1. Figure out what’s worth stealing
2. Move on to the next thing

Rinse and repeat.

From a New Yorker article about the French serial imposter Frédéric Bourdin (nicknamed “The Chameleon”):

…he tried to elevate his criminality into an “art.” First, he said, he conceived of…whom he wanted to play. Then he gradually mapped out the character’s biography, from his heritage to his family to his tics. “The key is actually not lying about everything,” Bourdin said. “Otherwise, you’ll just mix things up.” He said that he adhered to maxims such as “Keep it simple” and “A good liar uses the truth.” In choosing a name, he preferred one that carried a deep association in his memory….He compared what he did to being a spy: you changed superficial details while keeping your core intact.

This, too, is what the writer does…

Trying hard to solve that impossible problem? Hit the topless bar, take a warm shower, and sleep on it.

Three tips I gathered from Jonah Lehrer’s great article in the July 28th New Yorker called “The Eureka Hunt,” all about “insight,” where our good ideas come from, when they come to us, and why.

The formula:

total immersion → relaxing distraction = moment of insight

The insight process…is a delicate mental balancing act. At first, the brain lavishes the scarce resource of attention on a single problem. But, once the brain is sufficiently focussed, the cortex needs to relax in order to seek out the more remote association in the right hemisphere, which will provide the insight. “The relaxation phase is crucial,” Jung-Beeman said. “That’s why so many insights happen during warm showers.” Another ideal moment for insights, according to the scientists, is the early morning, right after we wake up. The drowsy brain is unwound and disorganized, open to all sorts of unconventional ideas. The right hemisphere is also unusually active. Jung-Beeman said, “The problem with the morning, though, is that we’re always so rushed. We’ve got to get the kids ready for school, so we leap out of bed and never give ourselves a chance to think.” He recommends that if we’re stuck on a difficult problem, it’s better to set the alarm clock a few minutes early so that we have time to lie in bed and ruminate. We do some of our best thinking while we’re still half asleep.

The mathematician Henri Poincaré had his “seminal insight into non-Euclidean geometry…while he was boarding a bus.”

Poincaré insisted that the best way to think about complex problems is to immerse yourself in the problem until you hit an impasse. Then, when it seems that “nothing good has been accomplished,” you should find a way to distract yourself, preferably by going on a “walk or a journey”. The answer will arrive when you least expect it.

And let’s not forget Richard Feynman:

the Nobel Prize winning physicist, preferred the relaxed atmosphere of a topless bar, where he would sip 7UP, “watch the entertainment,” and, if inspiration struck, scribble equations on cocktail napkins.

The good stuff comes along when you’re not forcing it—what Lynda Barry and Donald Barthelme call “not-knowing.”

My “Eureka!” moments always come to me in the shower, which is why I keep a dry-erase marker in the bathroom.

When do y’all get your best ideas?

see it bigger

Just got back from the third Vizthink Austin meetup. Daniel Saltzman of Enspire Learning gave a terrific presentation on visual metaphor. An excellent subject, as one of the most important and helpful bits I’ve learned about drawing and writing is that all marks on paper are metaphors.

Some equations:

• the unknown <– metaphor –> the known = learning
• love ≠ mediocrity

His steps to using visual metaphor in a design setting:

1. Start with the content
2. Find the emotion
3. Consider your audience

Saltzman talked a lot about using metaphors from nature, and so I asked about clichés—whether they were good or bad. His answer impressed me: “when you’re short on time, use clichés.”

(And Kay Ryan popped into my head—”Poets rehabilitate clichés.”)

At the last meeting, I mentioned that visual thinking is nothing new: it’s a forgotten art, something we have to rediscover:

Tonight Saltzman said the same thing: This is not something new, this is a return.

Also: something weird happened while I was drawing—the first thing I drew on my notebook was the awful Austin traffic I had to sit through to get to the meeting…as I drew (roughly) counterclockwise, towards the end, I made a note about giving users the illusion of freedom by allowing them to move through space within a linear narrative (Saltzman was showing us an Enspire training module, but I immediately thought of the LucasArts adventure games of my youth). Anyways, just I drew the word freedom, I realized it was pointing at the traffic:

What’s maddening about traffic? The lack of freedom! What gives the illusion of freedom? Weaving in and out of traffic—moving through space—while still following a linear path!

Behold, the power of mindmapping and visual thinking! The connections otherwise not made!

Other subjects touched on that merit further reading:

• Ensō
• Simonides
• constructivism

I’ve received a few e-mails from young(er) writers in the past couple of months, many of them trying very hard to figure things out and looking for words of advice and encouragement. Because I’m totally unqualified and ill-equipped to deliver them such words, I’m reading The Master: Rainer Maria Rilke and his Letters To A Young Poet.

Rilke was twenty-seven—still a young artist with his best work ahead of him—when he got a letter from a nineteen-year-old military school student named Franz Kappus. Kappus sent Rilke some poems and asked him for advice about becoming a writer. Rilke got lots of letters from aspiring artists, but Kappus’s touched him: Rilke had spent the worst five years of his young life forced by his parents into the same military school. And so o began a ten-letter correspondence lasting from 1902–1908.

The letters aren’t really letters, they’re diaries. Rilke saw himself in Kappus, and so they’re written from Rilke to Rilke—both to his past and his present. They begin with a description of Rilke’s current setting (various cities across Europe) and continue into the subject of how to live and how to create. Each is a map of where he’s been and where he needs to go.

There’s so much to take away from the ten letters, but here’s a short-list of questions a young writer might ask, with Rilke’s responses.

Is my stuff any good? Am I good enough to really make it as writer?

[You're asking the wrong questions!] There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple “I must,” then build your life in accordance with this necessity….

…But after this descent into yourself and into your solitude, perhaps you will have to renounce becoming a poet (if, as I have said, one feels one could live without writing, then one shouldn’t write at all). Nevertheless, even then, this self-searching that I as of you will not have been for nothing. Your life will still find its own paths from there, and that they may be good, rich, and wide is what I wish for you, more than I can say.

What should I write about?

Write about what your everyday life offers you; describe your sorrows and desires, the thoughts that pass through your mind and your belief in some kind of beauty - describe all these with heartfelt, silent, humble sincerity and, when you express yourself, use the Things around you, the images from your dreams, and the objects that you remember. If your everyday life seems poor, don’t blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is not poverty and no poor, indifferent place. And even if you found yourself in some prison, whose walls let in none of the world’s sounds - wouldn’t you still have your childhood, that jewel beyond all price, that treasure house of memories?

Can you send me some freebies?

…as to my own books, I wish I could send you any of them that might give you pleasure. But I am very poor, and my books, as soon as they are published, no longer belong to me. I can’t even afford them myself - and, as I would so often like to, give them to those who would be kind to them.

What about chicks?

For one human being to love another human being: that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been entrusted to us, the ultimate task, the final test and proof, the work for which all other work is merely preparation. That is why young people, who are beginners in everything, are not yet capable of love: it is something they must learn.

Okay, I must write—but how am I supposed to feed myself?

[....]

That’s a subject Rilke doesn’t really touch on. For a good 20th century update, I’d point to Hugh MacLeod’s “How To Be Creative.”

If you haven’t yet read Letters To A Young Poet, I highly recommend doing so. Get the the Stephen Mitchell translation.

Pictures and words in space:

• Comics = pictures and words diagrammed in space
• Blackout poems = words in space
• Mind maps = pictures and words diagrammed in space

What I’m trying to do when I make a mind map: I’m trying to construct a 2-D memory palace on paper. By making notes in a non-linear manner, by arranging images and words in space, I can SEE connections that would otherwise be impossible with just words written in sequence.

I use mind-maps for several things:

1) Brainstorming

Generating ideas, rather than just preserving them.

2) Taking notes on books

(Oddly, I have only attempted non-fiction, never fiction. Not entirely sure why this is.)

3) Taking notes on documentaries

4) Recording meetings and events

5) Remembering conversations

See all of my mind maps.

Note: this post was a response to the Vizthink prompt, “In what unique way do you use Mind Maps?“

Adapted from John Medina’s cool book, Brain Rules:

1. EXERCISE boosts brain power.

Moving around gets more blood and oxygen pumping to the brain, which gives you more ideas. (See Haruki Murakami’s essay on writing and running in the New Yorker.)

4. We don’t pay ATTENTION to boring things.

Elmore Leonard says, “Leave out the parts readers tend to skip.” Kurt Vonnegut called it “being a good date.”

7. SLEEP well, think well.

Get plenty of shut eye, and figure out when you’re most creative: it’s probably either early in the morning or late at night. NO ONE is creative during the mid-afternoon, and that’s why some of the greatest thinkers of all time were notorious for 3PM naps. (Salvador Dali napped with a spoon.) Hit a snag? Sleep on it: our brain is constantly working things out in our sleep. Keep a dream journal.

9. Stimulate more of THE SENSES.

Pictures and words belong together. Write by hand with a pen or paintbrush. Cut words out of magazines. Use a Sharpie and a newspaper….

10. VISION trumps all the other senses.

Words are seen, and stories are images.

12. We are powerful and natural EXPLORERS.

Even at an old age, our brain is still malleable. We can still learn new things and improve. It ain’t over ’til it’s over.

Links:

• Brain rules for PowerPoint & Keynote presenters
• Visit the Brain Rules Website
• Buy the book on Amazon

While re-reading Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s wonderful book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, I came across this passage on working crossword puzzles. I think he could just as well be talking about making blackout poems:

There is much to be said in favor of this popular pastime, which in its best form resembles the ancient riddle contests. It is inexpensive and portable, its challenges can be finely graduated so that both novices and experts can enjoy it, and its solution produces a sense of pleasing order that gives one a satisfying feeling of accomplishment. It provides opportunities to experience a mild state of flow to many people who are stranded in airport lounges, who travel on commuter trains, or who are simply whiling away Sunday mornings.

Csikszentmihalyi then goes on to talk explicitly about poetry and writing:

What’s important is to find at least a line, or a verse, that starts to sing. Sometimes even one word is enough to open a window on a new view of the world, to start the mind on an inner journey….

And the joys of being an amateur (why leave it to professionals?):

Not so long ago, it was acceptable to be an amateur poet….Nowadays if one does not make some money (however pitifully little) out of writing, it’s considered to be a waste of time. It is taken as downright shameful for a man past twenty to indulge in versification unless he receives a check to show for it.

Read more about flow.

UPDATE (6/30/08): Weird timing: a reader from Tacoma, Washington messaged me and said her local newspaper, The News Tribune, is running a blackout poems contest. (I’ve archived the full text in the comments.)

How to blog teach, write, make art:

1. Wonder at something.
2. Invite others to wonder with you.

Yes or no?

It seems to me that the language of poetry is very dependant on setting up images and juxtaposing them against each other. A poet will create an image in the first two lines of his poem and then he will create another in the next two lines, and so on. I do find this jumping from image to image in poetry to be a very interesting, comic-like element. Many poems are almost like word comics.—The cartoonist Seth on poetry and comics

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this recently, but in the beginning, I called my poems “Newspaper Blackout Comics.” The first batch I ever did explicitly juxtaposed image and text:

Other examples: here and here.

My old creative writing teacher used to tell me that a poet “thinks in images” and a fiction writer thinks in terms of “character and plot.” I’m not sure it’s that cut and dry, but I think it sheds a lot of light on why I find traditional prose fiction so incredibly hard, and poetry and comics so incredibly fun.

And speaking of poetry and comics, one of the main characters in Chris Harding’s excellent WE THE ROBOTS webcomic has started a poetry website:

So hilarious, and so true. Be sure to visit his site for even more.

And speaking of mean comments, here’s a new phenomenon for me: mean-spirited spam.

As if it wasn’t hard enough for me to get up in the morning!