creative voice

My creative brain awakens at the most inopportune times. It’s asleep when I need it to be awake and awake when I need it to be asleep, so I can sleep. It’s like a newborn baby.

Recently it went to sleep for a while and I was struggling with the sequel to ‘A Story to Tell’ but then, this week, it woke up, which would have been more exciting if it had happened during the day, when the children were otherwise occupied, but no, it woke up at midnight and nudged me at 1 a.m. and then again at 9:20 a.m., when the children were actually still asleep, but needed to be awake.Ó’

On Sunday afternoon, my husband was napping, my son and daughter were up in my son’s room and I was alone with time to write. Do you think anything would come to my mind for the new book then? Of course not! Because it wasn’t 1 a.m. and I wasn’t trying to sleep. I don’t know if any of you out there are writers, (well, I know many of you are at least bloggers, so you are) but writers know we can’t hush the Creative Brain at any point it awakens either. Much like the unwritten rule, “Never move a sleeping cat. Even if you can’t feel your legs anymore.” is the rule, “Never hush the muse once she begins to speak or she will NEVER speak to you again!”

I can’t move when the muse is speaking. I must simply write, even if my eyes are falling closed with exhaustion because if I move, the muse will fly away and Blanche won’t tell me the rest of her story and she’ll never return and I’ll never finish the book and I’ll be a failure! A failure, I tell you!

That’s probably not true, but my brain thinks it will happen that way because I have a vivid imagination. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be able to write fiction, right?

So how about you? Whether you’re writing blog posts, fiction or non-fiction or even technical manuals, when does your Creative Brain wake up? Is it the worst time possible like me? Let me know in the comments!

Lisa R. Howeler is a writer and photographer from the “boondocks” who writes a little bit about a lot of things on her blog Boondock Ramblings. She’s published a fiction novel ‘A Story to Tell’ on Kindle and also provides stock images for bloggers and others at Alamy.com and Lightstock.com.

I fell into one of those Youtube spirals the other night (like one does) and I caught an interview from last year with Ellen and Bradley Cooper. Ellen asks Bradley if he is on social media at all, although she admits she already knows he isn’t. When he says “No, I’m not.” she feigns shock and says “Oh my gosh. What do you even do with yourself?”

He laughs, shrugs and mumbles something about being able to waste a lot of time on the internet without social media. But really, a better answer, since he was there to talk about a movie he was filming, would have been, “I create.”

“A Star is Born” comes out this week and Bradley both stars in it and directed it. If he had been sitting around wasting his life on social media, getting distracted by the drama and ridiculousness that can be found on it, he might never have made the movie or made the music for it along with Lady Gaga and Luke Nelson.

Lady-Gaga-and-Bradley-Cooper-in-A-Star-is-Born-2018-670x335

Imagine all the books and paintings and songs we would never have heard if social media had existed earlier than it had. Yes, there are good things about social media for a creative. We can share our creations and our art to a wider audience and immediately. But what we lose in that immediate interaction is taking the time to really develop and plan our craft before we throw it to the world. What we lose is the time to actually create because we are distracted by looking at either the work of others or the drama of others.

We are squelching our inner voice because we can’t hear it over the shouts and creations of others. We are comparing and contrasting and then going back to our creative work, thinking we can’t create as well as the others we’ve seen. Or maybe we think can do the same, but end up disappointing because we never give ourselves time to really develop the skills we need to create, as well as, or better than, those we admire.

Bradley Cooper worked with a voice coach, musicians and others for almost a year and a half,l before creating what many are calling a masterpiece. He had a vision and he put the work in to complete and present that vision.

If he had wasted his time on the distraction that comes with social media, he may have never reached his goal of creating something he is extremely proud of.

Though I don’t know what Bradley Cooper’s personal reasons for not being on social media are I do think abstaining from it strengthens his creative voice. It’s something other creative people, or anyone with a goal they want to reach, should try as well.