How to Make a Love Potion

         This post is a case study of the strange and twisty ways of creativity and creation.  It begins back in the summer, when I was approached by Miguel O. Mitchell to collaborate on his own project of love: a book of poetry combining chemical elements and space aliens.  So there were actually seeds being planted before that, in May when Miguel saw my work at a virtual convention.  (You can see more about Miguel’s project in previous post Periodic Table of Aliens.)  I agreed to do illustrations for 14 of his poems, and one of those was about sodium.  Miguel’s poems were fun to illustrate because they gave only a few clues to indicate what the aliens might look like, which left things wide open for me to add my own ideas to the mix.  All Miguel gave me for sodium was that “in the slime of Oodleplops [it] is part of fake love potions.”  Out of those two lines I had a vivid image of a gelatinous, slimy creature tending the counter in some dark, old-time general store, shelves crammed with every sort of patent medicine.  I created the block print which I called “Love Potion.”

        Having completed the block, a whole different image popped into my head, placing my picture in a story that actually had nothing to do with Miguel’s poem.  Now I was thinking of some sort of Lovecraftian Old One living on Earth, rather than an alien somewhere on another world.  I am not a fan of horror, and was imagining how such an Old One might be quite fond of the patrons of his shop, and thus the whole story spooled itself out from the premise of a friendly, slimy, tentacled Old One selling all manner of magical wares… including love potions.

        I want to make two points about the process of writing that story.  First, it is very rare for inspiration to strike me so definitively and with such a fully-formed story.  I am not the sort to talk about stories “writing themselves,” or bolts of inspiration from the blue.  This story was very unusual for me in coming so easily.  But the second point is that it’s still not accurate to say it came out of nowhere.  Perhaps it came like a bolt of lightning, but it was lightning that struck and fused together all the grains of sand that were already lying around.  Or to return to the metaphor I used earlier, various seeds had been planted much earlier.  There was the seed that came from Miguel’s Oodleplop, of course.  There was my own love of the reconstructed 1900 Main Street and general store in the Cleveland Historical Society Museum, plus Woolworths, where it seemed like you could find anything from sneakers to lightbulbs to accounting books to parakeets, plus the beautiful old cash registers that a few shops still had when I was a child.  There were the seeds of my general attitudes toward monsters and love potions and the modern dating scene.  There were all the bits and pieces that are rattling around in my mind all the time, waiting for the seed of an idea to glom onto.  But certainly it felt like magic that a handful of those bits and pieces and seeds did glom together so satisfyingly.

        And it was another piece of magic, perhaps, that I submitted the story to the editors of Cosmic Roots and Eldritch Shores, and they decided that it would be a fun piece to publish for Valentine’s Day.  In another funny little bit of serendipity, I did not offer them my original illustration, but when the editors went looking for an appropriate illustration, they came across mine, and asked to use it!  They also asked if I’d like to do a second illustration for the story, which I did.  So I think this process illustrates the strange and wonderful combination of preparation (gathering and cherishing all those seeds) and luck (meeting Miguel, and having an editor like my piece) that go into getting a story out into the world.

        Meanwhile, I am keeping the rejection pipeline flowing with nearly a dozen other short stories, so I hope to have news of other publications before too long.  But in the meantime, please go on over to Cosmic Roots and Eldritch Shores, read my story, and support their work in bringing SFF stories to the world.

[Pictures: Love Potion, rubber block print by AEGN, 2021 (first published in Periodic Table of Alien Species (Elements 1-86) by Miguel O. Mitchell);

Ineffable Feathersquid, digital illustration by AEGN, 2022 (first Published in Cosmic Roots and Eldritch Shores, Feb. 2022).]

Bite-Sized Writing

         This post is about writing process - and lack of writing process.  For the past several years I’ve had two novels “in progress,” except that they are really getting no progress at all.  It’s not that I’m not excited about them, and it’s not that I don’t have any ideas for them… It’s just that every time I sit down to write it seemed like nothing was going anywhere.  This has been deeply, painfully, infuriatingly frustrating.  But I was still doing plenty of block prints, thank goodness, and that got me off on the tangent of writing On the Virtues of Beasts of the Realms of Imagination, which is not a novel but a whole collection of individual pieces for individual beasts.  That came out two years ago, and not long after it was finished covid struck, and I felt like that should have been perfect for writing… Plenty of time at home, all my outside activities cancelled, just peace and quiet at my desk…  But I still couldn’t seem to focus on those novels.  And then this summer I finally made a breakthrough: short stories.  Taking a small idea and writing a bite-sized story about it is actually manageable, and since the summer I’ve written seven new short stories, and it feels SO GOOD to be writing!

        I’ve been a bit rusty at figuring out how much plot a short story needs, and how to dive in with the right level of detail, since I’d been writing long form for so many years, but I think I’m finding my way back into the hang of it.  Now that I’m focussing on these short stories, I’ve found my creativity popping, and when I sit down to write I can actually get stuff down and feel like it’s going somewhere, and I can actually finish these small projects.  So I’ve diagnosed my issue as stress, which may be glaringly obvious, but I hadn’t given it credit for just how badly it was interfering with my ability to persevere on large projects.  Covid sure as heck didn’t help, but this started before covid, with the stress of politics, environmental disaster, escalating violence, and all the rest of the panic-inducing news bombarding us.  However, these bite-sized projects are something I can handle: a single image, sketched, carved, printed; a single mythical creature, imagined with just a little twist; a single scenario, followed just a little way to see what happens next; a single character with an interesting perspective, given a little push; a single observation, clarified and polished into a poem...

        If you’ve been having trouble with writing or creativity, I encourage you to give yourself permission to take smaller bites.  Scientific studies demonstrate that stress is actually the enemy of creativity, so if you’re feeling like you’re struggling right now, it’s not your fault.  (More here, at the beginning of the summer.)  Just take a deep breath, take one little fleeting idea, and try playing with it for a while.  Here are the stories I’ve written in the past five months or so

   - sci fi about a loner pilot encountering an alien mycorrhizal network

   - folktale-fantasy about a trickster

   - sci fi mash-up between “Hope is the thing with feathers” and “The Tell-Tale Heart”

   - fantasy about a unicorn maiden whose job is to sit in a glade and tame unicorns

   - fantasy about Pandora opening the jar, seen from an unusual character’s view

   - fantasy about Rumpelstiltskin set in an early-industrial-revolution mill

        I’ve been submitting stories to various speculative fiction magazines, and collecting plenty of rejections, and only one acceptance so far: for a very short, humorous, sweet story set in a Lovecraftian town.  It's scheduled to be published in February.  In the meantime, I’ve got three more short stories with a few paragraphs jotted down, and several poems I’ve been working on.  I’ve got one block about half-way carved and another sketch ready to transfer to rubber.  (I’m saving these to work on during upcoming art shows.)  And I’m just enormously grateful to be working and finding satisfaction in actually being able to create things.  More than ever I’ve been trying to incorporate messages of joy and hope into my work, because clearly we all need as much of this as possible these days.  I know I do!

[Picture: Beyond the Thorns, rubber block print (two blocks) by AEGN, 2017 (sold out).]

What's New (and Some Old) in the Studio

         A couple of weeks ago I shared a bunch of upcoming events, many of which feel as if they are suddenly exploding into life as covid restrictions are eased in my state, but today I wanted to share what’s been happening behind the scenes in the studio.  I’ll start by backing up even further to brush over this whole crazy past year.  For many of us introverts, the stay-at-home restrictions haven’t seemed so bad.  I was pretty much home all the time anyway, and all my art and writing is done at home, so being stuck at home doesn’t leave me feeling as isolated, stir-crazy, or depressed as it does some people.  That’s one regard in which I’ve been extremely lucky.

        But there is another part to all this that may not be so widely recognized, which is that plenty of time at home last year hasn’t necessarily been as good for artistic productivity as you might expect.  Under stress the brain diverts blood and energy toward the more basic fight-or-flight parts of the brain, and away from the parts that work on higher-order connections and creativity.  It is literally harder to be creative while stressed, so if you haven’t been feeling that spark recently, it’s not your fault.  And we can’t blame covid for all of this, either.  Our whole country (and perhaps the whole world) has been enduring chronic stress for quite some time, and for me this has meant that trying to write feels like wading through molasses while wearing a lead coat… Which is frustrating, and heartbreaking, and distressing.  (Again, if you’re feeling like your brain hasn’t been in top form this past year and more, it’s not your fault, and you’re not alone.)

         This is why I’m so delighted that I’m currently at work on a short story.  I can’t think of the last short story I’ve written, and this is sci fi, too, which is another departure for me.  Probably it’s really helpful to shake things up instead of continuing to struggle with the fantasy novel that I’m really psyched about, but which nevertheless feels like wading through that molasses.  Anyway, for this new story, imagine a human adopted by a mycorrhizal network.  I’ve had some beta feedback and I’m ready to get back to work on revision!  So exciting!

        I’m also working on another new writing project: a series of poems for each of the thirteen fairies who come to Sleeping Beauty’s christening.  I’ve been a little all-over-the-place about what I’m doing here, but at the moment each poem seems to be the explanation for the fairy’s particular gift.  Also, I’m fooling around with doing each one in a different form.  I’ve already got drafts of some blank verse, a limerick, a villanelle, and most of a sonnet.  Even if this series of poems never ends up going anywhere or being any good, it really feels good to be practicing those poetry muscles, and my arbitrary goal of working in many different forms is good exercise.

        While the writing has been a terrible slog in the past year, the block prints have not been hit so hard.  (Why?  I don’t know, but I suspect because they are more bite-sized.)  I am currently working on an idea that I’d been mulling for a while, which is Baba Yaga’s house on chicken legs.  I’ve made a little flock of Baba Yaga houses, and a little village full of Baba Yagas old and young.  The carving on this needs to be extremely detailed for the tiny people and the fancy decorations on the izba-style cottages, so I am not at all sure whether it’s coming out legibly.  I won’t know until I ink it up.  In the past few days I’ve been working on it only a tiny bit each day, but I will presumably get some solid carving done on Saturday while I’m sitting at my table during an art show for the first time in 18 months.

        Another new thing in my studio is a collection of tiny metal tubes.  I had two miniature metal thingies that I’d been using for “carving” little circles, but a couple of weeks ago I knocked over my toolbox, everything scattered all over the floor and radiator, and I never could find one of the little round bits.  After scouring the house for any old empty mechanical pencils or pens that might have comparable metal bits I could scavenge, it occurred to me that it might be worth just buying some simple metal tube beads.  And in my search for those I discovered little sets of assorted metal capillary tubes, and in a further search down that direction I discovered a packet of mixed small cut-offs from some metal manufacturer.  When my little package arrived I went through dozens and dozens of bits and pieces of various shapes, and selected an array of tubes of various miniature diameters that may work well for pressing circles into my rubber blocks.  There were even a couple of square and hexagon tubes that might have interesting possibilities.  So I look forward to having these to play with.

        What about you?  Are things reopening where you are?  And does the new season feel exciting and freeing, or are you weighted with dread?  How has your creative spark been faring recently?  Have you found any way to care for it?  Right now I am finally feeling cautiously optimistic about mine, and I hope you are feeling a lightening of spirit.

[Pictures: Out of Darkness, rubber block print by AEGN, 2021;

Carving a new block, AEGN, 2021;

Little tubes and experiments with “carving,” AEGN, 2021.]

How to Be an Artist

Gratitude first, then curiosity spurred by wonder,

Gathering beauty until it overflows.

Precision spurs precision,

Detail detail, light light.

Polishing each facet of wonder,

Place the world in a small silver setting

And present it to itself.

Pause often to let the beauty flow clear.

Hush often to hear the silence fill up with silence.

Yet never stop, for the pausing is work,

The hushing is work,

The waiting is work –

As long as it fills and overflows again.

[Picture: Small Glass Bottles, rubber reduction print by AEGN, 2017.]

Poem by AEGN, 2017.

Art for Friends

        Chances are you’ve never heard of a small, unobtrusive, text-heavy picture book called Goldie the Dollmaker.  Published in 1969, the illustrations are grey-tone, the cover is grey-tone on cream only 7x6 inches.  It’s not a book that grabs the eye.  The story is not exactly thrill-packed, either, and I would never have said I loved it as a child.  But nevertheless, since receiving a copy when I was ten, it’s stuck with me.  I’ve never forgotten it because it’s got some poignant messages about what it means to be an artist.

        The plot summary is that Goldie lives alone making wooden dolls.  One day in town she sees a beautiful Chinese lamp and buys it despite knowing that it will take three months of work to pay for it.  A friend’s horror over the cost and impracticality of it gives her buyer’s remorse, and makes her feel utterly lonely, until she dreams of the artist who made the lamp.

        Now I’ll admit I’m stingy and generally frown on impulse buys and impracticality, but I do love beautiful, handmade things and the joyful connections they can make.  And I do think a lot about creating things, and appreciating the creations of others.

        Author M.B. Goffstein’s first point is how an artist works.  Goldie makes her dolls with real care, choosing wood that seems just right for each part, rather than using precut wood that might be quicker but doesn’t feel as alive.  She explains, “It’s not as interesting to carve.  And then it doesn’t turn out as good.  It never looks alive…  I have to love making them.”  And the final step for each doll: “Goldie smiled and smiled into the doll’s eyes in the friendliest, sweetest way, and she painted a smile right back to herself on the little doll’s face.”  If you don’t care what you’re making, why should anyone else care?  But if you invest it with love, it can carry that love out into the world.

        The real climax of the story is the dreamed conversation between Goldie and the artist who made the lamp.  A warm, polite voice begins, “That lamp you bought.  I made it.”

        “Oh, it’s beautiful!” said Goldie.

        “So we are friends.”

        “But I don’t know you,” she said.  “I wish I did.”

        “You do know me,” laughed the voice.  “You know me better than the people I see every day.”

        “But who are you?”

        “I made that lamp you bought today!”

        “Oh, said Goldie.  “Oh, I see.”  And she sat for a moment, smiling.  “But you don’t know me,” she said suddenly.

        “Yes I do.  I made the lamp for you - whoever you are.”

        I wouldn’t go so far as to say that the people who buy my art or read my stories know me better than my family and friends, or that I know them, but we do know each other in a very particular, special way.  There is something we share because I made something I love, and they love it, too.  I hoped, as I created it, that it would bring someone joy - someone I’ve never met and didn’t know - and when they saw it, some of the love I put into it resonated with them.  So when you look at a piece of art that moves you, or read a story or poem that touches you, take a moment to appreciate that connection: the artist made it for you, hoping that you were out there somewhere, ready to be, in some sense, a friend.

[Picture: Goldie’s house, illustration by M.B. Goffstein from Goldie the Dollmaker, Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1969.]

The Stories in My Head

        Whenever I was alone as a kid, I spent a lot of time in my head, and much of that time was spent narrating.  Sometimes I put together the words I would use to describe what I was really experiencing - how I could weave into sentences the inexplicable antics of the squirrels, or the ridiculous decor in the corner house’s yard, or the color of the leaves against the shifting clouds in the sky.  I worked and reworked mental drafts of how I could write it all down later in my journal, although generally by the time I was actually writing in my journal I didn’t have time to record that stuff anyway.  Often I crafted more interesting, exciting, fantastical stories out of the raw materials of my mostly uneventful existence, and the more melodramatically romantic, the better.  While I was cleaning the bathroom sink I might tell a story of the Cinderella-like Princess.  While I was getting another box of cereal from the cellar I might tell about the Intrepid Detective exploring the dark and mysterious warehouse.  While I was walking home from school in the snow, I might tell about the Poor Victorian Waif, or the Rugged Arctic Explorer, or the Winter Woodland Fox.  Pretty much any time I was in a woods I’d be narrating something about elves.

        Perhaps this was the verbal equivalent of the stereotypical tourist so busy looking through the lens of the camera that he never sees the sights with his own eyes.  Perhaps this was Walter Mitty losing his grip on reality.  On the other hand, I think it often prompted me to be very consciously aware of what was going on, to note the smells and sounds and feelings in the moment, and to keep an eye open for the telling detail.  It was also writing practice, of course, as I sought the best arrangement of the most evocative words to turn a description of my plain life into something that could catch at the imagination.  For as long as I can remember, the urge to turn things into stories and to put those stories into words has been an ever present facet of making my way through my life.  I still do it, with fewer Cinderellas and Waifs, perhaps, but an equal urge to find the words to craft a narration of what I’m experiencing.

        Is this normal?  I have no idea - mine is the only head I’ve ever really been in, so I can’t compare it with what went on in other people’s heads when they were children.  I suspect, however, that everyone in my generation and earlier had to find something to do inside their own head, because what else was going to happen while you had to walk home from school alone?  I worry a bit that people no longer spend time in their heads.  The moment they’re alone (and often even when they aren’t) they can plug their heads into earbuds and listen to music, or a podcast, or chat with friends.  No one ever gets stuck with their own thoughts, or left alone with the world around them.  No one is ever forced to be in their own head anymore; there’s always an option that’s easier, or more immediately appealing.  Now, I don’t want to cry the catastrophe of change, the decline of the world, or the deficiencies of young people these days.  There are advantages to balance disadvantages, and the human spirit adapts to do what it does in whatever environment it finds itself.  All I can say with certainty is that when I was a kid I spent a lot of time in my head crafting narratives, and I can’t imagine being a person who had never done that.

        Tune in next time for a short story I wrote in high school capturing this habit of mine.

[Pictures: Illustration from Gods’ Man, woodcut by Lynd Ward, 1929 (Image from the Atlantic);

Frontspiece from God’s Man, woodcut by Ward, 1929 (Image from Amherst College).]

Get to Work

        I’ll be at Roslindale Open Studios this weekend, so I’ve been making up new calendars and note cards, matting and framing original prints, and preparing blocks to carve.  I had a meeting to go to last night and I have another tonight.  So am I in the mood to spend my time today writing a deep and substantive blog post?  No, I am not.  What better time, therefore, to share some of the things creative people through the ages have said about getting the inspiration to create something.

Inspiration is for amateurs - the rest of us just show up and get to work.

                Chuck Close, artist  (I’ve also seen something similar attributed to Stephen King.)

Show up, show up, show up, and after a while the muse shows up, too.

                Isabelle Allende, writer

A self-respecting artist must not fold his hands on the pretext that he is not in the mood.

Inspiration is a guest that does not willingly visit the lazy.

                Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, composer

Don’t wait for moods.  You accomplish nothing if you do that.  Your mind must know it has got to get down to work.

                Pearl S. Buck, writer

To know what you’re going to draw, you have to begin drawing.

                Pablo Picasso, artist

The desire to write grows with writing.

                Desiderius Erasmus, writer

You fail only if you stop writing [or, more broadly, creating].

                Ray Bradbury, writer

[Picture: Painter and His Canvas, linoleum cut by Pablo Picasso, 1963 (Image from The Metropolitan Museum of Art).]

Writer's Blocks

        Last year I saw some smug science-trivia thing stating all condescendingly that the moon doesn’t really look bigger at the horizon, which you can prove by holding out a quarter at arm’s length and comparing it to the disc of the moon when it’s at the horizon, and again when it’s higher in the sky.  I was quite astonished by the stupidity of this statement.  After all, if you’re telling me the moon isn’t really physically larger when it’s at the horizon, well, yes, I knew that.  No one was ever suggesting that the real moon actually grows and shrinks through the evening.  And if you’re telling me the moon doesn’t look bigger, I can only reply with perfect confidence, yes it does.  And if it doesn’t to you, it certainly does to me.  I know my perception, and for you to try to tell me I don’t feel what I feel is just stupid (as well as arrogant.)  And so with the people who love to say “There’s no such thing as Writer’s Block.”  Of course there’s something.  Sometimes people feel stuck, and to tell them they don’t really feel stuck is stupid and arrogant.  Likewise, to say that you should “just get over it” is about as helpful as telling someone to “just stop worrying,” probably the most futile words ever spoken.  That said, having writer’s block doesn’t mean you get to blame your writing problems on outside forces beyond your control, so that you can sit passively back and do nothing about it.  The first job is to examine this phrase “writer’s block” and see what the phenomenon is all about, because the problem isn’t writer’s block as much as it’s writer’s blocks.

        This post is not about 7 Tips to Cure Writer’s Block.  I don’t have any new wisdom to add to the extensive self-help literature already out on the subject.  Nevertheless, breaking down writer’s block into writer’s blocks may also be quite helpful in getting unstuck.  So the first way to break it down is the difference between facing resistance and being empty.  If you can’t seem to get going on any ideas, is your feeling one of having to fight resistance, or do you feel like there are simply no ideas there to work toward?  If the former, you need to show up to work and do what you can: writers write.  But if the latter, you need to get away from the desk and refill, recharge, refresh: an engine can’t run without fuel.
        Some people categorize writer’s blocks by the psychological issues causing them.  Is it fear of rejection or criticism that’s holding you back?  Perfectionism?  Stress or depression in other parts of your life?  Are you distracted by email, ringing telephones, children, or other things going on?  There’s a psychological theory that under various sorts of stress, the brain shifts control away from the cerebral cortex, thus making creativity, which is dependent on the cerebral cortex, harder (if not impossible.)  The psychological issues of fear, stress, and lack of focus are those that call forth the armies of positive thinking and self-affirmation.  I certainly can’t help you with that!

        The phenomena of writer’s blocks can also be usefully broken down by the type of problem you’re facing in your particular piece of writing.  Are you staring at a blank page unable even to begin?  Have you stalled out in the middle of a story?  Is it the characters or the action that seem to be stuck, or is it that the two won’t work together?  Has your story veered off course, or have you changed your mind about where it should be headed, and you can’t seem to wrench it back onto the tracks?  Are you trying to write about something that simply doesn’t interest you?  Maybe you just can’t figure out what should happen next?
        I can’t tell anyone how to fix their writer’s block (heck, I can’t even fix my own), and I can only say that, surely as the moon looks huge at the horizon, writer’s block can loom over the landscape.  But unlike a big, luminous moon, writer’s block brings no delight to the soul.  In fact, it utterly stinks.  It feels frustrating, aching, infuriating, futile, desolate…  There are a number of things to try that may be helpful, ranging from getting out and away to take a walk, to chaining yourself to the desk and free-writing whatever drivel you can manage.  You can brainstorm, you can skip to another part of your piece, you can write a scene from a different character’s perspective, you can imagine what your characters would write in their own essays on the topic of “What I Really Want to Do.”  You can also try acupuncture, self-hypnosis, chocolate, exercise, or whatever else works for you.  Go ahead and acknowledge that you’ve got Writer’s Block.  But don’t stop there and passively wait for the muses to show up with their magical dynamite and blow the block away.  Try to figure out which sort of block you have, and then do something about it!

[Pictures: Woodcut from The Ship of Fools by Sebastian Brant, 1494 (Image from The Endless Bookshelf);

Woodcut by Lynd Ward from God’s Man, 1929 (Image from The Mumpsimus);

Cicero writing his letters, woodcut from Cicero’s Epistulae ad familiares printed by Hieronymus Scotus, 1547 (Image from Wikimedia Commons).]

Creation is Embarrassing

        Back around 1959, Isaac Asimov was invited to participate in a brainstorming group set up by MIT and the government to generate creative ideas for a missile defense system.  Asimov’s only formal contribution to the group was an essay on creativity, which many a modern business manager and classroom teacher would do well to read.  In it Asimov tries to distill what he thinks are the necessary ingredients for creativity, and what are the benefits of group brainstorming.  He wrote
        …creation is embarrassing. For every new good idea you have, there are a hundred, ten thousand foolish ones, which you naturally do not care to display… The world in general disapproves of creativity, and to be creative in public is particularly bad. Even to speculate in public is rather worrisome. The individuals must, therefore, have the feeling that the others won’t object.
        I think he’s pinpointed a couple of important things here.  First, that although all the world loves a success, it is generally not very impressed by the steps that lead up to that success.  Every great idea comes after a long trail of discarded ideas, but while being the genius who puts forward the winning idea is respected, putting forth all the preliminary ideas that lead to it is not only not respected, but often actively discouraged.  So how do we carry on with our own creativity in the face of potential embarrassment?  Mostly by keeping our ideas to ourselves.  And how do we teach and encourage creativity?  By trying not to mock, of course, but even more importantly, by giving room for private thought and permission for solitude.  So the second point here is that we can’t be creative if we’re always in a public jumble of other people, without the chance to work through our own series of foolish ideas, quietly combing out the few precious strands.
        Asimov makes a third point, however: that group work can be enormously helpful in multiplying the fund of knowledge that can then potentially be combined in new, unexpected ways.  I know that I’ve often benefitted from running half-baked thoughts past tolerant family members.  They respond with the facts, ideas, fancies, and questions that occur to them, which are inevitably somewhat different from those that had already occurred to me.  But, Asimov asserts, this process only works in a group in which “all people at a session be willing to sound foolish and listen to others sound foolish.”  This requires a special kind of people, and a special kind of group dynamic.  Many a highly intelligent person has squelched their ability for creativity through too deep a concern for respectability making them unwilling to sound foolish.  Many a highly eccentric person has squelched the creativity of others through too deep a concern for their own colorful self making them unwilling to listen to others sounding foolish.
        So what does creativity require?  Silly people willing to spend time with their own silly thoughts, punctuated by time spent being silly together.  Perfection!  Therefore I challenge you: have you been silly today?

[Picture: The Electric Boots, engraving by A&E Taylor, from The Children’s Fairy Geography by Forbes Edward Winslow, 1879. (Image from The British Library.)]

Quotations from On Creativity, by Isaac Asimov, c 1959.  You can read Asimov’s full essay at MIT Technology Review.

The Lamp-post in the Wood

        In the next week we have the anniversaries of C.S. Lewis’s birth and his death, so this seems a good time to mention Narnia.  The Narnia books are, of course, extravagantly praised and extravagantly condemned for their Christian theology, and I intend to write about religion in fantasy some other time.  But Lewis himself didn’t set out originally to write Christian apology for children, however much Narnia may have ended up there.  In fact, as he said himself, it “all began with a picture of a Faun carrying an umbrella and parcels in a snowy wood. This picture had been in my mind since I was about sixteen. Then one day, when I was about forty, I said to myself: 'Let's try to make a story about it.’”  It’s funny that this picture stayed with him so long, because it’s the same picture that has stayed with me the most clearly, with the addition of the lamp-post, glowing in the snowy dusk.  It’s not the escape through the woods, or the childrens’ heroism, or even the resurrection of Aslan that stays with me most vividly, but that picture of the lamp-post, Mr Tumnus, the parcels, the umbrella, and the snow.

        So the principle I’m interested in today is how a story doesn’t need to begin with a grand concept - even a story that ends up being about as grand a concept as Christian Salvation.  In fact, often the books with the aim of grand concept-ness only end up being preachy.  A good story begins with something that begs to have a story told about it.  I’ve written about how my story The Extraordinary Book of Doors was inspired quite simply by the images and ideas evoked by the title of Sebastiano Serlio’s Extraordinary Book of Doors.  Sometimes a story is inspired by an imagined character.  Sometimes it starts with an interesting setting, sometimes with a little-known factoid (I think a lot of whodunits begin with factoids.)  So the point is that anything can potentially inspire a story.  The trick is to notice these inspirational snippets - notice them, remember them, cherish them, revisit them, mull about them, and then sit down and actually begin to write.  That’s the stage I’m in now, with a sequel to The Extraordinary Book of Doors.  I’ve collected pages of notes on all manner of little inspirations: historical facts, new characters, lines of conversation, and other cool things.  But now I have to write, because no inspiration, however brilliant, is a story until I can get it out of my head and onto the page.

[Picture: Meeting Mr Tumnus, book sculpture by Justin Rowe, 2013 (Image from Days Fall Like Leaves).]

Quotation from It All Began with a Picture, C.S. Lewis, 1960.

Importance of Fantasy - Importance of Liberal Arts

        Charles Dickens wrote in 1853 “In a utilitarian age, of all other times, it is a matter of grave importance that fairy tales should be respected.”  When I read this it occurred to me how much broader this issue is than fairy tales only.  It certainly applies to the whole realm of fantasy, but even beyond, to the ideal of liberal arts.  I’ll explain, but first, a few words on Dickens’s agenda.  The piece in which the statement appears, called Frauds on the Fairies, was his answer to his [former] friend and illustrator George Cruikshank, who had dared to rewrite some fairy tales to preach his favored cause against the evils of alcohol.  Dickens praises fairy tales for their morality, simplicity, and innocence.  He calls them “nurseries of fancy,” with which I agree, but also goes on with a lot of Victorian sentimentalism of which I think the fairy tales must be found Not Guilty.  Moreover, he argues that the fairy tales must be “preserved in their… purity,” which is nonsense, as the fairy tales had never been static before and will continue to be retold and modified as long as they live.  It’s my opinion that anyone who wants to rewrite fairy tales is entitled to do so, and if they stink, they will simply fall by the wayside.  However, you can read the entire essay here, and you may be amused by Dickens’s satirical rewriting of Cinderella, which mocks all manner of absurd moral notions from health fads to women’s suffrage.

        But to go back to that opening claim, I think Dickens was getting at something bigger than his irritation with Cruikshank.  In a utilitarian age, it’s a great temptation to believe that fantasy, imagination, literature, the visual and performing arts, are all useless.  Even in my generally enlightened town people write letters to the editor arguing that art and music are a waste of money in our schools.  In Dickens’s own time it was considered utilitarian to put young children to work in those jobs too cramped, dangerous, delicate, or tedious for adults.  We see now that taking children out of school to perform jobs that are likely to kill or maim them is hardly good for society in the long run, but we still seem to have difficulty seeing that squelching imagination, critical thinking, and broad-mindedness is also bad for society.

        And that brings me to the value of a liberal arts education, and why it’s important that in this utilitarian age we don’t make the mistake of thinking too narrowly about what’s “useful.”  I am very pleased to be featured in this month’s newsletter of The Phi Beta Kappa Society, where I explain the importance of the liberal arts and sciences thus:  The liberal arts and sciences encourage a love of continued learning and a broad range of academic interests, as well as the habits of mind that allow us to take notice of interesting facts, follow up a thought to find out more, analyze, sift, critique, and be creative.  Creativity requires cross-pollination.  It involves pulling threads from many different areas to connect ideas that haven’t been connected before, to create new worlds that reflect our own back to us in new, illuminating ways.  Not one of my three jobs [artist, juvenile fantasy writer, stay-at-home-mother] is the kind you might expect to “require” a college degree, and yet my education is a vital part of how (on my best days!) I do my work in all three of those areas: with curiosity, critical thinking, and creativity.  And I believe that all of those jobs, done in that spirit, can help make the world a better place.  Please go read the whole interview here.

[Pictures: The Pumpkin… to take Cinderella to the Ball…, copper engraving by George Cruikshank, 1854 (Image from Antiqua Print Gallery);

The Open Book, rubber block print by AEGN, 2013 (sold out).]

Bronze Dancer

        It must have been some 25 years ago that I saw an exhibit of ancient Greek and Roman miniature bronzes.  There were assorted gods and warriors, athletes, politicians, and satyrs, and there was an elaborately dressed Hellenistic dancer only 8.5 inches tall.  I fell in love.  Around 17 years ago I encountered the dancer again, this time in a book about art forgery.  The author (whose name I couldn’t determine in a quick search today) claimed this little bronze dancer was a renaissance forgery.  His argument was that forgeries reveal themselves after a certain amount of time, when their ideals of beauty can be seen to conform to the styles of the period in which they were made.  Certainly my dancer’s dress looks to my amateur eye more renaissance than classical, although I’m no expert on ancient Alexandrine dance costumes.  (It’s undoubtedly these charges that account for the Metropolitan Museum of

Art’s wording in their description of the bronze: that she’s been “convincingly identified.”)  But I don’t really care when she was made or by whom.  The artist, whether Greek or Italian, whether 3rd century BCE or 16th century CE, has created a masterpiece of incredible beauty.  Its value to me is exactly the same either way.

        I had sketched the statuette at some point, and in looking through some folders of old sketches it occurred to me that all those folds and draperies might make an interesting subject for transformation to black and white - in other words, for a block print.  So I used my drawing as the design for another block to carve a week ago at Roslindale Open Studios.  I’m fairly pleased with how it came out.  It does, of course, raise that age-old thorny issue of originality.  I
don’t want to rehash what I’ve already said about this issue (visit this post for my primary discussion).  But it once again raises all those questions: Is this copying?  Have I made something sufficiently new and different?  Is this work truly mine?  What makes anything original when all art, all human endeavor, is influenced by what came before?

        I certainly won’t solve those problems, and there will always be differences of opinion and interpretation, not to mention legal issues of copyright, etc.  All I can say is that I saw something beautiful and wanted to make a piece of art to celebrate it.  Here it is.

[Pictures: Bronze Dancer, rubber block print by AEGN, 2013;

Bronze statuette of a veiled and masked dancer, anonymous, 3rd-2nd century BCE Greek (Images from the Metropolitan Museum of Art).]

Interested in Everything

        It must be said that lots of things bore me: for example, reality TV, Serious Novels, political pundits, and lime scale remover.  But I like to think that I have the capacity to be intrigued by things wherever I go and whatever I'm doing, even when I might on the whole be bored.  I like to think that I have the awareness and openness to let things strike me even when I'm not expecting to be struck.  I think this habit of mind is one of the keys to being an artist or a writer.  (And it makes being a parent more fun, too!)

        The lime scale remover is a case in point.  I was in a mall many years ago when I was approached by one of those people with clipboards and asked if I would take part in a survey.  "Why not," I thought.  I had nowhere to be and I'd never done anything of the sort before.  It could be interesting.  So the woman took me into a back room and proceeded for the next twenty minutes or so to press me for my deep and heart-felt passions on the topic of lime scale remover.  I'd never even heard of lime scale before, and had no feelings on the topic whatsoever.  This was when I realized just how boring a subject lime scale remover intrinsically is.  But the over-all experience was, indeed, kind of interesting.  It made me wonder about all sorts of things: that this is how decisions get made about what products I'll have the option of purchasing, the creative and moral implications of advertising, that some people out there actually do care passionately about lime scale and its removal, and what makes those people tick, that there are these little cubicle offices behind the scenes at the mall that I'd never seen before, and how every place I go and everything I do is really made possible by little back rooms that I never see.  And that's actually really interesting stuff.  I love having the veil drawn back to see what goes into the things I take for granted.

        For art this awareness may be primarily visual - to notice the interesting patterns or curves all around, in the natural and the human-made, in the unusual and the everyday.  For writing the awareness must encompass conversations, situations, all sorts of human interactions, the emotions in myself, smells, tastes, and all kinds of sensations, as well as the visual.  But whether as an artist or a writer, I always try to remind myself to be aware of those elements of life that are interesting, surprising, and unexpected, and that simultaneously ring absolutely true.  And the wonderful thing about art and writing is that every time I find some treasure of truth, I can simultaneously keep it for myself and set about to share it with everyone else.

[Pictures: Let Your Hair Down, rubber block print by AEGN, 2008;

Trucks in Bed, rubber block print by AEGN, 2007.]

Artists Talk

        Last week I participated in a "Creative Connections" Artist Talk series at a local library.  There were three of us presenting that afternoon, and there were some interesting themes that came up between us.  The first woman to present is a potter who makes what she calls "multi-component interactive sculptures" out of porcelain.  Next spoke a metalsmith who mostly makes silver jewelry.  The examples he brought

used a lot of filigree.  And third was me.  There were definitely some differences between us - the ceramicist has been featured in all sorts of national and international juried shows, the metalsmith is a full-time professional, the sculptures and jewelry are largely abstract as opposed to my representational-ism…  Usually it seems that any group of artists is composed primarily of painters, and I'm often the odd one out because my medium involves the three-dimensional stage of carving the block.  But this time I was the odd one out for making 2-D works on paper!

        But what really interested me about participating in this program were the common themes that emerged despite the obvious differences in our finished work.  The first of these themes was the desire to follow our own curiosity, as opposed to designing things specifically with an eye to commercial popularity.  We all spoke about the joy in seeing something, getting an idea, and following it to see where it might lead.  We all mentioned that we don't like to repeat the exact same thing over and over but want to try something a little different each time.

        We also all mentioned nature as a major source of inspiration.  With all my prints of plants and animals, that's presumably pretty obvious in my work, but I certainly wouldn't have guessed it in the work of the silversmith (although perhaps it would be more obvious in some of his other work that I didn't see).  And the ceramic sculptures were even more interesting in this regard because the potter showed some photos of natural objects followed by a piece inspired by each one.  In some cases it was clear: a pitcher and mugs modeled with the shape and color of bamboo, for example.  But in other cases the connection appeared very slight, and this illustrated a point that was really interesting to me.  That is, inspiration and ideas come from all sorts of places, but they get transformed in each person, and they come out different from each person's own way of thinking, feeling, and creating.  Isn't it amazing and wonderful how the human imagination can be sparked by something, and flame up, and twirl away in any one of a million unique directions?

        Plus, I had to smile when the potter mentioned her excitement about diatoms, and showed the sculpture inspired by their forms… at that very moment I had at home a collection of photos of microscopic organisms and a couple of first sketches of an idea for a print inspired by them.  But if I ever do make that print, won't it be wonderful to see how completely different our two pieces of art will be, though both inspired by the same wonder at this same amazing detail of nature?

        This Creative Connections talk was one of the events connected with Natick Artists Open Studios, which will be held this year on October 20 and 21.  If you're anywhere in the neighborhood, stop by and visit us!  (The other artists who spoke with me were Suzanne Stumpf and John Harwood, if you want to look them up.)

[Pictures: A Couple of Hats, rubber block print by AEGN, 2008.]

"Where Do You Get Your Ideas?"

        This is probably the number one question I get asked, whether it's at an art show or a book talk, whether I'm conversing with children or adults.  "Where do you get your ideas?"  And it's a hard question to answer.  That is, the answer is actually extremely simple: Anywhere and everywhere.  But that hardly seems adequate when I'm trying to give a helpful answer.  So I think about what more I can say in order to be more specific or more concrete.

        The thing about ideas is that they're not like the rubber I carve.  I can't say, "I order them online in big sheets and cut off what I need.  Here's the web site where you can get some, too!"  I think of ideas as more like birds - they're around all the time, but the trick is to notice them and learn to identify them.  Or perhaps a useful analogy is Sherlock Holmes's explanation of observation.  In "A Scandal in Bohemia" he says, "You see, but you do not observe.  The distinction is clear."  In "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle" he specifies the difference, "You can see everything.  You fail, however, to reason from what you see."  Observation, therefore, is not simply seeing things but paying enough attention to them to note their significance.  A large part of getting ideas is similar: be observant enough, be aware enough, to notice those things that might make a beautiful piece of art or an interesting element of a story.  Take nothing for granted.

        A writing example I've shared with students comes from Kate and Sam and the Cheesemonster.  Kate and Sam are helped multiple times in the story by beetles who have received news of the quest through the Beetle Bulletin.  The beetle Maximilian Athanasius Plunkett explains, “It is true that we are miniscule in comparison to you, but even if each of us travels only a tiny distance, we will always meet another beetle, and that beetle will always meet another, and so the Beetle Bulletin can be passed over the entire face of the earth in time.  Did you know that we beetles are the most numerous group of animals?  One quarter of all animals alive on earth today are beetles!”  The beetle struck a pose with one spiny foot on his chest.  His tiny hoarse voice rang out with pride…

        The idea for the Beetle Bulletin came from reading that factoid in a kids' science magazine.   I'd already put a minor beetle character in Kate and Sam and the Chipmunks of Doom, and when I read this staggering fact that nearly 25% of all life-forms on earth are beetles, I knew that the beetles needed a bigger role.  So, where did the idea come from?  Well, it was probably just about anywhere anyone could read about beetles - in that magazine, in the encyclopedia, in books, on television shows…  So in a way, I didn't come up with the idea, I just realized its potential.  (This is also a good example of the application of "What if?")

        This idea of gathering up potential ideas is what I explain to students as a "writer's piggy bank."  In a real piggy bank you throw in all your money, in any amounts large or small, and eventually when you need to buy something, you open it up and see what you've got.  In the same way if you save up all those little interesting tidbits that come into your mind - cool character names, intriguing settings, elements of plot, interesting facts, surprising situations, memories of feelings, catchy turns of phrase - you're bound to have at least a few great ideas to use when you start to put together a story.

        And of course art can work the same way: it isn't so much that inspiration occasionally strikes magically out of the blue, it's that inspiration is anywhere and everywhere if you can only learn to recognize it.  From moments in my life ("The Puddle"), to everyday sights ("Dandelion"), to poems I've read ("The Listeners"), to things I've seen in books ("Three at the Water Hole"), to quirky things that catch my attention ("Yapok"), to items I've found at the dump ("Underwood"), anything is a potential subject for art as long as I remember to consider it in that light.

        So keep your eyes and your heart open, and don't just see, but observe.  Then you're ready to welcome all those wonderful ideas that really are everywhere.

[Pictures:  Downy Woodpecker, rubber block print with red watercolor by AEGN, 2006 (sold out);
Rhinoceros Beetle, rubber block print by AEGN, 1997 (sold out).]

Write What You Want to Read

        When I talk to kids about writing, one of the things I tell them is to try to write the kind of books they like to read.  That's how I write.  [I know that a more professionally viable technique may be to write the kind of books that publishers want to publish.  But I figure there are plenty of other people working that angle, and the readers who like the same kinds of things I do are the ones I really want to please.]  Of course, in order to write the kind of books you like to read, you need to read… a lot.  And you need to think about what it is about the books you like that makes you like them.

        Is it the main characters who draw you into the story?  Do you like characters who are brave, or silly, or clever, or shy?  Characters who are sort of like you, or characters who are practically the opposite?

        Is it the setting that intrigues you?  Do you like to read about things happening in an ordinary elementary school?  Or some other time in history, or another place in the world?  Outer space?  What about imaginary fantasy worlds or made-up planets?

        What kind of stories do you like best?  Mysteries?  Adventures?  Do you like funny stories or sad stories or scary stories?  Do you like happy endings?  (Personally, I insist on happy endings.  But I think I'll do an entire post on this another day.)

        Every story has to have trouble: a problem to be solved or a conflict to be overcome -- so think about what kind of trouble is interesting to you.  What kind of problems do you want to see solved?  And how do you like to see problems getting solved?  By trickery?  By hard work and persistence?  By epic battles?  By detective work?  By cooperation and getting people to work together?  By funny coincidence?

        I believe that if you consider these questions honestly for yourself, there's no wrong answer.  [It may be that not too many others share your taste and your story won't have a particularly broad appeal… but I figure it's better to write the best story you can according to yourself than to try to appeal blindly to tastes you don't share.]  Of course, when I'm talking to kids, my concern is to help foster a love of writing, not to launch them all on commercially successful writing careers.  But the real issue for the school students I speak to isn't whether or not their ideas are commercially publishable, but the fact that they're usually not given freedom to write whatever they want.  If this is the "realistic fiction" writing unit, then no "fantasy" will be allowed.  So how can you write what you love to read if this is the unit on a genre you don't care for?

        First of all, much as I sympathize with my kids forever being told to write realistic fiction when all they want is to write fantasy, I believe that it is important to make students try all different styles and techniques, not just the ones they're most comfortable with.  How can you know what you like if you never try?  How can you stretch your abilities if you always stick with your comfort zone?  That said, I still encourage writers to find ways to make every assigned genre their own.  No matter what genre you're working in, you can still choose the elements of your story to reflect what interests you.

        I give a version of this speech as part of my presentation to third and fourth graders, but today I'm talking to you.  Whether you want to write your own story or not, think about what it is you love in your favorite books of all.  Now appreciate the writers who shared that taste, because if they're anything like me, that's what they really wanted -- to reach out to all the others who might share their vision, and make a connection.

[Pictures: Romance, rubber block print by AEGN, 2009, (sold out) (Commissioned for Penelope’s Romance Reviews);

Old King Cole enjoys his favorite book about fiddling, design for bookplate, adapted from rubber block print by AEGN.]