Author: carin

good news for the creative genius who doesn’t need to eat

~ carin ~ 2 Comments

“How, specifically, does motivation affect creativity—both the generation and the editing of ideas? It matters where the drive comes from. All driven writers focus on their work. But people driven by intrinsic motivations such as curiosity and enjoyment have a relationship to the product of their work different from those moved by extrinsic motivations including praise, money, and a constantly varying world of punishments. Someone who is fascinated by language attends to details and to the overall texture of a writing project more than she will if she is writing simply to satisfy the public. While strong intrinsic motivation increases creativity, surprisingly, adding extrinsic motivations—even positive ones—can actually decrease creativity. If that is true, paying a writer may paradoxically make him writes less well. Reward may encourage the writer to stop work as soon as he or she has completed the minimal amount necessary for the reward, resulting in what the economist Herbert Simon calls satisficing. Extrinsic motivation may also have a negative effect on creativity by distracting the subject’s attention from the task to thoughts of reward or punishment.” —from The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer’s Block, and the Creative Brain, by Alice W. Flaherty (Houghton Mifflin, 2004)

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flying mammals on my mind

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“Does his first venture into prose herald a change of direction in his life? Is he about to renounce poetry? He is not sure. But if he is going to write prose then he may have to go the whole hog and become a Jamesian. Henry James shows one how to rise above mere nationality. In fact, it is not always clear where a piece by James is set, in London, or Paris or New York, so supremely above the mechanics of daily life is James. People in James do not have to pay the rent; they certainly do not have to hold down jobs; all they are required to do is to have super-subtle conversations whose effect is to bring about tiny shifts of power, shifts so minute as to be invisible to all but the practised eye. When enough such shifts have taken place, the balance of power between the personages of the story is (Voila!) revealed to have suddenly and irreversibly changed. And that is that: the story has fulfilled its charge and can be brought to an end.

“He sets himself exercises in the style of James. But the Jamesian manner proves less easy to master than he had thought. Getting the characters he dreams up to have super-subtle conversations is like trying to make mammals fly. For a moment or two, flapping their arms, they support themselves in thin air. Then they plunge.”

 —From Youth, by J.M. Coetzee

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how i found summer at minus fourteen without leaving town and how you can too

~ carin ~ 2 Comments

1.  Open a box of Jello.

2.  Wet index (or other) finger.

3.  Stick finger into Jello powder.

4.  Stick finger into mouth.

5.  Presto. Instant Lik-M-Aid—and just like that I’m back to pre celsius temps—something in the low 80’s with a gentle breeze—decked out in baggy yellow shorts and a striped tank top, a bandaid on my knee, another on my elbow, reading Richie Rich on the porch or riding my sister’s green two-wheeler hand-me-down that was so big I had to choose: pedal or sit. Impossible to do both at the same time.

(Incidentally, I notice it’s now called Fun Dip and comes with a dipping stick, which is depressing because you know this change occurred to avoid having children stick germy fingers into their mouths—to which I say how are they supposed to develop immune systems if they aren’t occasionally putting fingers into their mouths?? Especially during summer—the universal Lik-M-Aid season—when the more multi-coloured your index (or other) fingers are, the healthier you will grow!)

6.  Take your fingers out of the Jello powder—you’re a grown up, for heaven’s sake! It’s winter. Get over it. Boil water. Make Jello. Eat it in the bathtub.

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new favourite

~ carin ~ 2 Comments

I love book shopping for the very young—it gives me a reason (not that I need one but it helps) to wander about the picture book aisles at length where I inevitably find something to add to my own collection. My latest discovery being Debra Frasier’s On the Day You Were Born.

Beautifully illustrated (by Frasier) in bold earthy colours and simple lines. The text is written as a poem of welcome and tells what the various elements of nature—wind, trees, tide, moon, stars, sun—were doing to prepare for ‘your’ arrival on the planet. (The trees, for instance “…collected the Sun’s light in their leaves, where, in silent mystery, they made oxygen for you to breathe…”)

Frasier is new to me, so I looked her up and found that ‘connection to nature’ is a theme close to her heart.  I’ve already called my bookseller with a list of titles just for me—as well as gifts for friends and family, both young and older.

“On the event of your birth
word of your coming
passed from animal to animal.

The reindeer told the Arctic terns,
who told the humpback whales,
who told the Pacific salmon,
who told the monarch butterflies,
who told the green turtles,
who told the European eel,
who told the busy garden warblers,

and the marvelous news migrated worldwide.

While you waited in darkness,
tiny knees curled to chin,
the Earth and her creatures
with the Sun and the Moon
all moved in their places,
each ready to greet you
the very first moment
of the very first day you arrived….”

—From On the Day You Were Born, by Debra Frasier.

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ways of spreading holiday cheer: #1

~ carin ~ 1 Comment

Find a lonely tree that needs some love.

Add baubles.

—Voila!

When I saw two very merry women giggling in their sneakers, throwing tinsel onto this tree—all rosy cheeks and grey hair (god bless femmes d’un certain age)—I just had to stop, didn’t I.  They looked a little tense as I walked over, then one says Oh, man, for a minute there we thought you were the cops. I considered pointing out that I drive a toast coloured Toyota, but they’re already back to laughing and when I ask why they’re decorating the tree, they say for fun.

Of course!

Makes sense to me.

Although popcorn or cranberry garlands are preferable to tinsel. Better for wildlife.
And don’t forget to clean up after the hols!

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this is not a review: stunt, by claudia dey

~ carin ~ 8 Comments

I don’t have a lot of guilt about giving up on a book that hasn’t got me riveted by, say, page 100. But that still doesn’t make it easy. Before crying Uncle I tend first to do a kind of dithery dance: close the covers, open them a few hours later, close them, consider another book, open its covers, then go back to the original, skim a few chapters.

And so on for a day or two.

By which time I could have read the bloody thing.

Much easier of course is a book so outright awful (or just really not my cup of tea at that moment) that it inspires me to slam it shut and move on without the hint of a dither. It happens but it’s rare.

Even rarer is a book I consider giving up on but don’t, and then end up not only glad I didn’t pull the plug, but thrilled that I didn’t. Claudia Dey’s Stunt is such a book.

It’s narrated by a young girl searching for her runaway father. The setting is Toronto: the islands, Parkdale, ravines. Much of her journey is internal, much bopping back and forth in time, and peopled with characters so quirky I sometimes couldn’t distinguish between what she’s living and what she imagines. Which is the whole lovely point of course.

Having said that, it felt long in places. Too much of a good thing is still too much and by page 100 I was saying: enough; it’s all beautiful poetic writing that circles and circles but I keep losing track of the story; is there a story??  But when I tried to stop, I couldn’t. That hypnotic circling poetry kept prancing round my head and so I continued and by the time I finished I wanted to start all over again. And I will.

Not for the story—but for the language.

And for the place Dey’s word magic ultimately takes both us and the narrator—back to ourselves with sharpened senses—the way senses can only be sharpened after a particularly breathtaking ride.

Language always wins.

“I wake to you standing above me, grinning. You should have bird feathers between your teeth. A thermos of coffee and a bag of worms in your hands. Apples in your suit pockets making you the many-breasted Artemis, goddess of the beasts. Boots grinding the carpeted floor, you are flinging sparks. Secret. And suddenly we are on your bicycle and we are, with your fist in the air, heading southeast to fish and to make fire!,our house and the life that we stage within it shrinking behind us to a dot on a map—instantly, the Old World. How far will we go? The Scarborough Bluffs? The Orient? And will we ever go back? Or should I start to memorize my mother’s face now? My sister’s? Every night I ask myself this question, and every night we return home, smelling like fire.”  —From Stunt, by Claudia Dey, Coach House Books, 2008
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