Quantum Storytelling

Seth Godin has a definition for yet another type of blog.

“I think we’re seeing the rise of the RH (Rocky Horror) blog. These are blogs with a posse, a cadre of loyal readers who participate by chat, comments or in a tightly-knit circle of blogs. The goal of the blogger is to put fuel on the fire and to keep the existing audience engaged. The ideas don’t have to be new, and they don’t have to spread, but the blog is a great way to create and maintain this community of fellow travelers.”

Since blogs like Melly’s All Kinds of Writing, many of the others in the sidebar, and yours truly don’t really fit under the ‘cat blog,’ the ‘boss blog,’ or the ‘idea blog,’ then there’s really only one kind of blog category left that we fit.

I guess that makes us Rocky Horror blogs. I’ll take it. :)

The Midnight Disease offers up yet even more fascinating tidbits:

Writer’s block that is linked to anxiety is often also tied to procrastination–the process that leads you to suddenly clean out your basement the week before a writing deadline. Procrastination of a different sort can accompany depression. For at the most fundamental (or simplistic) level, there are perhaps only two types of writer’s block, high energy and low energy. Unlike low-energy block, high-energy block may worsen as your deadline approaches; it makes you sweat, makes you sit down only to jump up again. When your work is part of who you are, and you fear that it is bad, you become more and more frantic. Perhaps you have ideas, but you quickly reject them as worthless. Perhaps you do not even let them into your consciousness, but feel them swelling, purulent–an abscess where your brain used to be. In low-energy block, the desire that makes you sit down to write is a dull sense of guilt. Instead of ideas, you only have sterile ruminations on how things used to be when you could write, when the world had color.

Before this I hadn’t even considered that there could be different types of block. To me, block was block. My block is totally high-energy. I can’t sit still, I get distracted easily. The more energy I have, the harder it is for me to focus.

Although self-diagnosis is often completely inaccurate, I consider myself to be somewhat hypomanic. A brief time spent in therapy during 2001 seems to have confirmed this. My ‘depressions’ are not so much depression in the classical sense, but slumps caused by anxiety or negatively spent excess energy. I can be a little obsessive/compulsive at times, and so most of my writer’s block is the high energy variety.

Fascinating enough, writer’s block is also linked to the frontal lobe of the brain, which, not-so-coincidentally is also responsible for higher order logic and planning. Those with low-energy block (depression) have lessened activity in the frontal lobe. Those with high-energy block, such as myself, are reigned under control by structure, routine and planning.

This perfectly explains my love for structure. It makes me feel safe and calm from my own irrational energies. I know that if I have a good plot, for example, all I need to do is sit back and write. It also highlights the most frustrating part of writing and writer’s block for me–when the ideas and excitement are so high that I’m almost fundamentally incapable of sitting down and getting anything done. This happens a lot actually… and while some might call that a blessing, at times I think it is a curse.

I am more of a hypergraphia kind of person. I can write lengthy blog posts such as this one, rambling forum posts, emails, etc. But when I sit down and stare at my novel, the energy begins to boil in a fury that threatens to choke me.

Solution to a low-energy writer’s block involves getting yourself excited. Arouse yourself–find more energy. Solution to a high-energy block is, ironically, to be less aroused. Lessen the excitement and energy somehow. Maybe I need to take up meditation? Whatever helps me focus I guess…

I’ve learned a lot about myself from The Midnight Disease. Perhaps you could too.

Is your creative block high-energy or low-energy?

Another great snippet from The Midnight Disease by Alice W. Flaherty:

“Although–at least in principle–everyone approves of creativity, many have been skeptical of attempts to study or enhance it. The artist’s view is often that creativity should be left alone, that looking too closely could endanger it. The basic scientist’s view also is often that creativity should be left alone; that it is by definition too anomalous for controlled study. That has left the study of creativity enhancement to New Age practitioners, inspirational business seminar leaders, and a few brave social scientists.”

This is true, and I’ve seen it many times. What we don’t know can’t hurt us, so it’s better to just leave everything alone?

I strongly disagree. The only way I’ve ever improved a thing in my life was by learning more about it, and the principles under which it operates. I’ve never increased my skill or ability through ignorance. Ignorance only supports the status-quo of mediocrity.

And yes, the study of creativity enhancement has indeed been left up to New Age practitioners, inspirational gurus, and people who are often otherwise known as ‘quacks.’ The fact that they are profiting off the ignorance of others, well… I will hold back from making a moral judgment on that. In one sense, I say more power to them. It is up to every individual to be wary, alert, and self-educated, to avoid being swindled by the magical aura of self-declared authority figures.

The role of the creative person is not to mindlessly crank things out of infantile self-expression, but to also gain & lend perspective. To go a step further, open-minded exploration should not just be done through our mediums, but it should be applied recursively to the creative process itself. Creative people exist alongside a polygamy of methods. There is a wide array of tools and processes available to us, and we are not married to any particular one of them.

The belief that creativity should be left alone isn’t far from superstitious or religious belief. It is the idea that examining a process might destroy it, just as mentioning a possible bad outcome might ‘jinx’ that outcome.

It is no surprise that people involved in the creation of myth are also susceptible to believing myths. And certainly when it comes to entertainment, we should not deny ourselves the pleasure in suspension of disbelief. But when it comes to improving at the creative process, we need to be honest with ourselves and set aside the myths we use to craft our fiction, and apply the razor of logic and intuition. Our beliefs about the creative process should not share in common with our work, the label of fiction.

In respecting other peoples’ beliefs, I also must admit that my view on creativity is also just my belief. But I can’t help ask…

Why should creativity be left alone?