Why Being Creative Counts

Imagine a childhood without cartoons, picture books, music. A world without books, paintings, sculpture, dance. A life without imagination.

My son is a fan of zombie apocalypse stories. We are binge watching a very popular tv show about zombies. While watching this bleak, gray world the characters are living in, trying to survive the next attack, someone starts to sing. Her song brings hope, beauty and entertainment to the situation. People have something else to think about than destroying the brains of zombies before they eat you.

She changed every person in the room with her song.

Art can change the world. It can inspire. It can bring people together. It can start a conversation. It can make someone happy.

There are many ways to be creative. You can paint a picture, write a song, create a website, host a YouTube channel. The choice is yours, and what you feel comfortable with doing to share your vision, your point of view, your story, your humor.

It might not look good at first. You might be embarrassed with what you produce. There is a reason for this. Ira Glass would say it is about taste, and it is a reason to keep trying until your taste meets what you are creating.  

With time and practice, your work will improve, and grow, and change. Malcolm Gladwell said it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert. Be an expert. Keep creating. Without new ideas, the world remains the same. Without song, the zombie apocalypse is always gray and hope slips away. 

Book Review: Go Set A Watchman

Jean Louise (Scout) is all grown up and contemplating marriage in the onset of Harper Lee's subsequent novel to "To Kill a Mockingbird." This book does not sound interesting to children, unless they grew up reading TKAM and want to read more from Lee.

Jean Louise has been living in New York and returns to Maycomb and her aging father, Atticus Finch. She is disheartened to see how things have changed with her father and her home town. Set in Alabama in 1955, Scout is seeing the changes in the world reflected in her beloved home town.

The story plods along to a long winded conclusion. The best parts are the flashbacks that let the reader catch up with what has happened in the last 10-15 years. Jean Louise's relationship with Henry is sweet, but there is a distance that may be intentional as Jean Louise is comfortable with the idea of being alone. Or maybe the distance is because he is new to the reader, but an old friend to Jean Louise. The long simmering romance between the two is revealed in playful memories.

The more important relationship is between Jean Louise and her father, the much admired Atticus Finch.  Her disappointment in what she learns of him is palpable. Fans of Lee's iconic novel may share that sentiment.

What We Can Learn from the Pope's Visit

I am ridiculously excited about the pope visiting the US, almost to the point of Royal baby watching days of yore. I don't live in an area Pope Francis will visit, and while I am a lifelong Catholic, I don't agree with half the stuff he says.

Love him, hate him, or feel indifferent about him, he is kind of like a superstar. Everyone knows who he is. If they can't recognize him as a man, they can certainly recognize him by how he dresses. He is the leader of the oldest church (or so I am told by my priest). And, Pope Francis is cool.

He reminds me of Pope John Paul II. He was instrumental in bringing change to the Catholic church with the Vatican II, but he also brought something else....public interest. Like Pope Francis, Pope John Paul II had an air to him, a charisma, that people liked. It made people like the church.

The Catholic church has been losing numbers in droves as new generations lose faith in organized religion and scandal marks the church. Pope Francis breathes new life into the church. Nothing major has changed (there still aren't women priests and that contraception thing continues to be ignored by most of the people attending mass), but the perception has. Pope Francis is likable, and the twitter hashtags and emojis make him feel current.

Both Pope John Paul II and Pope Francis prove that it isn't so much the message you bring, but the feeling people have with your presence/message. If you bring a feeling of hope, you may be elected president. If you bring a feeling of love and liberation from rigid practices and evil secrets of the past, people may like you as a pope.

I hope he enjoys his stay in the US. I will be following on Twitter. 

Book Review: To Kill a Mockingbird

More than 50 years after it was first published, "To Kill a Mockingbird" is getting a lot of interest with the release of a new book by author Harper Lee.  This interest is only a reminder that this classic novel is as relevant today as the day it was published with its warmth and delicate handling of racial inequality.  This one is a must read.

The story follows Scout Finch going to school for the first time in Maycolm, Alabama during the Great Depression. This moment in history is captured in perfect detail in the classroom with children with no shoes, no lunches and no baths. Scout and her brother, Jem, become fascinated with a spooky house in the neighborhood and "Boo" Radley, who supposedly has lived inside for years with no one seeing him. Their fascination turns into a friendship of sorts as Jem loses his pants sneaking around the Radley place, only to find them mended on the fence when he comes back for them later and the pair find treasures tucked inside a tree outside the Radley place.

Their father, Atticus Finch is a lawyer who defends a black man accused of rape. There isn't much hope for his client in the atmosphere of time and place, although Atticus provides some convincing testimony of his innocence. The very act of defending Tom Robinson brings repercussions for the Robinson family as well as the Finches.

"To Kill a Mockingbird" has been so successful, winning a Pulitzer Prize and topping the best seller list for many reasons. It is very readable, with relevant topics that are made palpable to children through a very relatable and lovable Scout.

Why Stars Matter

I spent much of August on a lounge chair at midnight, staring at the sky. News reports promised the Perseids meteor shower, which peaked during a new moon phase, would be more visible and more amazing than ever.

Well, they weren't. I saw a meteor or two, but then there were several cloudy nights in a row where I couldn't see a single star. Then I gave up.

Still, it was the best writing time I had in awhile. Perhaps it was the fresh air, perhaps it was being alone with my thoughts staring at nothing for a chunk of time. It reminded me that as important as it is to get the butt in the chair to do the work, it is equally important to stare into space with the promise of seeing something incredible to fuel the brain and get creativity in motion.

The Family Vacation

It has been a few years since we took our family of three sons (ages 16, 13 and 8) on vacation. It was time to brave the open road again. It is expensive to fly five people anywhere, so we packed up the family car for an old fashioned road trip.

Riding in a car with a week's worth of luggage and five people for dozens of hours doesn't sound fun. We were in denial that we would actually do this until the morning we left. We didn't leave until the afternoon to give us time to pack our bags and book some hotels at the last minute.

Traffic was terrible. Maybe it always is, or maybe it is because getting on the road in the afternoon makes it more likely to hit rush hour. The weather was hot and humid, making us wonder why we left the north.

But something happened along the way. As miserable as the trip was at times, we were doing it together, which was the point. All those endless hours in the car led us to create playlists (I didn't even know my car could DO that!) Cramped hotel quarters informed us our oldest son still suffers night terrors. Hokey touristy things led to the greatest jokes.

Sometimes it wasn't so miserable. Sometimes it was great. We were together for that, too.

The family vacation, with its frequent bathroom breaks and questionable food, was a bonding experience. It was us against the elements of long hours in the car without a radio station, traffic, tourists, summer heat on concrete, fast food. We made it out alive, and we wouldn't want to do it with anyone else.

Where Do Writers Get Their Ideas

Where I get my ideas is the second most common question I get as a writer. The most common, curiously, is, "How many pages is your book?" 

I thought I would poll other, more famous authors, who have surely heard this question one million times. 

Stephen King (from Stephenking.com)

I get my ideas from everywhere. But what all of my ideas boil down to is seeing maybe one thing, but in a lot of cases, it's seeing two things and having them come together in some new and interesting way, and then adding the question, "What if?" "What if" is always the key question. 

JK Rowling (from jkrowling.com)

“It was 1990. My then boyfriend and I had decided to move up to Manchester together. After a weekend's flat-hunting, I was travelling back to London on my own on a crowded train, and the idea for Harry Potter simply fell into my head.

I had been writing almost continuously since the age of six but I had never been so excited about an idea before. To my immense frustration, I didn't have a pen that worked, and I was too shy to ask anybody if I could borrow one…

I did not have a functioning pen with me, but I do think that this was probably a good thing. I simply sat and thought, for four (delayed train) hours, while all the details bubbled up in my brain, and this scrawny, black-haired, bespectacled boy who didn't know he was a wizard became more and more real to me.

Perhaps, if I had slowed down the ideas to capture them on paper, I might have stifled some of them (although sometimes I do wonder, idly, how much of what I imagined on that journey I had forgotten by the time I actually got my hands on a pen). I began to write 'Philosopher's Stone' that very evening, although those first few pages bear no resemblance to anything in the finished book.”

Jerry Spinelli (from jerryspinelli.com). 

Jerry gets his ideas from everyday life, memories, his imagination.

Linda Sue Park, (from lspark.com)

From the idea store, of course! 

Just kidding. I get ideas from reading books and articles, listening to people talk, watching TV and movies; from things I see and hear; from sitting around daydreaming. Ideas are everywhere: important thing is to find the ones that interest you. 

What Linda Sue Park does not say is her husband is a journalist. She got her idea for "A Long Walk To Water" from a young man her husband introduced her to. 

By now you are getting a theme. Writers do not have any secrets about where the ideas come from. They come from observations of everyday life, people, experiences. You don’t have to live an extraordinary life to write a great story. You just have to use your imagination and ask yourself, "What if?"