Thursday, July 12, 2012

100 days of summer: day 8, or: this curious thing called creativity



the 100 Days of Summer project started a week ago. the task: to be creative daily for 100 days and blog ones work to share and inspire each other.

i first joined the 100 Days last year, some days late, with a photo blog. this year, i am picking up the photo blog again, with a focus on revisiting photos i took in other places, and have a second look at them. the first place i revisited was Vienna - and without planning to, i also added some lines: de/light (Vienna, day 1).  a string of mirror images followed: Lanzarote, Bodensee, Paris, Munich. and again, with each photo, there are some notes on the moment of being there, in form of a poem.

all days are online here: p art ici patio n

so far, i picked and prepared the photo for the next entry in the evening, and added the lines while blogging it in the morning. the odd thing is that i havn't accomplished much creative writing in the previous weeks, neither fiction nor non-fiction. that's why i went for a photo blog again. just to find that it now creates a space for poetry. and also, made me finally wrap up the zen book review that lingered for a week. a (kind of drastic but also true) line from NaNoWriMo comes to mind: "Put a gun to my head and words come out." or like Susan Gibb put it today after writing tomorrow's story already: "Who the hell put a qurter in me?" only that the task wasn't even listed in word count, only in an act of daily creation.

such a curious thing it is, creativity.

2 comments:

practice said...

yes, just when you think the creativity spark has gone out, someone walks past, a rush of air to the embers, and off you go again, rekindling.
nice musings :)

Dorothee said...

(a brief conversation on this theme continued in facebook and in a mail, thought i add the comments here to have it all in one place):

"Somehow it works, doesn't it? That sudden kickstart that spills everything out. I know after writing a story every day all of last year, I certainly didn't think I had any more in me." - Susan Gibb

"yes, somehow it works. it's probably a combination of kickstart and group dynamic. like when running a marathon or such." - Dorothee

"that is an interesting essay about creativity. it is a magical thing, which can be influenced but is beyond control, I feel. and yes, 100 days has been good for provoking it, just by giving it some thought and effort every day to come up with something." - Steve Wing