Monthly Archives: May 2012

Finding Your Creative Time

You sit in your favorite writing chair, by the window, on the porch, or in the study. You wear your favorite tweed jacket with the leather elbow patches, or your blue jeans, or your “creative shoes.” You look around at the carefully crafted environment you spent months arranging to trigger your inspiration. Reaching eagerly forward you place your hands on the keyboard or grasp the pen or pencil, and… Nothing happens.

You look around the room again, out the window, sip your coffee, cross or uncross your legs, finger your lucky charm, reach forward and… Still nothing

What in blazes is wrong? You know you are full of inspiration; you can feel it! Why the ideas were flowing like a deluge just this morning, last night, or yesterday. Frustrated, yet determined, you try several more times to get the words to flow, but to no avail. “Good pen name, ” you think,” Noah Vale.”

So what’s the problem? How can you feel all primed to write, sit in your favorite environment with everything just perfect and still nothing comes?

Perhaps the problem is not where you are trying to write, but when!

Each of us has a creative time of day and a logistic time of day. Never heard of this? I didn’t discover it until quite recently myself. As a writer, I always thought creativity came and went with the Muse, sometimes bringing inspiration, sometimes spiriting it away. Like most writers, I had found that creating a quiet refuge, a creative sanctuary, increased the frequency and intensity of visits from the Muse. What I didn’t know was that the Muse keeps a schedule: she comes and goes like clockwork.

Here’s my scenario and see how it might apply to you… I’ve always felt guilty when I write – guilty that I’m not out cleaning something, building something, visiting someone, or even just getting out in the real world and living a little. But writing always draws me back. I find it therapeutic, cathartic, invigorating, stimulating, and, well, just plain fun. Sometimes… no, make that ALL the time, it’s as good as… no, make that BETTER THAN sex! And food! And earning a living! I often feel (when writing) like that rat with the wire connected to his pleasure center who kept pushing the stimulation button until it starved to death because it forgot to eat!

Well, the urge to write is there all the time. But, because I feel guilty I try to get all of my chores done I the morning, clearing the way to spend the afternoon or evening writing guilt free. But then I sit there watching the sun go down, full of the desire to write but completely unable to do so.

Recently, however, I had the good fortune of actually finishing all my chores the night before. I found myself with the whole morning free and guilt-free as well! At first, I was just going to goof off, do some reading, watch some TV, but then that old Writing Bug took a nip of my soul and off I was to my study to pound the keys. And you know what? The words just spilled out like secrets from the town gossip! This was wonderful! What an experience! I was pelting out the thoughts without the least guilt and without the slightest hesitation. I was flying through my own mind and playing it out on the keys! It felt very much like when I play music.

But why was this happening? I was truly afraid the feeling would go as quickly as it came and I would be lost in the creative doldrums again. In fact, it did fade with time – not abruptly, but gradually… slipping away until it was no more. But it did not leave a vacuum. In its place was a rising motivation to clean something, build something, visit someone, or get out in the real world and live!

Then, it hit me… Perhaps my creativity does not spring from where I write, but when! Perhaps the morning is my creative time and the afternoon, my practical time! I experimented. Try to write in the afternoon, the evening, at night, the morning. Quickly I discovered that if I felt free from the guilt of non-practical activity, I could write in the morning as if I were designed to do nothing else! But no matter how many chores I might accomplish in the morning, by the time the sun dropped below the horizon, my inspiration dropped away as well.

In fact, my creative time seems tied to the sun. For me, it brightens in the morning, peaks around noon, and fades away to nothing at dusk. Interestingly, I recently moved to the mountains and dusk comes early hear in the canyon this time of year – far earlier than when I lived down in the flatlands of the city.

Looking back over the years, I could see that my daily creative cycle depended upon the direct rays of the sun, not the time of day. And all those years I tried to get the practical stuff done in the morning to avoid guilt didn’t help my creativity but hindered it!

Lately, I just know that when the sun goes down it’s time to get practical. As a result, I know in the morning that I’ll accomplish real world logistic things later in the day. That eliminates guilt because the work part is already scheduled. And, that frees my mind to play with words all morning long.

When is your creative time? Just being a “morning person” or a “night person” isn’t enough because that only determines when you have your most energy. But what KIND of energy? Perhaps you are more energetic when you are working on the practical, so you think that just because you get your greatest energy at night you are a night person. This is not necessarily so! Suppose your creative side is NEVER the most energetic part of you, but is strongest in the morning. Then you are a Practical night person and a Creative morning person.

Your Creative Time might be any span of hours in the day. Or, it might even be more than one time. For example, you might be most inspired from mid-morning until noon and again from mid-afternoon to dusk. Everyone is a bit different. The key is to find your Creative Time and then adjust your daily schedule to fit it. It is important to remember to avoid guilt feelings while trying to determine your Creative Time. To do this, don’t just focus on when you are going to try writing, but make sure to also schedule other time to concentrate on chores. This way your “reading” of the level of your creativity will not be tainted by negative feelings of guilt, and you should arrive at more accurate appraisals.

After a week or so of trying different combinations, you should be able to determine the best creative and most practical times of the day. From that point forward, you will almost certainly find inspiration is present more than it is absent, and writing becomes far more joyful a process and less like work.

But there is a little bit more… Our lives are not just creative or practical. In fact, there are four principal emotionally driven aspects to our days: Creative, Practical, Reflective, and Social.

We need our Reflective time to be alone, to mull the events of our life over our minds eye, to let our thoughts wander where they will: to daydream. We need our Social time to recharge our batteries in the company of others, to express ourselves to our friends, to de-focus from our own subjective view by standing in the shoes of those around us.

I’ve found for myself that Saturday is a Social day for me, and that Sunday a Reflective day. I don’t do much of either on the weekdays at all. Whether this is nurture, nature, or something else altogether I can’t say, and to be truthful, it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that I have come to recognize it.

When is your Reflective time? Do you have some every day, just on weekdays, only on weekends, or some combination of these? How about your Social time? Do you ever feel guilty wanting to be alone? Do you ever feel deprived because you ARE alone? Part of these feelings may come from trying to do each of these activities in times that (for your) are actually geared toward the other.

Once you have mapped our your Creative, Practical, Reflective, and Social cycles, you’ll find that you get so much more accomplished, and with so much more fulfillment. All four aspects of your life will improve, and the improvement in each will remove emotional burdens and therefore increase the energy in each of the other three!

In short, you can be in phase with your emotional cycles, or out of phase. The more you schedule your activities to match the flow of your feelings, the more your life experience will buoy itself higher and higher with less and less effort. And best of all, the more inspiration you will find when you sit in your tweed jacket and reach for the keyboard.

Dramatica Class: Mental Sex

Dramatica:  Okay, we move on to Mental Sex…

This question is not about the gender of the main Character. And, it is not about their sexual preferences, AND, it is not about masculine or feminine. It is about problem solving techniques,linear, or holistic. More often than not, if you have a male gender, they are male mental sex, and female gender is female mental sex. Sometimes this is not true. Ripley, in the original Alien, was male mental sex. In fact, the part was written for a man,they just changed the names and gender references, but kept the problem solving techniques intact.

That’s why it is so odd when she goes back for the cat! Not that a man wouldn’t go back, but just that they had not given male reasons to, they just assumed she was a woman, so she would go back,but they had created her as male mental sex.

Now, men or women can easily learn to respond in the opposite sex techniques, but underneath it all is a tendency or bias to adopt either spatial or temporal problem solving techniques.

Clarisse Starling in Silence of the Lambs is another male mental sex character, whereas, Tom Wingo, the Nick Nolte character in Prince of Tides, is Female mental sex. Again, most often, go with what you expect.

PGThomas : Wasn’t Ripley saving the cat meant to build horror suspense, regardless of “mental sex”?

Dramatica : But be aware that it will have an influence on the way your main character goes about solving the problem, not the conclusions they come to.

PGThomas : How could they have established that action for Ripley?

Dramatica : Yes, PG, that is the author’s intent, but if the action is out of place to the established character, even though it may build tension, it rings untrue.

Dan Steele : how do linear/holistic relate to spatial/temporal? not clear.

Dramatica : Well, Dan, female mental sex tries to hold it all together, male tries to pull it all together, female tries to “tune-up” the situation with leverage,male determines steps that lead to the desired outcome. And so on, women look at things holistically, because they think with the time side, men look at things in sequence, because they are using the space side to think with.

PG, all they would have needed to do, is to have Ripley have said to Jonesy, the cat, at some earlier time, that no matter what, she would never leave him.

PGThomas : Gotcha

Dramatica : Then, she would have made a commitment, and that is a male contract.

PGThomas : “Commitment” a male contract? Don’t tell my girlfriend that!

Dan Steele : But there are time sequences ie., do a then b then c; and men do that.

Dramatica : Yes, men stand on space to see time, women stand on time to see space.

William S1 : What?

Dramatica : It all goes back to inside the womb in the 12th to14th week of pregnancy…There is a flush of testosterone or estrogen over the brain of the developing fetus. Testosterone boosts serotonin, the neurotransmitter that is an exciter. Estrogen boosts dopamine, the neurotransmitter that inhibits. This does not affect the body, which is controlled by XX and XY chromosomes, but just the foundation upon which the mind is built.

Dan Steele : hmm, going to run into my resistance on these views of male/female intelligences, but not going to make issue.

PGThomas : Does this flush determine the sex of the baby, or vice versa?

Dan Steele : The stand on space to see time thing versus time to see space is too vague for me without clarification, can’t buy it

Dramatica : One sees easily the arrangement of things, and works to figure out how things are going (paths). That’s seeing logic and figuring the emotions. The other sees emotions clearly, which give meaning, but need to work to see what the mechanism is. Again, its only an influence, and training can counteract it, though not eliminate it.

PGThomas : So a male baby could conceivably get an estrogen flush? And vice versa?

Dramatica : Yes, PG, that is true.

Dan Steele : are you saying that basic difference this theory builds on is that men see objects, logic, order, and women see emotion, reasons?

Dramatica : More precisely, Dan, that is just an aspect of the theory, only one of perhaps 80 questions, and it is not exclusive, it says men see linear logic more clearly, and women see holistic logic more clearly, and they lead to different approaches to problem solving. This is always the controversial question, but we found it in our model and can’t deny it.

Dan Steele : Am still bothered by definition of “holistic logic” and the contrast. Is stereotyping people too much I think. But dropping issue now so we can move along.

William S1 : Relax… for the most part males think in male patterns, and females think in female.

Dramatica : Tell ya what Dan, I’ll email you a whole article I wrote on the subject for our newsletter, that can go into more detail than I can here.

Dan Steele : Sure, helpful.

Dramatica : How about an easy question?

PGThomas : Is it possible to have a character equally male AND female mental sex?

Dramatica : PG, when a character switches between the two, they move from problem solving to justification, And that is, in fact what hides problems from the main character, creates a blind spot, and winds up the engine of potential. Its not a sex issue at that point, just like saying things are rotten now, but the reward is worth it, or I don’t care if this leads anywhere, I’m having fun.

William S1 : Don’t we all think in some parts male and female?

Dan Steele : Ah – men tackle problems head-on, women work around them. Confrontational versus nurturing.

Dramatica : There are four levels of the mind, and this only affects one of them. The other three questions about the Main Character, create dynamics for the other three levels. What’s nice is, once you answer enough questions to determine the shape of the message your working toward, Dramatica, the software, starts to see that pattern, and limit out choices that would no longer be consistent with the direction you have chosen. Eventually, it fills in the rest of the blanks, and tells you things about your story you didn’t tell it, and the things “feel” right! This could be formula,but you can start with any question and take any path through them, so there is no bias built into the software at all.

William S1 : What impact does Dramatica have on the intuitive creative process?

Dramatica : That depends on the particular author, Willam, first of all, some writers like to use it right off the bat, to figure out their dramatics so they know where they are going. But others like to write a draft first, then go to Dramatica to look for leaks and inconsistencies. And for the “chain of consciousness” writer, since they are not consciously trying to convey any overall meaning,but are just exploring a path and leaving a trail, then Dramatica has no value to them at all.

Male vs. Female Problem Solving

All too often in stories, relationships and interchanges between characters of different sexes come off stilted, unbelievable, or contrived. In fact, since the author is writing from the perspective of only one of the two sexes, characters of the opposite sex often play more as one sex’s view of the opposite sex, rather than as truly being a character OF the opposite sex. This is because the author is looking AT the opposite sex, not FROM its point of view.

By exploring the differences in how each sex sees the world, we can more easily create believable characters of both sexes. To that end, I offer the following incident.

I was at lunch with Chris (Co-creator of Dramatica) some time ago. I had ordered some garlic bread and could not finish it. I asked the waitress if she would put it in a box to take home, and she did. On the way past the cashier, I realized that I had forgotten to take the box from the table. I said, “Rats! I forgot the bread!”

Chris said, “Go ahead and get it, we’ll wait.”

I thought for a moment and said, “No, it’s not that important.” and started to walk out.

Chris: “It’ll only take a moment.”

Me: “Yes, but I have to go all the way back, and I probably won’t eat it anyway, and it probably won’t reheat very well, and…”

Chris then said in jest, “Sounds like a bunch of excuses to me.”

In fact, they really did sound like excuses to him. But to me, the reasons I had presented to him for not going back for the bread were not rationalizations, but actually legitimate concerns.

At the heart of this difference in perspective is the difference in the way female and male brains are “soft wired”. As a result, neither women nor men can see into the heart of the other without finding a lack of coherence.

Here is a line-by-line comparison of the steps leading from having too much bread to the differing interpretations of my response to forgetting the box.

Melanie thinks:

That’s good bread, but I’m full. I might take it home, but I’m not convinced it will reheat. Also, I’ve really eaten too many calories in the last few days, I’m two pounds over where I want to be and I have a hair appointment on Wednesday and a dinner date on the weekend with a new friend I want to impress, so maybe I shouldn’t eat anymore. The kids won’t want it, but I could give it to the dog, and if I get hungry myself, I’ll have it there (even though I shouldn’t eat it if I want to lose that two pounds!) So, I guess it’s better to take it than to leave it.

Melanie says:

“Waitress, can I have a box to take the bread home?”

Chris understands Melanie to mean:

I want to take the bread home.

The balance sheet:

To me there was only a tendency toward bringing the bread home, and barely enough to justify the effort. To Chris it was a binary decision: I wanted to bring it home or not.

Melanie says:

“Rats! I forgot to bring the bread!”

Chris says:

“Go ahead and get it, we’ll wait.”

The balance sheet:

I’m thinking, “How does this change the way I feel about the situation?” Chris is thinking, “How can she solve this problem.”

Melanie thinks:

Well, I really don’t want to be tempted by it, this unexpected turn makes it easier to lose the weight. If I go back I’ll be tempted or give it to the dog. If I don’t go back I won’t be tempted, which is good because I know I usually give in to such temptations. Of course, the dog loses out, but we just bought some special treats for the dog so she won’t miss what she wasn’t expecting. All in all, the effort of going around two corners while everyone waits just so I can get an extra doggie treat and lead myself into temptation isn’t worth it.

Melanie says:

“No, its not that important.”

Chris says:

“It’ll only take a moment.”

The balance sheet:

I’m thinking that since I was right on the edge of not wanting to take it in the first place, even this little extra necessary effort is enough inconvenience to make it not a positive thing but an irritation, so I’ll just drop it and not pay even the minor price. Chris is thinking that since I made up my mind to take the bread in the first place, how is it that this little inconvenience could change my mind 180 degrees. I must be lazy or embarrassed because I forgot it.

Melanie says:

“Yes, but I have to go all the way back, and I probably won’t eat it anyway, and it probably won’t reheat very well, and…”

Chris says:

“Sounds like a bunch of excuses to me.”

The balance sheet:

I’m trying to convey about a thousand petty concerns that went into my emotional assessment that it was no longer worth going back for. Chris just hears a bunch of trumped up reasons, none of which are sufficient to change one’s plans.

I operated according to an emotional tendency to bring the bread home that was just barely sufficient to generate even the slightest degree of motivation. Chris doesn’t naturally assume motivation has a degree, thinking that as a rule you’re either motivated or you are not.

The differences between the way women and men evaluate problems lead them to see justifications in the others methods.

Making sense of each other:

Now, what does all this mean? When men look at problems, they see a single item that is a specific irritation and seek to correct it. When they look at inequities, they see a number of problems interrelated. Women look at single problems the same way, but sense inequities from a completely emotional standpoint, measuring them on a sliding scale of tendencies to respond in certain ways.

Imagine an old balance scale – the kind they used to weigh gold. On one side, you put the desire to solve the problem. That has a specific weight. On the other side you have a whole bag of things that taken altogether outweigh the desire to solve the problem. But, you can’t fit the bag on the scale (which is the same as not being able to share your whole mind with a man) so you open the bag and start to haul out the reasons – biggest one’s first.

Well, it turns out the first reason by itself is much lighter that the desire to solve the problem, so it isn’t sufficient. You pull out the next one, which is even smaller, and together they aren’t enough to tip the scales. So, you keep pulling one more reason after another out of the bag until the man stops you saying, “Sounds like a bunch of excuses to me.”

To the man, it becomes quickly obvious that there aren’t enough reasonably sized pieces in that bag to make the difference, and anything smaller than a certain point is inconsequential anyway, so what’s holding her back from solving the problem?

But the woman knows that there may be only a few big chunks, but the rest of the bag is full of sand. And all those little pieces together outweigh the desire to solve the problem. If she went ahead and solved it anyway, everything in that bag would suffer to some degree, and the overall result would be less happiness in her consciousness rather than more.

This is why it is so easy for one sex to manipulate the other: each isn’t looking at part of the picture that the other one sees. For a man to manipulate a woman, all he has to do is give her enough sand to keep the balance slightly on her side and then he can weigh her down with all kinds of negative big things because it still comes out positive overall. For a woman to manipulate a man, all she has to do is give him a few positive chunks and then fill his bag full of sand with the things she wants. He’ll never even notice.

Of course if you push too far from either side it tips the balance and all hell breaks loose. So for a more loving and compassionate approach, the key is not to get as much as you can, but to maximize the happiness of both with the smallest cost to each.

All too often, one sex will deny what the other sex once to gain leverage or to use compliance as a bargaining chip. That kind of adversarial relationship is doomed to keep both sides miserable, as long as it lasts.

But if each side gives to the other sex what is important to to the other but unimportant to themselves, they’ll make each other very happy at very little cost.

Story Structure – Part 12 of 113 (video)

“Bad Story Structure is No Joke!”

Here’s the link to the video:

http://storymindguru.com/dramatica-unplugged/12%20Bad%20Story%20Structure%20is%20No%20Joke.htm

In this episode, I compare story structure to a joke and storytelling to the manner in which the joke is told.  Understanding the difference betweeen story structure and storytelling is crucial to separating the two so structure can be built logically, step by step, while simultaneously the Muse of storytelling can be unshakled to run free.  As long as these two essential aspects of a story are blended, structure is unclear and inspriation is hobbled.