This week in creativity

Let's see how long TWIC lasts.  Perhaps it will become TMonthIC.

Story Dice

     I've discussed 'terror of the blank page' and the use of prompts to ease that terror before.  Now, I have found some cool dice to do the work.  Rory's Story cubes, in a variety of genres, are available at Amazon and a similar App is on iTunes for iPads.

    I reached a similar result with a pretty enthusiastic class a few years ago.  After four meetings with the class, I would write the major vocabulary words from those four stories on the white board and would collect random numbers from students.  We would then select four or five words randomly (or so the students were lead to believe) from the list and these words had to be in the story they wrote that week as homework.  For the record, most of the words, most of the time, were randomly chosen but if students had particular difficulty with a word, I was likely to slip it into the short list.

   "Trick" was a surprisingly difficult word.  The story was titled "A Sick Trick" and was about a child who faked an illness to evade school... on Saturday morning.  The students had trouble in their stories separating the "sick" from the "trick".

     Anyway, I like the idea of story dice and will shortly send some to my sister for her children to use.  I am likely to order a set for myself, too.

     Or, I could make a set abusing this website.  I can't figure out how these dice are meant to be used.  It sure looks like students are expected to include most of the information they need to complete their essays so I don't get the role of randomness normally expected of dice.  In the "Bio Cube Creator", section, it sure looks like a summarizing tool rather than a randomizing tool.

--------

Avoid Cliches like my Creationist Coworker!

    Nigel Fountain has a book out describing the abuse of cliches.  In the UK it is apparently called "Cliches: avoid them like the plague" while in the US it is "The Best Thing Since Sliced Bread: Cliches: What they Mean and Where they Came From".  Um, my aforementioned coworker does not noticeably avoid cliches more than other people, but I've seen people avoid conversations with him.

     I particularly enjoyed learning where the term comes from:

"The word itself originates in mid-19th century France, where printers would assemble time-saving blocks from the most commonly used word combinations. Fountain [the author of the book on Cliches being reviewed] hews to that broad definition, and his A-Z of shame embraces buzz-words and bromides as well as adages, truisms and idioms. From “affluent society” to “zero-sum game” they are all, he argues, either redundant, vacuous or overused to the point of meaninglessness."

     Does this mean that "How are you?" is a cliche?  It is overused and typically a vacuous question that nobody ever listens to the answer of.

     The cliche that bothers me most, for no good reason, is "having said that...".

   For more cliches than you can shake a stick at, see this site.
----------------------
Ride a tramp to work!

     First off, what do you think I am going to write about?  Prostitutes, hobos, old steamships or trampolines?

    The correct answer is 'trampoline'.  I like the idea and the unexpectedness of the transport but I am pessimistic about the usage of this as a fast track to work.  The text claims this is only a 51 metre long track as a prototype so I have to give the photographer creative credit for making it look much longer.
--------------------
Bazsali in the news.

     A coworker (I don't know his views on evolution) worked on the soundtrack for a movie that was just released.  Pretty cool stuff!  He also has a solo album out.

links roundup

At my university, students need to take a TOIEC test and we professors don't see the results until after the semester is done.  Objectively, their taking -or not- the test doesn't affect me but it does affect their grades and I do what I can to remind them.  Here is one example:



My son plays the teacher.
------

For more professional movie making, look to Gord Sellar.  He needs some extras for a movie he's making and has issued a cattle-call.

We need extras of both sexes — male and female — for Sunday, December 2, in Bucheon City. We need as many people as we can get: if we don’t get enough people, we’re going to have to hire more, which will use up the money we had earmarked for post-production.

We put out a call last week, and got an okay response: about twenty people are coming. But we need more people. If you participate, you’ll be welcome at a party we’re hosting at my place after the shooting is done, with beer. Free beer, until the kegs run dry. We’ll order pizzas, too. And extras will eventually receive a copy of the film on DVD, as well!

We especially need Koreans — or anyone who can pass for Korean — as extras, but don’t get me wrong: we will find a use for you no matter what you look like! 

--------
When I engage in FLOW, I lose track of my surroundings.  I remember working on something with my MP3 player going and coming up for air a few times and finally realizing that I had been listening to one song on repeat for over an hour.

I enjoy the background sounds Omm Writer provides.  When I was a student, I used to listen to Doug and the Slugs all the time.  I would be working and focused and take a break, singing along for a moment, then focussing again. D&the S wasn't for listening to, so much as it was for being a familiar background noise.

Neuro Tribes reports on what some top writers listen to as they work. The authors are pretty science-heavy but their music is remarkably varied.  Via Boingboing.
----
TED now has a playlist for creativity.  I don't see Ken Robinson on the list, so perhaps it is new stuff.  I have some new material to watch now.
------

Rappers in an fMRI:

No matter what they were rapping about, their brains "activated differently during the improvised flow versus the memorized lyrics," says Stephanie Pappas at LiveScience. When subjects were freestyling, the medial prefrontal cortex — an area associated with organizing and integrating information — showed an increase an activity. Meanwhile the dorsolateral region, which helps with "self-control, self-monitoring, and self-censoring," showed a decrease in activity, adds Pappas. (This area became more active when the rappers were reciting memorized lyrics.) 

Elsewhere in the article, the brain is described as "turning off it's own censors".  This is a valuable reminder that one needs to spew ideas and smooth them out later.

PZ Myers thinks the science of the fMRI work on rappers is trivial.

You know, there’s nothing really wrong with this work: it’s not bad science. It’s just pointless science. It’s settled that we have this technology that can monitor variation in blood flow in the functioning human brain, and that’s nice, but what are people going to do with it? So far, it seems to be simply crudely phenomenological, with investigators stuffing people’s heads in cylinders and asking them to do X, Y, and Z, while we all coo over the pretty colors the computer paints on the screen.
The results of this study, for instance, are completely unsurprising…and they also don’t tell me what should be done next, other than bringing in artists in other genres and seeing what their brains do. Which wouldn’t tell me anything other than more correlations between brain blotches and behavior. I’m not seeing any new questions arising from this work, which to me is the real hallmark of interesting science.

He's probably right, but I see the takeaway a little differently.  I often need the same fact repeated a number of ways before it really sinks in.  I know that one needs to brainstorm and, well, vomit out ideas, and later tidy them up. But I still find myself editing as I write and paralyzing myself when the written work isn't profound or pretty enough.

The Oatmeal on making things

Here is one panel from The Oatmeal's latest.

In further panels, someone tells The Oatmeal that they hate hipsters and want a comic on the subject.  He brainstorms ("Hipsters: beards, vintage glasses, mustaches, PBR, skinny jeans"), considers making a comic about beards and eventually makes a story about goats "The hipsters of the Pacific Northwest".

The greater point he works to explain is how his job is wonderful.  He doesn't sugarcoat it though.  His final frames discuss the descent into Hell that all youtube comment threads follow.

Productivity... and other links

The writer and unmade beds:

2. An unmade bed has no negative measurable impact in eternity. An unfinished book probably does.3. We will feel much better, and be much less distracted dealing with mundane tasks, important as they may be for the quality of our lives, if our calling is tended to first.

More, and discussion of his points at the link.

Scalzi feels the same way.  When there is work to be done, don't get involved in unnecessary chores. At the link, we can view Scalzi's writing room which is full of chores that will be attended to once the book is done.
---
I'm writing this instead of doing NANOWRIMO- again.  This means I am not the best candidate to dispute the two writers above who are actually writing and getting paid for it.  Still, I would add the caveat that making your bed might be worthwhile once you have achieved some writing goal for the day.  Taking shorts breaks away from the keyboard is probably a good idea.

Also, wear pants.  At The Awl, Alexander Chee has a list of lies writers themselves.  First is "1. Underwear is definitely pants."

..There's no shame in working in your skivvies, though. Victor Hugo used to get undressed and have his valet take his clothes away. Be proud; just know that it's not pants you've got on. Now go back to work.

If you're not writing,but rather solving mechanical problems at work or home, check out these pics from  Dark Roasted Blend.

and

More at the link.

DSU Hallowe'en Game

Apologies for posting this here.  I guess it is creative as most teaching material is but I am mostly posting it here as I don't want my students to find it until class starts.

Slides are here.

This story is hers

I am really digging Nina Paley's This Land is Mine.  Paley is a(n) unknown cartoonist who became known, to me, anyway, for her Sita Sings the Blues animation.  This new one, the final scene to a maybe, maybe film titled Seder masochism is hilarious and horrific at once and fits my distrust of religion to a T (whatever that means).



This Land Is Mine from Nina Paley on Vimeo.

Paley has earned a spot on my creative people list in the sidebar!

Two from Scientific American

I am a fan of Mind Maps and other exercises that claim to improve brain flexibility and intelligence.  I think Mind Mapping has real value, although I have read that Buzan, the promoter of it and other exercises, invents his statistics (Foer discusses it in his book, Moonwalking with Einstein).

I specifically mentioned Buzan so let me state that the results described in Scientific American do not apply specifically to him.

In an article titled "Best Evidence for Brain Training Falls Short", various brain games are shown to improve performance in that game, "But the ability to master a game or ace a psych test often doesn’t translate into better cognition when specific measures of intelligence are assayed later."
The article concludes with:

 If you’re doing these tests as part of a personal self-improvement program, maybe consider the piano, Spanish lessons or even Grand Theft Auto 3—The Ultimate Tribute to Liberty. Any of these pose less threat of the monotony that could ultimately undermine the persistence needed for mastery of any new pastime. Seems like a no brainer, in fact.

Next from Sci Am is an article about longevity.  Apparently, people who pursue creative activities live longer.

In other words, creative activities may act as exercises that keep the brain fit. People who exhibit creativity also seem to cope with stress better, finding solutions to stressful situations rather than being overwhelmed by them. And other studies this year have also shown a connection between openness and reduced metabolic risk.

The creative activities do not need to be exhausting or lead to professional-level performance; they do need to be engaging and interesting to the individual.

A commenters asks how to be creative and the author offers some tips.  The tips are very concrete and reasonable and end with the slightly more abstract:

Whatever you go with, the most important first step is to shun criticism, especially from your inner critic. Just turn it off -- stuff it in a box. It's never satisfied and can kill motivation and inspiration, so don't subject your efforts to its withering gaze, and harsh judgment. Learn to ignore it until you feel close to ready to give it the competition of an outsider's judgment.