love all that I am doing, but at the same time it feels like is something missing. I have started a search to reignite the flames of creativity to reach an even higher point. I want to push myself to create in ways that are new and unusual. To that end I have begun a search and have found some interesting options I thought I would share. Some of you may already know of them and some may not.
I have started to revisit the book “How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci: Seven Steps to Genius Every Day” by Michael J. Gelb. Looking at the seven steps again puts my mind in another state. I see and look at things differently. This in turn translates into enhanced ideas and thoughts that show up in my writing. I am in no way the genius that daVinci was, but it is nice to inhabit what may have been his mindset for a while.
Self-portrait by Leonardo da Vinci, executed in red chalk sometime between 1512 and 1515 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
One of the members of Pike Peak Writers has an improv writing group that meets once a week. Anywhere from five to fifteen people show up. The rules are: no critiquing, each person reads their work aloud. Different people bring three writing prompts which everyone writes to. Even if you cannot think of anything to write you can just start writing words. There is no judgement on the part of the participants. I have found this exercise to be exciting and supportive.
I have just found a form of poetry called cento. You compose a new work using the verses or passages taken from another author or authors work put in a new form or order. For more information on this form Wikipedia has a fairly simple definition and example. What I like about this concept is learning and hearing ideas that I have formed from the works I love.
All these are ways for me to re-define my work and creativity. It is something I do to keep myself excited about the prospect of creating new and exciting works. The blog post, the haiku, the short story and non-fiction are all hopefully the beneficiary of this search.
I wish you all a fun creative week.
To read some of the haiku you can find them at http://fivesevenfivepage.blogspot.com
Keira's Place 