C.I.T.O.K.A.T.E.

Some of you say "I wish I were more creative." Penguicon 2011 Guest of Honor Howard Tayler's podcast is often useful not just for writers, but for anyone who would like to be creative in any way. This is particularly true of season 5 episode 8. One of the things Howard says in this episode is "you have a thousand jigsaw pieces in front of you. Pick them up and start putting them together." I would like to expand on that concept.

1. Mix and match everything. Make it a habit. Do it in your head as often as possible.
2. Ask questions about the ridiculous crap that results.

The questions are the important part. Here's Neil Gaiman's blog entry on "where do you get your ideas?" It was only when Neil talked to a kindergarten class and they asked it, that he realized all of a sudden that there is an answer to this question after all. He told them they just have to keep asking questions about the weird combinations that come into their heads. Most creative professionals don't even recognize when they themselves are doing it, because they have no concept that there is anyone on the planet who does not do this every minute of every day like they do.

Recently J was watching "Legend of the Seeker". I asked myself "wait a minute. If everybody's going to end up dead and go to the netherworld anyway, what's the point of the netherworld raising an army of the dead to destroy all life?" I pretended that I lived in this fictional world and had experienced this, and then I wondered about it for a while. Eventually a few jigsaw pieces clicked together in a perfect match. I know exactly why the netherworld would raise an army of the dead to destroy all life.

Look right there. That process is where imagination comes from.

While learning how to be more creative, I'm also learning how to not be so wrong about things all the time. What I've found is that these processes walk through the steps in a different order. In real life you have to gather data and perform tests. Avoid making any premature hypothesis, or you will be less likely to notice evidence which contradicts it. The real universe is inconsistent with delivering a satisfying narrative momentum. However, in a fictional story you as the author are pretty much a god, and what passes a test is not "what's real" but "whatever holds your interest", a dramatic tension that needs to be resolved. Truth-seeking and fiction-seeking have processes which are the inverse of each other.

Now to paraphrase advice from Ira Glass of This American Life. As an aspiring creative person, you must start your creative life by churning out loads of bilious crap that you hate. Start now. There has to be some grist in your mental mill. In order to develop this ability, you have to practice this mental process on something, and at first your search engine will be slow and you're going to be terrible. But anyone can develop their own internal Google with enough practice.

Everything you think about is a jigsaw puzzle piece. Just like a puzzle, pick them all up and put them next to each other. That process is why creative work is called work. But if it's too dreary, you're thinking about the wrong things. What do you enjoy thinking about? That's where to start. If it helps, make index cards of everything you like to think about. Put that stuff together in juxtapositions that are either funny, or inspire questions. You guys know I like ice cream. I also think squids are cool. Ice cream + squid. Underwater ice cream truck, delivering aquatic treats to fish. If you keep doing this over and over, you are shuffling your mental deck. Put enough cards that you like in the deck, and shuffle it often enough, and eventually you can't help but draw a combination that catches your interest.

Once you've drawn a hand of cards that inspires cool questions, you have to play those cards right by asking the right questions. Every idea is a puzzle to be solved. There are two main kinds of questions. They are not an acid trip, trance, or dream. They are nothing but logical problem-solving, pure and simple.

1. How can you force the nonsensical to make sense? Why is there an underwater ice cream truck? Who does it deliver to? Is it in the ocean, or in an aquarium, or a world of anthropomorphized animals like Spongebob? Is it really a metal truck, or is it a squid who likes to gather treats and deliver them to its fish friends? Why does it do this? Watch for that "wait a minute, something doesn't make sense" moment. Grab onto that moment. "That story is wrong. That's not how it happened." Then what did happen? List a bunch of dumb or smartass answers and rank them in order of wrongness. That list is a signpost, showing you how to turn right. One end is "you're getting warmer" and the other end is "you're getting colder". Start mixing and matching closer to the warm end.

2. What is enjoyable and why? Study the factors in the mentality of the audience which makes it work for them. Every time you enjoy or don't enjoy a game, or TV, or novel, or any experience, take some time to break down the experience into its parts, look at what it was doing to your mentality, and wonder why.

The skill you are trying to acquire, through study and practice, is quickly honing down your search so you can be more productive. The creative instinct is the instinct for which questions will be most fruitful to ask yourself. Until you get that instinct, you substitute a brute-force search technique, which you will not enjoy so much, but that's why it's called creative work.

This week I illustrated another slide show, "Evolutionary Biology and Evolutionary Psychology".

I can no longer find the reference, but I recently read of a study that showed that the brain-chemical rewards of satisfaction from talking about our intention to do a project are the same as the feelings of satisfaction that we receive from completing a project. The lesson was to finish first and then unveil it afterward, so as not to sabotage your drive.

This was consistent with my life experience. When I was a boy, I would get the neighborhood kids involved in projects of vast ambition, such as an RC car racing track, or a circus, or a backyard theme park made of cardboard. A week later I would forget the plan ever existed because I was busy drawing up detailed schematics of my latest life's work, and assigning a role in it to everyone who would listen. I don't think very many of them ever stopped going along with it, because on balance dreaming and planning is fun. However, I eventually remembered some of my abandoned plans with embarrassment, and could no longer muster the sincere belief that is a crucial component of my glowing enthusiasms. I didn't get back in the saddle until my late twenties, when I figured out how to subdue my attention span. I now cajole, distract, and bribe my brain into avoiding shiny distractions. Well, mostly.

The study on announcements is the latest trick I've learned. That is why I have not already blogged about the paying assignment I have been working on for a week. In another week it's scheduled to be done, and I hope I'll be allowed to show it to you. Until then please regard it with skepticism for the sake of my clever mind-trick. In fact, I might be violating the new lesson just by saying this much.

I would just like to say it's satisfying, and I wish I knew how to get more work with projects of this nature. It feels refreshing to get paid to do a project that I like and approve of; to get paid to do something that is easier to start than to stop. I think the last time this happened was six or seven years ago, and I don't remember it ever happening before that.

The first five people to respond to this post will get something made by me! My choice. For you.

This offer does have some restrictions and limitations:
- I make no guarantees that you will like what I make!
- What I create will be just for you.
- It'll be done this year.
- You have no clue what it's going to be. It may be a story. It may be poetry. I may draw or paint something. I may bake you something and mail it to you. Who knows? Not you, that's for sure!
- I reserve the right to do something extremely strange.

The catch? Oh, the catch is that you have to repost. We can all make stuff!!

You guys didn't want to go with me to "The Gallery Project", so you missed out! It's still running until 4PM Sunday afternoon, so you still have a chance.

I'm gaining skill in Second Life. This Aztec/Egyptian/Greek/Chinese hybrid is based loosely on a prehistoric Japanese idol called a "Ueno." He's a creation of mine for the Intensive Course In Spoken Lojban. It will be a web comic created by taking snapshots of scenes we set up in Second Life, and the dialogue will be in MP3 files in Lojban. In each exercise, the student character will be in a different situation in which he must figure out the language of the natives (Lojban, naturally), and select the correct reply in Lojban from multiple choice to proceed. Do you remember the TV show Quantum Leap? You can think of this character as the student's "Al". He knows the native language; he refuses to translate but is happy to coach.

I've finished the artworks for the first five people to respond to the LJ Art Meme.

If anyone else wants one, you can ask, but I make no guarantees. And it helps if you make a request for something, even if it's vague. I'll do it if I like it.

How many of you actually fulfilled your promise to make art for this meme?

This project sat idle for more than half a year while I was busy with other projects that were more time-sensitive. Click the "sculpture" tag at the bottom of this entry to read the past blog entries on this topic. The silicone rubber mold is now finished on my maquette of Linux-Tan.



Here is a photo set of the process of removing the clay original.
This photo has mouse-over notes describing what you are seeing.

While I was at it, I also photographed a game board R. and I made ten years ago in college. It's a Mah-Jongg variant intended to teach the Japanese alphabets, hiragana and katakana. I'm not sure where I put the tiles.

Last year conservatives made a big deal about a supposed "War On Christmas" because some private business choose of their own free will not to participate in publicly decorating for the Christian holiday. There is a certain kind of Christian who feels persecuted if cities don't pay out my tax dollars to display Christmas creches on public streets and squares that are paid for by my tax dollars.

But now witness the terrornoia reaction when some girls did a cool and fun art project for April Fools' Day. Click here for a link to the article in the Akron Beacon-Journal and the article in the online Record-Courier. I have put in a call with the Beacon-Journal's Metro Editor in charge of local news to confirm that this is not just an April Fool's Day joke on the part of the paper and that the events really happened as described.

The teenage girls followed the instructions on a cool website to make life-size Super Mario Bros. power-up blocks and spread them all over the town. The bomb squad was called out to disarm these pinatas. According to the instructions on the website, the foil-covered cardboard boxes should contain a prize as a gift to whoever is lucky enough to find them. As anyone knows who has not lived under a rock for the last twenty years, question mark blocks traditionally dispense help and not harm. These decorations were intended to delight, not threaten.

Criminal charges are being brought against the five girls ages 15 to 17. Are we now criminalizing random acts of kindness toward strangers? Some artists put up beautiful decorations for April Fool's Day, and are actually being persecuted for it. See, this is what it would actually look like in December if there were a war on Christmas. The internet is banding together to make an outcry, and pay their legal fees if this laughingstock of a case actually makes it to court.

One of my favorite comments to the article was from a user named "disgusted by cowardice": "Hello Police? Yes, there have been several unidentified packages left under our Christmas tree. We saw a bearded man leaving the scene. Can you send in the bomb squad?"

To which I would add, "Hello, police? Someone has made a rainbow and sprinkled it with dew. I feel that the security of my homeland is all tingly."

The nice thing about decorating a public place with privately-funded question blocks is that the first person to find them is supposed to destroy them. If people put out their own privately-funded manger scenes which yield coins, flowers and mushroom-shaped chocolates when smashed with baseball bats, I'd be all in favor of it. Sounds like a fun holiday season.

I did something wrong, and would like to apologize for it publicly, in addition to my private apology. But I'm not sure if the party involved wants me to name him. What I did was probably legal, but ethically questionable. When I translated an artist's song into Lojban and put it into the Lojban podcast, I didn't wait for him to return my e-mail in which I asked for his permission. I had mis-typed his e-mail address.

Seeing that it was credit-attributed, noncommercial, educational, fair use, and does not displace the consumer's need for the original-- it was, in fact, represented as a karaoke track and therefore intended to be used and sung to-- I went ahead and played the voice-over translation for my listeners with the karaoke track in the background.

I have long maintained that just because you have the right to do something doesn't mean it's the best choice. Which is more important? Demanding my rights? Or maintaining the relationships that make everything move forward? Rights are vitally important, but enforcing them just on principle for their own sake is a good way to be miserable and not a co-operative member of a society. Does it matter that my action was legal? Should I do it just because of that? Not really. It's not worth the cost to personal networking. It's not worth the possibility that artists will say "I'm just not going to provide my hard work for free download anymore."

The artist says he really would have preferred I asked him first. That is what matters, because people matter. This was the first artist from whom I did not get consent. Permission is nice, but agreement is better. The principle of Fair Use is a poor and weak excuse to lose a friendly collaborative relationship with a creative person. I ordinarily know better than to risk such relationships.