Exploration

Sunrise over East River, NYC

It's been over four months since I last posted on here. A lot has happened since April. Most significantly, my daughter had corrective brain/spinal surgery from which she has fully recovered, thankfully. We've persevered during these difficult months and good things are finally beginning to happen. 

My focus has returned to honing writing style and voice while exploring topics for my MFA thesis including creativity, fear, and motivation. And of course, writing dark fiction occupies my free time.  

So why am I sharing these thoughts with the world?

I just finished reading a great book on motivation – Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink – which resonates quite well with my professional experiences. I've always found it hard to dedicate my time to a job I didn't care about, even more so if I felt there was no greater purpose than collecting a meager paycheck at the end of the week. This got me thinking about my writing: what motivates me to write about certain subjects, what breaks me out of self-imposed episodes of writer's block, where my ideas come from, and so on. Furthermore, why I am so focused on writing about the creativity vs. fear thing, the topic of my thesis. Sure, both are fascinating subjects on their own, but there is a much deeper rooted thing here, which I am beginning to investigate.

Over the next few months I will explore these items and more on this blog. And I invite any readers to share your thoughts and experiences on these topics as they relate to fiction and nonfiction. Topics include but are not limited to: creativity, innovation, fear, motivation, work culture, and writing/working environment. If you're willing, I may include some of your stories in my thesis/book. 

The Antithesis of Creativity

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Immersed in a whirlpool of ideas, some good, some worth dropping off a cliff to the jagged rocks below, still others leading to publication or other successes, creativity abounds in all of us. It’s how we use that energy, how we channel it into our passions that defines us as artists or strategists or inventors or a number of other creative-based professions. When we are fearless, we are at our best.

It’s that moment when we let apprehension stand in our way; when we let self-doubt consume our inspirations; when we allow aversion to risk-taking to override our passions. That moment when the reaper positions his queen with that bony hand to proclaim checkmate. Fear is the consummate eternal when we grant it the opportunity.

Fear comes in many valid forms: an explosion at a chemical factory, an out-of-control eighteen-wheeler on a busy highway, an angry dictatorial boss, the wrong end of a gun. All physical, all legitimate. Even a zombie invasion should one occur. It’s the fear in our heads that restrains us, prevents us from taking ownership of our ideas, of executing an idea as the lingering possibility of retribution or disappointment hangs six inches in front of our noses. That is the antithesis of creativity, which has claimed so many unwritten stories and unperformed songs. And it lives in our collective subconscious, both culturally and individually.

Those lucky fortunate few who have made a killing following their creativity passions, those people we are fans of and consume everything they produce. We love them, we want to emulate them and collect everything they’ve ever touched. We hang on their every last words. We wonder: How did they do it? Right place at the right time? Perhaps. More than likely, they took control of fear. They did not listen to the naysayers – themselves the products of internalized fear – they channeled that energy into their passions, they took risks knowing that at any moment we may reject them. Through every mountain and canyon, they persevered.

Bottom line: we are products of ourselves, we are our own creators. We define what we put out there, assuming we take the first step allowing our viscera to be exposed. The sad reality is, most of us are willing to give in without a fight. Don’t do that.

Push forward. Follow your passion. Create.

A Semi-Subconscious Self Portrait

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Drawing inspiration from the mundane, regular, everyday type of stuff that surrounds us; average, unnoticed, omnipresent. That’s where I find the strange, the scary, the peculiar, the horrific. Much like the carnival sideshows of decades past, showcasing oddities and mysteries, my brain is both spectator and showman when I write. That sounds so esoteric and pompous, I suppose, so ridiculous yet it defines my creative process. I can only be egalitarian to a point, as far as my humble nature allows before I fall victim to self-induced humility and fall into that downward spiral that is routine nature.

Somehow, this rambling makes sense to my subconscious and my ego is enthralled. One day I may learn a thing or two from my subconscious, the distant world where all of my creativity stems from. It’s the well-fertilized part of my being, complete with a robust composting system providing nourishment and enrichment.

Confused? Me too, maybe to a lesser degree. This is my brain in raw action, after all, translated into words that a reader can understand.

Otherwise, if my mind was to get with the program, the doldrums of everyday work and life becomes the routine norm where innovation is scoffed at and free expression is shunned. The thick skin of humility blockades the acceptance of compliments, accolades, and accomplishments. We accept only what we have been taught in school about being nothing more than a number in the system, a little cog in a great machine, the pawn the corporation sees as expendable and thrown into the basement to work next to the boiler room. These things really happen, some figuratively, some literally, others fictional. You get the point. I think.

Writing for the Reader in Me

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I have heard countless times since returning to writing and pursuing my MFA degree “write for yourself.” Coming from the profession I have spent my whole career in, the target audience has always been the first influence on work I have created. So the reader, naturally, is someone I want to write for, never mind the fact that I don’t know many of my readers – if there are even many outside of this blog.

Every writer must have experienced the exhilaration of reading their own work after some time has passed at least once. It’s like a whole other person produced it; a deliberate subconscious separation to a completed story that allows the writer to read it for the first time. It’s a beautiful thing.

Since I don’t have a specified audience for fiction in this embryonic stage, I write about subjects that excite and interest me, maybe scare me, and often stuff I want to learn more about. For example, I have never worked in a circus or government office, so a character I create may be campaigning for a local office or a veteran sideshow performer.

Then there is that old adage “write what you know,” which I do fair amount of. Thing is, some of what I know isn’t necessarily based on first-hand experience, some of it is observational and intuitive. I was never a patient in a psychiatric hospital nor have I committed a murder, but pulling from what I know about these subjects based on research and observation, I can place my head in those spaces and become those flawed characters, in the figurative sense. I know how they think and feel, whether they are rational or irrational, what they base their decisions on. They become real live humans in my brain and on the page. This is probably normal for any writer, perhaps all creative-types; I don’t know, I never asked. Whatever the case, it’s part of my writer’s tool box.

So I write for myself now with the intention that other people of similar mind and dysfunction will appreciate it – maybe even love it! It’s working out so far with another short story this year due to publish soon in an anthology about demons.

Tell me about you. I’m always interested in learning how others think about these topics. Do you write or create for yourself or others? Do you become your characters who deviate widely from your real life?

Happy November!

Fighting Creative Fear

In my latest writing ventures, I find myself once again staring down the dead eyes of fear. The polar opposite to creativity when the so-called writer’s block has taken hold. Thing is, it’s not a block, it’s confronting the wide-open unknown. In one aspect, I am playing god with my characters in a fiction piece whose outcomes have been conceived and reconceived several times over while pondering the structure of a nonfiction book. I have confronted fear on numerous occasions, never submitting to it. Yet, I still find myself here.

Some days I wish my life were as simple as coming home from work, turning on the TV, and eventually going to bed. That simplicity would make me crazy. It’s an escapist thought to avoid this inevitable confrontation. Better thought: escape to Disney World for a day or a year. It’s easy to avoid fear, to let it win. And then what – spend a lifetime burying my head and cowering in the corner?

So, what’s the point of me writing this. I’m sure you’re wondering that as I am. To confront fear in the creative sense. To realize, to affirm, to share the lesson that creativity dies when fear fills the void. Embrace the unknown; mold it in your mind’s image. Create your world before bloodless zombies scare it out of you. Hold a pep rally, fall asleep at the bar, enter altered states of dementia; whatever motivates you. Just try not to harm anyone in the process. My point is – as I beat it into my own subconscious – you need to maintain control, kill some zombies, and spend a well-deserved week at Disney because those monstrous writing projects are complete and on their way to publication. Until then, never give in. Let creativity reign.

Art & Fear hit home

I wrote this response to Art & Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking by David Bayles and Ted Orland in January 2012 as part of my MFA Writing studies. Reading through it tonight I felt it was worth sharing on the blog. It's quite autobiographical and contains a few lessons in self-awareness and self-acceptance that anyone in a creative field must work through and overcome.

* * * 

Art & Fear is a fascinating book touching on several points throughout my professional and personal life. It has stirred up many thoughts and emotions, evoking memories of my artistic roots and where I find myself now, questioning my seemingly unorthodox path from aspiring artist to corporate communicator.

I have always been involved in the arts. Before I was ten I had already decided I would be an artist when I grew up. By the time I was in college I already had several years experience in making art: played guitar in rock bands, painted with oils, wrote short stories, wrote and performed at poetry slams, and shot, developed, and printed black and white 35 mm film. These passionate endeavors led to my pursuit of a BFA as a Fine Art major with the predetermined career path to become a professional artist.

The harsh reality hit shortly after graduation. Within a few months it became clear that digital media was replacing the traditional methods at a rapid rate. The local freelance creative job market was intensely competitive. Having found I was adept at using Photoshop I launched my career as a digital photo-retoucher building off my traditional education in painting and photography. Not quite the fine artist pursuit, but it satisfied my creative urges and paid the bills. Digital graphic design soon followed as I continued to expand my capabilities, eventually leading to web design and development.

It was never easy; I found myself stopping some of my much beloved creative disciplines, particularly writing and music, to focus my energies on becoming the best digital artist possible with no formal training in new media. Fortunately, in recent years writing has made a surprising re-entry in my life, now playing a dominant part of my profession.

Early in the book, the authors of Art & Fear explain the grim reality that ninety-eight percent of graduates with art degrees are set up to fail. A lack of preparation and education on the business of artmaking tends to be a problem in the art schools – it certainly was when I was a student. Art is an accepted profession in our country, but not an accepted occupation. As Bayles and Orland vividly point out, “if ninety-eight percent of our medical students were no longer practicing medicine five years after graduation, there would be a Senate investigation.” (11). I know too many such art grads who have failed in their artistic careers soon after college. Talented individuals who did not know how to make a living as artists, who did not know the right people at the right times, who did not know how to apply their talents and skills to a tangential profession outside of their comfort zone. Looking back it seems I was one of the fortunate few.

So here I am fifteen years later, as a web designer, as a business writer, as a professional communicator, I have never once deviated from the creative path I set out on in my teens. But I cannot call myself an artist. I have not primed a hand-stretched canvas or pressed an intaglio print in several years, but the knowledge of color, texture, form, composition, and storytelling is carried with me in the communication work I produce today. Writing a strategy requires a great deal of creative thinking, in both the over-arching concepts and the tactics to implement it. Creating a website is a multidisciplinary task involving skills in writing, design, user experience, and technology. Why should these sorts of works disqualify me from being an artist? I never technically quit; I evolved.

However, Bayles and Orland do write, “For most artists, making good art depends upon making lots of art, and any device that carries the first brushstroke to the next blank canvas has tangible, practical value.” (61) Any device … has tangible, practical value caught my attention, as in the medium and method do not matter as long as the artistic intent is there. Have I been an artist all along?

I have found myself in this gray area throughout my career. When I am asked what I studied in school, my answer is naturally fine art, and I get the funny look. How did I get here from there? Did I throw away my education and sell out? Of course not, I applied everything from my fine arts education to become what I am today, whatever that label might be.

Ultimately, what this book instilled in me was self-acceptance. I understand where I came from is not so unique; many aspiring artists have traveled this path. I am getting over the fear of calling myself an artist, a writer, or any other creative title. As long as I am true to myself, in my corporate communication job, or in my revitalized interest of becoming a professional writer, no one can take that away from me despite his or her level of acceptance or understanding. And I can live with that.

A writer’s maturation of character

Last week I wrote about drawing influence from published writers. Over the weekend, my latest influence revealed itself. Last week through Saturday morning I had been reading Robert Stone’s Fun With Problems, a collection of short stories dealing with heavily flawed characters existing in the darker side of humanity whether or not they even realize it. In some incredible feat, I spent at least ten hours on Saturday writing, rewriting, and revising a short horror story. I don’t get to spend that much time writing in one day usually, it was a strange feeling when I had wrapped it up for the night, like I had stepped out of time and reality. I didn’t want to come back at first, but my family came home, we needed dinner and so on.

The revelation came as I was reading the story aloud. Stone’s book influenced my approach to incorporating my protagonist’s backstories; slowly revealed details layered one on another creating a complex persona in as few words as possible. Without this awareness during the process, I found myself striving for new depths in character creation. Not to say I’ve never dug deep before; this was different.

I found specific intent in what I wrote about his past actions and their effect on the current-day storyline. Writing this horror story has become a psychological study of this heavily flawed character, seemingly laced with lessons in morality, maybe even spirituality. Good versus evil in this story became a thick pool of grayness, a viscous organic byproduct of several visceral systems malfunctioning in tandem. My flawless victim of circumstance born of mediocrity in the rough draft matured into a well rounded, wonderfully dark, and flawed character with the charm of a successful door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman and the patience of a hungry cat. I leapt over a hurdle I never knew was there.

Perhaps my protagonist, as different as he is from me, is my reflection or a second personality buried in my subconscious. We shall see.

Starting anew

New semester. New MFA writing. I have been away from this blog during the summer, not for any reason in particular, except for moving to a new home and undergoing some minor medical stuff. The fall semester has begun; a good excuse if any to dedicate time to this thing.

I read over the weekend as I recovered from surgery Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, which I will focus on in more detail in a following blog entry. I’m still processing it twenty-four hours later. Deep, dark, heavy, bleak, cold. The commentary on the value of religious belief, human nature, compassion, survival instincts, father-son relationships, trust, and the downfall of human civilization. To dissect McCarthy’s writing style at this moment is a massive undertaking I’m not prepared to take on for this blog, at least not today, but his rule-breaking and the resulting creative freedom is something I can cherish and learn from.

Unusual sentence structures. The lack of quotation marks for dialogue and apostrophes missing from certain conjunctions, like “havent” and “didnt.” The subtle convergence of inner dialogue, dreams, and third person narrative, which occasionally slipped into first person. All to tell the story exactly as McCarthy intended. The first few pages required some adjustment to the odd style, but I fell quickly into his post-apocalyptic world, his style providing foundation and lending to atmosphere rather than creating disruption. His disruptive style became my normal as the reader.

My take away is simple. Style, whether or not rules are intentionally broken, is as much a key part of the story as the characters and plot. Another tool in the writer’s toolbox, to borrow from Stephen King, that creates the indisputable uniqueness of a writer.

The Road has set the stage for an intriguing semester of new writing, new methods, new experiments with style. The perfect kickoff.

A Writers Exploration: Where I Am

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I am here in early May as my MFA Writing program spring semesters wraps. I have definitely come out ahead from where I started, making a few self-discoveries along the way. For instance, I learned that I am a natural at writing horror and suspense in my fiction life, something I never touched on until recently. I had always aimed at the slice of life, somewhat absurd, realism in my earlier days of writing, mixed with elements of surrealism for the unexpected. Rejuvenating my writing style in the psycho thriller and horror area story feels like a natural progression for me, one that I just took the risk and succeeded at. Who knew? My first story in this genre will be published soon, details to come.

I find myself filled with far more knowledge about the discipline of corporate communication and PR than I had ever anticipated. The things that come out of my mouth on this subject at work or during casual conversations catch me by surprise sometimes, only proving that my MFA endeavor is anything but futile. I now have a solidified foundation in communication that I have already begun to build upon, which will only continue upwards as I finish my schooling and grow in my professional life.

Most important, I find myself a more confident writer, no longer afraid to take risks and voice my opinions. Risk-taking led to my upcoming first horror publication and brought out my contrarian nature in the world of critiques and classrooms.

Recently, my classmates learned that I couldn’t assimilate with the accepted norm; rather, I innately challenged the authenticity and validity of a big Hollywood screen adaptation to a great Stephen King novella, Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption. Surprisingly, most of my classmates respected my opinion and did not appear as upset as I had expected considering the Shawshank Redemption film is so highly revered. I did write my review with the utmost respect, after scrapping the scathing first draft. What can I say? I’m an obsessive purist in my artistic roots, it’s who I am. The movie on its own was good, but did not capture the complexity and the many shades of gray that is human nature as depicted in the book. But that’s a whole other discussion.

So, here I am writing my last blog entry for the spring 2012 semester. It’s sad to see a great semester come to an end, but exciting to know I have accomplished so much and gained some new friends along the way. I am already eagerly anticipating the next semester and reconvening with my classmates at our next residency in August.

As for this blog, I will carry on regularly.

A Writers Exploration: The Rules are the Rules are for Breaking

The concept of rules in writing has circulated in my head this past semester, some thoughts seeing the light of day on a previous blog post. My obsessive nature makes me want to be a purist, following all regulations on grammar and sentence structure to the extreme. But the proverbial devil on my left shoulder, who’s persuasion over me has been quite successful in recent months, has helped me deviate quite effectively. Taking risks in my writing has become my normal, sometimes it works well, leading a short on its way to publishing soon, and other times it falls flat on the iced-over concrete resulting in a few bruised ribs and a shattered ego. But that’s okay; “live and learn,” as someone once said before it was repeated a billion times.

I recently read a few stories written outside of the mainstream when it comes to point-of-view and tense that jarred my attention. These stories felt odd, foreign beyond earthly limits, stimulating my imagination as I prepare to work on my current pieces.

The first story was written in second person in the present tense. Yes, you read that correctly. How often do you find yourself reading about yourself placed in a life that you never lived? Fiction is traditionally written in either first or third person, generally dependent on the author’s preference and intent, but second is a whole other world. Check out the following published story, “Sacrifice,” written by Jenn Powers, a peer in my MFA program. Whether or not it was intended, the story plays off the double portrait concept, in which the author paints a portrait of another person who is connected by some type of relationship and thereby creates a self-portrait through responses and interactions. I highly recommend reading the brilliant essayist Philip Lopate to learn more on this subject. Moving back to the story, the reader assumes the role of the protagonist’s ailing and embittered grandmother, grieving the loss of her long-time husband. It is a tragic story conveying a lot of emotion. As I read, I learned about the protagonist’s strong bond with her grandmother and the endearing sadness caused by the current situation. I got to know the protagonist as a result.

A second story that transported me into in another part of the animal kingdom was Tim Weed’s “Snarl.” Tim is a writing mentor in the Western Connecticut State University Writing MFA program. It’s written in the first-person present tense with an additional twist – from the perspective of a hyena. The story moves in real time as it is read, time lapses represented by extra line breaks. Humans are seen as strange and foreign creatures called “skin-monkeys” with their “fire machines” and “false suns.” Essentially, Tim has created a sci-fi story resembling the enslavement of humans by an alien race; only the humans are the aliens here. I fell into this story in the first few paragraphs; the vivid sensory elements placed me in the head of a hyena with his mate on the run from a fenced-in enclosure, presumably a zoo – a sort of Bonnie and Clyde scenario only ore visceral than bank robberies.

The rules exist to provide structure and guidance as we develop ourselves as creative beings regardless of our chosen discipline. Traditional methods, such as writing in past tense and third person exist to provide stability and a level of comfort while exploring the craft. When you have mastered the craft, you must master undoing all of those rules and traditions to find your voice, to let your nature shine through your art. In other words, break the rules when you know how to do it well and with intent. Show no fear.

A Writer’s Exploration: Fleeting Ideas

That worst possible scenario for any creative person struck me this weekend – drawing a blank on ideas about what to write about. I knew I needed to write something about writing, but what? I ignored the news for the past week or so, having no idea of what the latest is on the hot button issues or presidential race. I know there has been a lot of politicization on the unfortunate Martin death in Florida, as evidenced in some posts on Facebook and Twitter I read, which made me feel sick. Why shouldn’t I be surprised, though? Somehow, the conservatives support the shooter, while the liberals support the victim. I really don’t get it. Yet another example backing my life-long independent streak and disdain for partisan politics. Whatever. Moving on now.

Here I am writing about something with no particular purpose in mind. Just letting the words spill from my mind and into my fingers finding their final resting place on the computer screen. I write because I do, I have stories to tell, from what I have been told. With no ideas in mind the language still manages to take form in something comprehensible. That is, if you find the stream of consciousness gibberish comprehensible. I’m not sure I do right now as I fight to stay awake.

But this is how ideas are born, at least for me. Well, this is one of several ways they are born; one I don’t use enough when I am faced with this weekend’s dilemma of fleeting ideas. So, as I write this piece having no ideas, the idea has already taken form – a blog post about having no ideas. How obnoxious can I make this? How poignant and life changing? How mundane. I write because I need to, because it’s my job, my education, my passion. Because I would much rather invest my short time on this planet creating and hopefully enlightening others than passively watch hours of television each night. That would suck the life right out of me; I know so because it has happened.

While the news media pundits debate whatever the current topic is – I seriously don’t know – and reality TV shows continue to take the country by storm, I will sit idly by with an active brain and computer on my lap typing away. That’s what matters to me.

A Writer’s Exploration: Plight of the Obsessive Revisionist

I enter my own world when I write. I know all artists can identify – some call it entering the zone or finding their own space. The sights and sounds around me become non-existent; I hear nothing but my mental voice. As a painter sees only color, form, and texture on the canvas, I see nothing outside of the words on the page or screen and the mental images I intend them to portray. Smell, taste, and touch are similar experiences, except for the sips of beer or water as I work, which I tend to forget about pretty quickly until I have exhausted my brain for the night.

I enter an entirely new world when I revise. With all senses alert, I traverse this alternative environment capturing every pertinent detail for the reader who dares to enter it. Life spent in this world far exceeds the time spent in the first round of creating it. It is an art unto itself, one that has occupied my brain at all hours of the day and night regardless of activity – cleaning the dinner dishes, driving my daughter to an ice rink, working on a project at my job, enjoying a show – revision never sleeps.

Once upon a time, when I was eighteen or so, I would fall in love with my first draft. Yes, I was one of those people. God forbid I corrupt those authentic words no matter how unnecessary, weak, or confusing the language might be. I quickly came around, though. By the time I graduated college, my creative writing mentor, Dick Allen, had instilled in me the necessity and value of revision. My power over the craft and technique were less than stellar at my nascent age, but the effort was there.

Last summer I pulled out my writing archive (read: large airtight Rubbermaid container filled with notebooks and printed manuscripts) to review what I wrote nearly twenty years earlier, in search of stories I might revitalize. Some stories were immediately cast aside; they are not the person I am today. Minimal effort on revision, I determined, unintentionally breaking rules with minimal consequences. Others showed promise. I went to work on them for the full summer, cringing and laughing at the elements I allowed to stay in the final drafts when I was just starting out.

So here I am today, revision is a permanent addition to my pantheon of obsessions. I have a touch of OCD, well, maybe more than a touch, but I have learned to manage it over the years, funneling it into my creative endeavors. Thankfully, I would never qualify for the latest wave of reality TV shows exploiting people’s strange addictions and compulsions, not that I would ever take part in those. This writing thing, whether on my blog or other channels, is my reality show with me in control. Those TV shows do serve as great source material for creating some interesting characters, however.

I spent the other night compiling line edits, comments, and other feedback from at least ten different people (I lost count) for a story I have been developing for the past several months. Hours passed without my knowledge, the occasional blurt from my daughter or whine from a cat piercing my focus, but I persisted. When I decided to finish for the night, I had learned seven hours had passed and it was nearly 1:00 AM. I finished my warm Ruthless Rye IPA and went to bed satisfied that my new story had grown up a little bit more. Of course, my story wrapped itself around my waist and followed me to bed where it continued to play out as I slowly fell asleep.

Thing is, if it wasn’t a story my brain was mulling over as I tried to sleep it would have been some other not so happy – even stressful – thoughts in a continuous loop plaguing my sleep. I will always opt for the former; call it my form of escapism in support of mental wellness.

A Writer’s Exploration: Finding My Nonfiction Voice

I tried something new recently. It was risky – well, not really risky, let’s say daring – I applied my fiction voice to my nonfiction work.

Over the years, as I have developed my business writing prowess, I always felt there were certain molds I needed to fit in to and expectations to meet. Often times I found myself writing in a stilted, unnatural voice, like I was listening to myself on the other side of a two-story brick and mortar wall. It never sat right with me. It felt like a chore. I would spend countless collective hours revising and refining, restructuring and reworking – as I am sure any writer has had the good fortune of dealing with – to sound reasonably good. And the good was good, sometimes a little better than good, sometimes it was dry, business-like, professional, regimented, bland and craving a makeover of charisma and soul. Sometimes I hated the venomous amorphous beast that slowly gnawed at my psyche little bits at a time. It made me crazy; my mental wellness was not quite at stake, but crazy nonetheless. But I did what needed to be done, I stuck to my due diligence.

Now don’t get me wrong, I wrote well, when I was into it. And if not well, well enough for the sake of well enough. I wrote news articles and business information for the corporate intranet, website content, ad copy, various employee communications, a few press releases, a speech or two … whatever a Corporate Communicator would write on a regular basis. It did the job, it communicated clearly and efficiently, and I fulfilled my obligation. Nevertheless, it felt distant to me – like another shallow faceless automaton wrote it. I was starved to fight my way out of this monotony.

Since last August, I have been writing a short fiction piece for my MFA writing workshop course. You could say it is a psychological thriller among other things. During the process, I found myself seeing the story and interpreting it into the written language in a novel way. My writing voice, to my surprise, had evolved to a new level. Though it is hard to pinpoint the catalyst, I fell in love with the writing process all over again (I had to throw in one more cliché, really).

Then it hit me in a subconscious sense – because I did not actually speak or think these words – why not use this evolving fiction style, this new voice, in my nonfiction? I tried it out on a few small pieces. I found myself perceiving what I was writing in a new light with a different thought process. I introduced elements of this evolving voice to a recent book review … and it blew my mind. Reading the work back to myself aloud, I could not believe the barrier I had leapt over. The style was so fluid, so easy to follow, so full of humanity and personality. It was, and still is, an incredible feeling. My true nonfiction voice has emerged from the dark depths of white offices with beige carpets!

American innovation

Innovation is a hot topic lately, I hear about it at my job and in the collective consciousness of the business world quite frequently. Innovation for new products, new work methods, new infrastructure … the list goes on. With innovation comes the need for change, a concept championed by some and fretted by many, yet necessary. And at the root of innovation is creativity, which seems in recent decades not to receive the respect it deserves in American business.

As stated in the article “Innovation and Growth ‘Inextricably Linked,’ GE’s New Global Innovation Barometer Finds,” the US is perceived “as the country with the best reputation for innovation.” There is no doubt that the US is where it is today because of its innovative history. Think about the many inventions we now take for granted – automobiles, computers, light bulbs, semi-conductors – all products of American inventiveness, and great feats of innovation that have propelled this country to the global economic forefront throughout its relatively short history.

With the outsourcing of manufacturing to Asia and automation of jobs once requiring mathematical skills over the past few decades, America now finds itself in a rut. Nine or ten percent unemployment as blue collar jobs are shipped overseas and a lack of a new industry to compensate for these losses – it is time for the country to embrace and find opportunity in its innovative spirit as a means to turn this crisis around.

Innovation, creativity, and inventiveness cannot be automated or outsourced. They are part of the American fabric, the source of our former industrious heyday. As the findings suggest in the Innovation Barometer study, the other developed and emerging nations recognize this to varying degrees and are investing in innovation with the intent to drive their economies forward. In order for the US to stay ahead of the curve, it needs to invest in its intrinsic talent pool, despite the slow economy and lack of funding. It can start with the education system, placing a new emphasis on the arts and sciences. Out of that will grow a new awareness and appreciation for innovation and creativity that can be embraced not only by the business world, but also on a larger cultural level.

As a communication professional, I feel it is my obligation to help lead the wave of innovation at my job and in the community. My employer would not have endured a century-and-a-half if it were not for its history of innovation, as I am sure the same could be said about many other older American businesses. We need to sow the seeds now so in one hundred fifty years America will still be regarded as “as the country with the best reputation for innovation.”


See the article that inspired this post, “Innovation and Growth ‘Inextricably Linked,’ GE’s New Global Innovation Barometer Finds” on GE Reports: http://www.gereports.com/innovation-and-growth-inextricably-linked/