The pros and cons of writing with a view

 

Waves pound­ing on a rocky out­crop­ping, an eagle perched in a fir tree, the sky drenched in pink and or­ange as the sun slips be­yond the ho­ri­zon. Every writer dreams of a view like this. But is it be­ne­fi­cial? Does it beck­on the cre­at­ive muse? Nudge you into writ­ing faster and better?

In my thirty-plus years as a writer, I’ve worked in many spaces. The first was at a desk in the corner of the liv­ing room. My nine-year old step­daugh­ter had a tough time un­der­stand­ing why she wasn’t sup­posed to in­ter­rupt me.

But I’ve also been lucky enough to write where I had views of wa­ter, treed areas and wild­life. I fondly re­call the little sum­mer house I ren­ted as a private writ­ing re­treat from Shannon and Brian on their is­land sanc­tu­ary in the Nuchatlitz archipelago.

I loved my writ­ing re­treat in this little cab­in and spend­ing time with Shannon and Brian at Nuchatlitz.

My fa­vour­ite writ­ing space, how­ever, was in an Arts & Crafts her­it­age house I lived in for dec­ades. Two huge transom win­dows provided ex­pans­ive views of dog­wood trees, large flower­ing shrubs, and maple trees with leaves as big as din­ner plates.

Visual memor­ies in­clude a snow­fall of pink cherry blos­soms, a hum­ming­bird pier­cing a small owl’s breast with its beak, and a deer lick­ing the in­side of a fer­al rabbit’s ear.

This is where I wrote a weekly arts column for the loc­al news­pa­per, hun­dreds of arti­cles for main­stream and al­tern­at­ive magazines and six non-fic­tion books. But this was not my most pro­duct­ive writ­ing space. That was a tiny room upstairs.

An en­gross­ing book to work on, The Cougar de­man­ded my full at­ten­tion. The phone and even the sound of my part­ner walk­ing around in oth­er areas of the house were un­wel­come intrusions.

So I took my laptop to the grey room. The only fur­niture was a bed, a desk and a book­case. To my de­light, I couldn’t hear any­thing in the rest of the house. And I didn’t have ac­cess to the Internet, so an­oth­er dis­trac­tion was eliminated.

There was an un­ex­pec­ted quirk, though. The desk faced the win­dow, and I couldn’t work with the light shin­ing in my eyes. There was no room to move the desk, so I closed the blinds. Then I real­ized that light from the oth­er bed­room shone in the open door­way, cre­at­ing glare on my screen. I shut the door, only to dis­cov­er that the light from the over­head fix­ture also cre­ated screen glare. So, I turned it off.

I didn’t know if I could write solely by the light of my laptop screen. But strangely, it worked. I felt like a cap­tain at the helm of a space­ship ca­reen­ing into out­er space. I couldn’t hear any­thing, see any­thing, or google any­thing. It was just me and The Cougar. And I wrote up a storm.

The up­shot? Having a view to write by is lovely but not ne­ces­sar­ily the most effective.

That said, no mat­ter where you shape your stor­ies, it’s al­ways a good idea to peri­od­ic­ally give your eyes a break from the screen. That’s the per­fect time to find a win­dow with a view. And if you have time, to go out­side into it.

Top im­age is the view from one of the win­dows in my former her­it­age house. 

 

 

Painter Bev Byerley on creativity

The west coast land­scape is the cre­at­ive in­spir­a­tion for most of Bev Byerley’s paintings. 

As a writer, cre­ativ­ity in­trigues me. Why do we seek it? How do we find it? 

While I con­tin­ue to ex­plore the concept in my per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al life, I’m also curi­ous about how people in oth­er fields of artist­ic en­deavor, find their muse. Painter Bev Byerley was kind enough to share her thoughts below. 

First of all, I take pho­tos of my fa­vor­ite places. Usually it’s just a few in­ter­est­ing lines I see in these pho­tos that sparks my cre­at­ive interest.

Then I sketch the bare bones, em­phas­iz­ing the lines that I find in­triguing, with a paint brush and dark col­oured paint. After the ini­tial sketch I’m full of artist­ic ex­cite­ment and be­gin to block in col­ours and cov­er the canvas.

It’s usu­ally about this time that I real­ize just how much work it’s go­ing to take to pro­duce the im­age I have in my head. My en­ergy level wanes and I have to push my­self to keep going.

But when I do, there comes the point that I can see the fin­ish line and the ini­tial spark re­turns with all the en­ergy and en­thu­si­asm to com­plete the piece.

For me, paint­ing is like walk­ing a long dis­tance; pla­cing one foot in front of an­oth­er, and an­oth­er, and another…

Then sud­denly you’re there.

To view more of Bev’s work, vis­it www​.bevby​er​ley​.com. 

 

What fuels your creativity?

Being cre­at­ive can be as chal­len­ging as grabbing a hand­ful of fog. The mind and body may be will­ing, but the muse of­ten chooses its own time to ap­pear. Some people seem to be in a con­stant state of cre­at­ive con­scious­ness, while oth­ers grunt and grind their way along as if push­ing a two-ton rock up a steep hill.

But soon­er or later, most cre­at­ives ex­per­i­ence an “aha!” mo­ment that pro­pels them for­ward on a rush of star-stud­ded euphoria.

So, what flips the switch from mundane to innovative?

Sometimes I can write my way into a cre­at­ive flow by play­ing with a vari­ety of words, scen­ari­os and ran­dom com­bin­a­tions. Or a walk in the woods or along the Salish Sea can trans­form neb­u­lous thoughts into a quirky idea.

And, al­though far less en­joy­able, cre­at­ive thoughts also emerge while do­ing some­thing mind­less like wash­ing dishes or vacuuming.

But even when strug­gling, I’m drawn to the craft of story.

Curiosity is the driv­ing force be­hind my cre­ativ­ity. Even as a child I was al­ways ask­ing ques­tions and si­lently watch­ing what people did and the ways oth­ers re­acted. I want to know why some­thing hap­pens and how people be­come who they are.

Inspiration is usu­ally sparked by an ex­tern­al in­cid­ent: rot­ting fish be­ing con­ver­ted into oo­ligan grease, a cou­gar scream­ing in the green­space be­hind my home or feel­ing un­com­fort­able around the home­less in my community.

I’m in­trigued by the reas­ons people live and act the way they do. And of the dark that lies be­low the sur­face some­times swim­ming to the top to wreak hav­oc. What’s the back­story? How do people change? Or even survive?

In pre­vi­ous books, I’ve ex­amined re­la­tion­ships between people and wild­life, the land­scape, and oth­er cul­tures. Now I’m ex­plor­ing a more in­tim­ate re­la­tion­ship, that of a fam­ily shattered by past events, nev­er ac­know­ledged or spoken about.

Switching from non­fic­tion to fic­tion is a chal­lenge, lead­ing to much thought and con­tem­pla­tion. On his web­site, in­ter­na­tion­ally renowned au­thor Michael Connelly says he re­cently cre­ated a new series, “Because you have to write like a shark. You keep mov­ing or you die creatively.”

Now I’m ex­er­cising my cre­at­ive muscles in dif­fer­ent ways and learn­ing new as­pects of the story-telling jour­ney. Writing like a shark in­volves change and step­ping out­side my com­fort zone.

I nev­er know how each dance with the muse will turn out but that’s part of the charm. Every story is an adventure.

 

How I beat the worst writers block ever – twice

I was stuck. On page one.

Life stuff had hal­ted my writ­ing for months but today was the day I’d re­claim my real life. The only prob­lem was noth­ing got bet­ter after the first page. In fact, the first ten chapters of the nov­el I was work­ing on prob­ably con­tained the worst words I’d ever written.

It was like get­ting into a brand new, shiny red Mercedes with black leath­er seats and then hav­ing a fis­sure crack open on all sides of the vehicle with no way over it.

I stewed, fret­ted and cursed. But no mat­ter how much I stared at the page, I couldn’t get past this road­b­lock. Usually, a walk on the beach or in the woods clears the way for cre­ativ­ity. But there seemed no way back into this story.

In my 30+ years of writ­ing, I’d nev­er been this stuck be­fore. It was like ter­min­al con­stip­a­tion of the brain.

Finally, Harold Macy, a friend and writ­ing col­league since my wanna be a writer days, told me to ditch start­ing at the be­gin­ning of the story and to just dive in any­where. Another long­time writ­ing friend, Caroline Woodward, said she was go­ing to write 1,000 words a day for a month. I wondered if I could too.

Following Harold’s ad­vice, I chose the cli­max of my story — where there was plenty of ac­tion and ex­cite­ment — as my re-entry point to the nov­el. The en­ergy was palp­able and work­ing back­wards was eye-open­ing. I couldn’t re­mem­ber if I’d set up events in pre­vi­ous chapters so it was al­ways a sur­prise. It was al­most like read­ing a book in­stead of writ­ing one.

One thou­sand words a day – or even more – no prob­lem. I was elated!

Then I got to chapter 10 and the red Mercedes screeched to a halt. The first third of the book still sucked. I felt like the guy in this photo — lots of ideas and all bad, bad, bad.

I was back where I star­ted. But in­stead of a crevice, the Andes Mountains had sprung up in the road and there was no way over, through or around them.  The prob­lem was, I still really liked the story and didn’t want to aban­don it.

I felt like a fail­ure and wondered if I should give up writ­ing. Be con­tent with what I’d already ac­com­plished. But, if I didn’t write, what would I do?

Then Derrick, a tai chi buddy, told me a story about one of his wife’s cats. I’m not a cat per­son but the couple’s struggle with Sophie stuck in my mind. A few days later I watched a 2003 Russian com­ing of age film, The Return.

A scruffy, doped up cat and two young boys ad­just­ing to the re­turn of their fath­er was all it took. The moun­tains crumbled to dust and the Mercedes roared to life. I wrote a pro­logue and totally re­vised chapter one. The mo­mentum kept up for re­vi­sions of the fol­low­ing chapters. After months of angst, I was writ­ing again. And lov­ing it.

So, what did I learn about deal­ing with a double whammy of a writ­ing logjam?

-Be open to find­ing in­spir­a­tion any­where, on a bus, in the gro­cery store or in between moves on a check­er board.

-Set writ­ing goals and stick to them. The act of writ­ing it­self can shake some­thing loose.

-Approach your story from a com­pletely dif­fer­ent angle, try work­ing back­wards, in­tro­du­cing a new char­ac­ter or chan­ging a character’s point of view.

-Don’t be shy about shar­ing your woes and listen­ing to suggestions.

-And per­haps most im­port­antly, if you be­lieve in your story, don’t give up.

 

Feature im­age cred­it: iStock 1085064170 Moussa81