“The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider’s web.”
– Pablo Picasso
“Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.”
– Dorothea Lange
“Every human is an artist. And this is the main art that we have: the creation of our story.”
– Don Miguel Ruiz
I find it interesting that when we speak about the art of paying attention, we use financial words: paying attention, spending time.
This question often sends us down the road of calculation. How much do we make annually? How much does that work out to as an hourly wage? These are helpful time-management questions, but they fall short when it comes to attention management. Here’s another question for you.
Again, this is a quantitative question. The line of thinking sends me down the rabbit hole of a “quantified life.” How many hours did I spend writing? How many minutes running? How about working? Playing? Commuting? Suddenly, I feel like a bean counter in my own life. My attention is spent on counting, not on being present.
Articles like this one explain that negative experiences imprint more deeply on our minds than positive ones do. Understanding this tendency is important not only for mental health, but also as insight into the art of paying attention. What if we were able to treasure each moment as the pearl it truly is, rather than counting or weighing or measuring it?
Like most creative habits, it’s more a way of being than an item on a to-do list. No matter what we’re physically doing—eating, working, playing—our life’s moment can be treasures, or they can blur past, lost in fog. It’s a practice, a muscle we can build, and though it seems simple and possibly even unimportant in the larger scheme of life, the fact is, it IS life.
Your day awaits. How might you bring your attention more fully into its moments?
It’s terrifying. You arrive at home after having commuted for a half hour (or more, ugh!) only to realize you don’t remember the drive. Auto-pilot happens to everyone sometimes. Too often, it settles in, a thick fog settling over our entire lives.
Our brains, in their complex way, are kicking in to save us calories and time. Why waste precious energy noticing something we saw yesterday and the day before? As far as survival goes, these instincts are absolutely helpful.
For living fully, not so much.
One of the reasons I love spending regular time with young writers is because kids are a constant reminder of what is possible. Kids have superpowers. Actually, we all have these superpowers, but as adults, we often misplace ours.
Imagination:
Recently, I’ve been watching Anne with an E on Netflix. Among other things, the show is reminding me about Anne’s singular perspective on the world. Time spent outside offers any number of “What if…?” possibilities. What if we coined names that fit the beauty of our local redwood grove or nearby flowering meadow? What if we looked for hints of magic in our everyday lives?
Imagination is a superpower because it turns the mundane into an adventure. All it takes to tap into the imagination is a choice. We choose to ask “What if…?” And while imagination can be silly and whimsical, its power reaches far beyond bringing happiness. Imagination is what allows us to see what’s possible, to imagine innovation and solutions to complex problems and opportunities beyond our current situation.
Belief:
Imagination allows us to dream up possibilities. Belief invites us to roll up our sleeves and bring our vision to life. We’ve all seen a child tugging on an adult’s sleeve asking “Can I …?” (or if they are grammatically savvy, “May I …?”) Adults are so quick to say no, to give reasons why not. We’ve learned through experience that the world can be full of danger, and disappointment is always a possibility.
When kids ask, “Why not?” it can be difficult to hold back the list of reasons that spring to mind. Too often, those same reasons cause us to not try. Last weekend, I hopped on my bicycle for the first time in years. I hadn’t ridden for a litany of reasons: cars, the possibility of crashing, looking silly. We rode 22 miles, to a local town I’d never visited, and the whole trip was a grand adventure. Why not? Exactly.
Laughter:
There’s a widely quoted myth that children laugh 300-400 times a day, while adults only laugh 17.5 times per day on average. While research doesn’t back this wide discrepancy, in general, most of us know that we laugh less as adults than we did as children. Why? Like imagination and belief, laughter is also a choice. And it’s a third superpower that we all can access anytime we choose.
Laughter changes everything. Just try staying gloomy after a belly-laugh. It’s nearly impossible. Finding laughter when we feel gloomy can be a challenge, but once we start laughing, the impact is immediate and powerful. Hopefully you don’t need any more convincing that laughter is good for you, but if you’d like to study quotes from scientists on the topic, you can find eight here.
If you had a superpower, would you forget about it?
Would you forget to use your super-speed, for instance, or your invisibility? Why, then, do we forget to use our actual superpowers? Maybe all we need is a tiny reminder every once in a while. Hey, there, Naomi. Don’t forget … You have a superpower. You have at least three, in fact.
I’ll be using mine today. How about you?
If you dust off those superpowers, I’d love to hear what adventures ensue. And I’d also love to hear: What other superpowers would you say that we all have, and often misplace? I’m sure these three aren’t the only ones.
Feel free to comment below, or, as always, connect with me on Facebook or Twitter. Your stories are an inspiration!
Visit the Writerly Play Studio and play your way into creative discoveries. Never heard of the WP Studio? Learn how Writerly Play thinking strategies supercharge your creativity here.
No one can stay in a funk when they turn on a happy song and dance. When you need a creative kick-start or have a happiness SOS moment, you don’t want to have to come up with a solution on the spot. Preparation is key! That’s why taking some time to choreograph your own happy dance is such an excellent creativity-boosting strategy.
When you’re designing your dance, you’ll have a blast of fresh energy that comes from thinking with a different part of your mind. Chances are, choreography isn’t one of your daily tasks, so the process will feel novel and will likely remind you of being a kid. After you’ve designed your dance, you will have a solution in your back pocket anytime you feel your energy lagging.
Try This:
Hints:
Creativity often shows up at the intersection of various thoughts. Here are three on a sense of wonder … what do they spark for you?
“The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease forever to be able to do it.”
– Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie
“Believing takes practice.”
– A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L’Engle
“The ability to retain a child’s view of the world with at the same time a mature understanding of what it means to retain it, is extremely rare – and a person who has these qualities is likely to be able to contribute something really important to our thinking.”
― How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading, Mortimer J. Adler
I’m collecting other quotes and images as I continue to spot wonder in our world. Check out my collection on Pinterest.
Visit the Writerly Play Attic to collect experiences and sensory detail to bring your creative work to life. Never heard of the WP Attic? Learn how Writerly Play thinking strategies supercharge your creativity here.
Visit the Writerly Play Studio and play around the edges of your work to get to know your character. Never heard of the WP Studio? Learn how Writerly Play thinking strategies supercharge your creativity here.
Whether you love your birthday or hate your birthday, it’s a day that celebrates you! That’s why it’s such an excellent opportunity to get to know a character.
This month, I posted over at Smack Dab in the Middle on using birthdays as a character development tool. Check out the post here.
Or, if you want the cliff-notes edition, here’s a list of birthday-related questions to help you explore unexpected corners of your character’s personality.
On your character’s birthday:
1. What does she love to do?
2. Who does he spend time with? Does he prefer large groups or small ones?
3. Do her friends make her gifts, or are the gifts store-bought?
4. What do the gifts given reveal about him?
5. What does the reaction to the gifts reveal about her?
6. How does he change from birthday to birthday? What remains the same?
7. Does she plan her own birthday? If not, who plans the day? Is this what she would choose, were it up to her?
8. How does he feel about people singing happy birthday, or not?
9. What surprises come up on her birthday?
10. Which birthdays are most meaningful to him?
How do you use birthdays in your writing? Do you have favorite literary birthdays? Feel free to share your thoughts and ideas below, or connect with me on Facebook or Twitter.
“A diamond gemstone is made up of facets—defined surfaces, sides which each face a particular direction and yet are all connected to one another: distinct aspects of the whole.”
― Marianne Roccaforte, Ph.D., Bridges in the Mind: An Artist’s Handbook for Everyday Living
“Meg, when people don’t know who they are, they are open either to being Xed, or Named.”
― Madeleine L’Engle, A Wind in the Door
“We’re afraid of writing characters different from ourselves because we’re afraid of getting it wrong. We’re afraid of what the Internet might say.”
― Gene Luen Yang
