Today’s creativity links outnumber the writing links two to one. I’m grateful to be named a Top 10 Blog for Writers, but I’m also grateful my readers tolerate my polymath interests. These, of course, are some of the links I tweeted this week, and thus are a reflection of what caught my fancy at a moment in time. What’s on my mind also finds its way into my summaries; this week you might see a reference to coconut.
CREATIVITY
- “The Success of Failure: Pulitzer winner’s surprising road to the top,” Todd Leopold, CNN: “Successful people — creative people — fail every day, just like everybody else.” I fail constantly, so by extrapolation I must be very successful and creative.
- “Training Creativity,” Allan Douglas, guest on Creative Flux: Is your muse housebroken?
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This is the Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires, Argentina, a necropolis I visited in 2006. The vault of Evita Peron is located there. Why am I posting this photo, you ask? Since when have my photos had any relation to my posts? “Placing Too Much Importance on Passion,” Jane Friedman: So you’re really passionate about something? Who cares, Jane says: “What matters is how that translates into action.”
- “Study: The Brains of Storytellers and their Listeners Actually Sync Up,” Discover: All creative action involves telling a story, I believe. Thus, all creatives connect with their audience on a neurological level. Cool.
- “Open-plan offices killing creativity,” The Sunday Times (Australia): “Research strongly suggests that people are more creative when they enjoy privacy and freedom from interruption.” That’s true for me. Of course, when I crave interruption there’s always Twitter.
- “Ten Steps for Boosting Creativity,” Jeffrey Baumgartner: #9: “Read as much as you can about everything possible.” YES, I AGREE! #7: “Don’t watch TV.” Um, you know a new season of Archer has just started, right?
WRITING
- “Focusing on Flash Nonfiction: An Interview with Dinty Moore,” Jenny Patton, River Teeth: Hey all you flash-fiction writers. Hear from a fav writer of mine–and the editor of Brevity–on the CNF equivalent.
- “The Delicate Tension of Being a Writer,” Charlotte Rains Dixon: “The pull of the story is always with us. And that creates a constant tension in our lives.” That sounds about right. That, and looming deadlines.
- “How to Put On Your Own Writer’s Retreat,” Jane Porter: Great DIY advice. Given that currently I have a coconut jones, let me add another suggestion–put out a plate of macaroons between writing sessions.
Here’s to a great February. I hope yours is filled with creativity, coconut, and bacon. You could try engaging the first by combining those last two. If you do, let me know how it worked out.
The Artist's Road 
Thanks for the mention, Patrick, you old polymath! I’m sorry I just love that word so much I wanted to use it one way or another. And it does seem to describe you so well. Thank God for your varied interests in the world of creativity!
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It’s true – “polymath” is not used in daily conversation nearly enough. 🙂
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Thank you, Charlotte, for that kind comment!
And yes, Kathleen, it’s simply a fun word to say and write. But I suspect it is also a word that was more popular when we actually tolerated polymaths in society. I’ll stand on my soapbox for a minute and say our educational system forces specialization, from high school to college to advanced degrees, too often at the expense of other fields. We worship experts, but describe them as eccentric when they don’t act predictably, i.e., stay in their field. I’d rather admire a forest than pick at a piece of bark.
Now back to our regular programming! 🙂
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Things I found especially intriguing this week:
Charlotte’s post – This one really touched me as she seems to have been secretly snooping around inside my heart.
The brain syncing thing – way cool
Training your creativity like a puppy
Combining bacon and coconut
Re: the bacon and coconut, are you familiar with the Canadian bacon and pineapple pizza? I know it’s not the “right” kind of bacon, but it is very good with pineapple, and since pineapple and coconut are yummy together, I think the pineapple, bacon and coconut pizza might be a winner! I plan to experiment. I’ll report back.
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Ah, that is my favorite pizza! Well, perhaps tied with pepperoni, spicy Italian sausage, mushrooms and black olives. Ham and pineapple pizza (ham is a fine substitute for Canadian bacon, I find) was a staple of my diet when I went to college in southern California; in the 1980s that style of pizza–often called Hawaiian–hadn’t really moved much beyond the west coast. I look forward to the result of your experiment! 🙂
Oh, and thanks for the creativity tweet. I plan to peruse the article more fully than my first read, but it looks interesting. The definition of “creativity” has been touched on here on The Artist’s Road, but certainly not with the depth it deserves. We did have a good debate awhile back about what a “creative” is. I look forward to your take!
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Great to know you’ve explored that here. Perhaps that was before my time. I’ll go back through the archives.
My goal is not to offer any sort of definitive definition (hmm…that belongs in the department of redundancy department). I want to define creativity in the context of my work as a creativity coach. I find a lot of people don’t see the relevance of creativity coaching to their work because they don’t think of what they’re doing as creative, when, to my mind, it definitely is. I want to offer a broader definition of creativity than just “the arts” or major innovation.
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Great articles. I think I may follow the suggestion “Read as much as you can about everything possible” a little too much though sometimes. =P Researching interesting things for a book is definitely an element of fiction-writing that I enjoy though.
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