Creativity by Patricia Daly-Lipe
Thursday, December 1, 2016
Rated "G" by the Author.
Writing comes from the heart. So take the time to know yourself. And take the time to appreciate where you are and what you see.
Take the time to look, not see; to listen, not hear. Slow down; enjoy the moment. All our impressions stay with us and, one day, they may be exposed. Exposure will come from our innate creativity. And you may be surprised. But what methodology of creativity to use is a personal choice. Perhaps you prefer painting or perhaps writing. Comparing writing to art, this is what the late Irish author, William Trevor, wrote: “If the novel is like an intricate Renaissance painting, the short story is an impressionist painting. It should be an explosion of truth.” In watercolor painting, what you leave out is almost more important than what you choose to include. The strength of short story writing is also just as much what is left out as what is put in. Mr. Trevor continues: “The novel imitates life where the short story is bony, and cannot wander. It is essential art.” It is you, as writer, artist, or musician who can transcribe your personal experiences into a work of art. It is you who makes the choice: what to leave in and what to leave out. And it is for the recipient of this creative work to enjoy and/or learn from what you chose to leave in.
The artist considers what materials to use; the writer chooses the words. When I am writing stories on my computer, often I lose track of time and, as my fingers touch the keys, the words seem to take over. Later, I am surprised to read what I have written! But the thoughts were there, inside, just waiting to be released.
For the writer, there can be an affinity between musical rhythm and literary rhythm: repetition, meter, movement, harmony. Take the ‘motion’ out of ‘emotion’. Music is motion. Life is motion. For some, the creative muse finds his or her expression in music. Words are not necessary. The visual is not necessary. Music takes us beyond the external world and draws upon our inner selves, our emotions. And this inner voice is what we, in all forms of creativity, need to listen to and recognize. Friedrich Nietzsche, in Composition on Thus Spake Zarathustra, wrote about the notion of revelation (which etymologically translates as ‘remove the veil’). He said revelation was something "profoundly convulsive and disturbing" which "suddenly becomes visible and audible with indescribable definiteness and exactness…a thought flashes out like lightening, inevitably without hesitation - I have never had any choice about it." This flash of lightening or revelation describes creativity. It is freedom from constraints. Can we describe creativity as an intuitive leap? Perhaps.
Man is both creature and creator. Creative energy creates. The journey never ends. It is the journey, not its destination, the creating, not the created that opens our minds and hearts to more than logic, science, or technology can ever know. As Tom Robbins wrote in ‘Skinny Legs and All,’ “the mission of the artist in an over-technologized society [is] to call the old magic back to life.” Now, go find that magic.
This is an empowering article about the muse in the Stories section. I agree very much about the spontaneity of writing and where ideas are writing come from, “like lightning.”
