Mysterious Flame

A few months ago I picked up the book The War of Art by Steven Pressfield, who also wrote The Legend of Bagger Vance. It’s an excellent book that deals with getting yourself off your rear end and doing whatever it is you were meant to do, whether it’s writing The Great American Novel or starting a business.

Summary

Pressfield begins by taking a good, hard look at what he calls “Resistance,” that thing that keeps us from doing anything difficult or end up with a good long-term result. Book One, “Defining the Enemy” talks about the many forms Resistance takes, many of which you will recognize right away. In Book Two, he quickly moves on to the idea of “Turning Pro” — resisting Resistance by not procrastinating and treating your art as a job. Just plug away at it, even if it’s crap. It’s the old “quantity over quality” idea that says if you work hard enough and long enough and make enough, the quality will happen on it’s own. Finally, he conludes this short book with third section about his fervent belief in angels and muses, who inspire him. He even cites Homer’s Invocation of the Muse (it’s his prayer before he begins writing) and touches on Jungian psychology.

My take: no nonsense (or very little, anyway)

I really appreciate Pressfield’s no-nonsense, tell-it-straight writing style that mixes in humor and an uplifting moment or two along with the career successes and failures he shares. The former Marine has an in-the-trenches attitude that says: “Cut the crap and get the art done.” I will say that the last section of the book, “Beyond Resistance: Higher Realm” gets a bit weird with all the talk about angels and muses. Then it takes a weird turn where he starts swearing at the first novel he ever finished. Nonetheless it’s a great book, and I enjoyed the tidbits of Greek history and philosophy.

It’s written in an almost devotional sort of format, with each “chapter” rarely going more than one or two pages. The chapters had a bite-sized “blog post” feel. One could read a page a day at random as they get fired up to go to their studio and do their art. I loved the lack of New-Agey fluff that’s so common to art/self-help books like The Artist’s Way. It’s a great book that will inspire you to get off your butt and get moving. There are great tidbits of advice and pep-talk without any sugar-coating at all. I highly recommend it to any creative person, whether they’re stuck or not.

On the wall of our copywriter’s office, I saw something on her whiteboard that made me take notice. “Nice spider-web,” I said. She explained to me what it was: a sort of modified mind-map called UNO, short for UNiversal Organizer, developed by Paul Borzo, a teacher and writing tutor at Metropolitan State University in Minneapolis/St. Paul. My co-worker found out about it from a writing newsletter she recieves.

The idea is to start off with a primary concept and break it down into finer concepts and more granular points or supporting ideas. It’s a nice twist on a classic idea.

Yesterday as I was perusing my daily feeds, I came across an interesting link on Steve Rubel’s Lifestream: an Idea Generator from The Director’s Bureau. It looks like all there is to the site is just a simple Flash application (if you can call it an application, since it does only one thing) that randomly complies three words from a list. It reminds me somewhat of the game Catch Phrase.

The site doesn’t give any explanation at all as to what this is for or who made it. (I Googled ‘The Director’s Bureau” and it seems there’s a group of Hollywood directors who call themselves by that name, but I get the feeling this is not affiliated with them.) At any rate, it looks like an interesting tool to help people find jumping-off points for free-association, so it can be useful in brainstorming sessions, much like Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies.

from Mysterious Flame - inspiring creativity by BradBlackman

Laurie at photopreneur.com compiled a list of 60 Sources of Inspiration for Photography. Here are a few of my favorites:

• Play with Photoshop
  So much of photography these days happens after the shutter release has been pressed. There’s probably a ton of things that you don’t know how to do in Photoshop. Learn something new and see what that does for your photography potential.

• Visit a Flea Market
  Strange objects mean strange shapes, odd shadows and plenty of potential for unique compositions. And you don’t even have to buy anything.

• Join Flickr Groups
  The pictures in Flickr Groups are great places to see what other people are doing with a theme; the discussions are great places to find out how they did it. And you’ll probably find that the feedback you get on your own photos will give you plenty to think about too.

• Start a Project
  Inspiration might come in a flash but you want it to hang around. Instead of thinking of an idea for one photograph, try thinking of an idea for a series of photographs. If you’d decided to take pictures of lightning for example, expand the concept to include extreme weather as a whole and add photographs of windswept trees and sun-bleached rooftops. That should keep you busy for a while…

• Create a Shooting Schedule
  One way to cut back on the regular head-scratching is to plan ahead. Pull out a calendar and decide in advance what sort of images you’ll be shooting each weekend for the next few months. And leave room for flexibility.

It should almost go without saying that these don’t apply only to photographers. In fact, they are commendable to just about anyone who wants to pursue pretty much any creative endeavor. The last one I cited, about creating a schedule, reminds me of something I read recently in Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art, where he talks about author Somerset Maugham, who was asked whether he writes on a particular schedule or when inspiration strikes:

“I write only when inspiration strikes,” Maugham replied. “Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o’clock sharp.”

What about you? Where do you find inspiration, and what little tricks work for you? Share in the comments.