Ruminations on creativity - by Sendak, Oswalt & others

A few different things I've seen recently that stood out to me around the creative process (which certainly includes, but is not limited to the writing process) included a post Patton Oswalt made to his website, an interview website I've come across recently and a Maurice Sendak video interview from 2011.

In addition to being a well know comedian and having a supporting role last season on probably my favorite TV show, Oswalt is an excellent writer and a few days ago posted "A closed letter to myself about thievery, heckling and rape jokes" to his website. It's pretty lengthy and contains I thought some very cool thoughts with one portion that stood out being how he's ok with turning off or upsetting some people... "As carefully as I've curated and cultivated my career, I’m now doing the same with my audience. Universality was never my goal as a comedian. Longevity and creativity are."

The interview website that I found recently is The Creators Call and it's a weekly podcast put together by Anthony Palmer, a Georgetown Law student, and Pete Barrett, a Gettysburg College student (who recently had posted to MLB.com a story he wrote on Cardinals closer Edward Mujica).

There's thus far been posted to The Creators Call audio from five different interviews with creative types. The lineup so far has been excellent (each person I've previously linked to content from has their name hyperlinked) with people featured to date being Chris Brogan, Jeff Pearlman, Glenn Stout, Jeffrey Toobin and Matthew Cerrone.

The Sendak interview was conducted a year before his death last May and included I thought some really profound and worthwhile thoughts from the acclaimed writer of Where the Wild Things Are...

"The question is why bother? and I don't mean why bother to die. Why bother to get bored?"

"It's sublime, To just go into another room and just make pictures. It's magic time. Where all your weaknesses of character and all the blemishes of personality, and whatever else torments you, fades away. Just doesn't matter. You're doing the one thing you want to do and you know you do it well. And you're happy. The whole promise is to do the work, sitting down at the drawing table, turning on the radio. And I think what a transcendent life this is that I'm doing everything I want to do. And that moment I feel like I'm a lucky man. 

I'm trying very hard to concentrate on what is here, what I can see, what I can smell, what I can feel. making that the important business of life. Just looking out the window, the colors I see, reading Charles Dickens at night for an hour, little rituals I have, listening to Mozart. Learning how not to take myself so seriously.What I'm working on, what I'd like to work on, it's not earth-shakingly important. I'm not earth-shakingly important. I'm just clearing the decks for a simple death. You're done with your work, you're done with your life and your life was your work. 

I think what I offered was different, but not because I drew better than anybody or wrote better than anybody, but because I was more honest than anybody. And in a discussion of children and the lives of children and the fantasies of children, and the language of children, I said anything I wanted. Because I don't believe in children, I don't believe in childhood. I don't believe there's a demarcation with 'you mustn't tell them that, or you mustn't tell them that. You can tell them anything you want. Just tell them if it's true, if it's true, you tell them. I have adult thoughts in my head, experiences, but I'm never going to talk about them. I'm never going to write about them. Why is my needle stuck in childhood? I don't know. I don't know. I guess that's where my heart is."

Writing Wisdom - by Vonnegut, Tomlinson, Stout & Richmond on Hersey

Prattling on about writing and linking to established writers doing so is one of my favorite things to do on this blog and over the past few weeks I've seen (three of them via Tommy Tomlinson) a few different excellent pieces on writing.

From the Nieman Storyboard site was "Professor Hersey: one student, the iconic author of ‘Hiroshima,’ and 6 timeless takeaways" by Peter Richmond on his former professor John Hersey, acclaimed writer of the non-fiction story Hiroshima, published first as the entire contents of an August 1946 New Yorker issue and then in book form. There's a lot of remembrances from Richmond on writing wisdom passed down by Hersey and what stood out in particular to me were the dual ideas of the writer letting a story speak for itself and Hersey telling his students that writing more of a craft than art form.

The second and third pieces to note here on the subject of writing were both from the personal blog of current Sports on Earth and former Charlotte Observer writer Tommy Tomlinson. On May 23rd he posted "Everything you need to know about storytelling in five minutes" and then "Story shapes (and exercise tips?) from Kurt Vonnegut" on June 3rd.

The "storytelling in five minutes" piece was from a speech Tomlinson gave in Charlotte and has some very straightforward, logical and cool about what makes story good. To summarize, Tomlinson talks about a successful story featuring (1) a sympathetic character, (2) a hurdle to overcome and (3) the payoff delivered if hurdle overcome. Additionally, he notes the importance of a good story containing both initial and then deeper level meaning that can be taken from a story.

The "story shapes" post is comprised almost entirely of a YouTube video embedded that features Kurt Vonnegut giving an extremely short lecture on writing. Vonnegut talks about good stories containing universal story arcs and themes (i.e. main character has a good thing going, that thing becomes in jeopardy, then gets saved) that can actually be plotted out on an X/Y axis. Vonnegut gave an entertaining lecture on an interesting notion that seemed as if it could fall under this umbrella of story as craft and a writer as skilled tradesman.

The last piece to mention here was "On the line with Glenn Stout", a phone interview conducted by Anthony Palmer and Pete Barrett on The Creators Call, an audio series hosted on SoundCloud. The audio is 25 minutes long and while all of it interesting, below is what stood out the most to me...

Identifying good writing - Stout noted how he looks for stories where the writer is confident and committed from the beginning of the piece. The story just starts because the writer knows where they are and where they want to go. The reader should know the story, know the characters and know the voice of the writer.

The importance of reporting - Stout makes the point that the best writing comes from the best reporting and mentions how author David Halberstam would say that if someone doesn't know what to write in a piece, they haven't done enough reporting on it. Writers know when they're just going from point A to point B in a story because they have to get there, but don't have the details needed and that are provided thorough reporting.

Becoming a writer - Stout referenced his August 2012 personal blog post "How I became a writer: a true story" and how everyone he knew who wanted to be a writer and kept at it, is a writer. Just because it hasn't worked out yet is no reason to stop.

Writing a book - Covered in the interview by Stout was how great it is to immerse yourself into a subject over the course of a few years to write a book. Similar to the smaller process of reading something great, a writer can basically lose themselves in the reporting and writing process of a book.