Keith Jennings | Keitharsis

The Tension

Everything exists in tension.

Our personalities are a mix of tensions: introversion vs. extroversion, spontaneity vs. order, emotion vs. reason, etc.

Ethics is built on tensions: truth vs. loyalty, short-term vs. long-term, individual vs. community, justice vs. mercy.

Even taking a sip of that coffee beside you requires tension: the upward force you create must overcome the tension of gravity plus the weight of the object, right?

Tension is simply the energy (positive AND negative) created by two or more objects pushing and pulling against each other.

If you were to go back and read every essay on this blog, you would discover that the vast majority of my essays are built on tensions.  And the most interesting tensions are “right vs. right,” rather than “right vs. wrong”.

Here's a sampling:

• Should we seek depth or diversity in our creative work?
• Should our lives be balanced or harmonized?
• Is creativity received externally or self-generated internally?
• Are our lives paths or portfolios?
• Should we embrace mystery or demystify it?

Tensions cannot be resolved.  They are perpetual.  They exist because of the co-existence of opposing forces.

At best, we can find relief from tensions, but not release.

I believe our creative lives serve as cathartic agents for the tensions in our everyday lives.  (Get the name of this blog now?)

So my hope is to challenge the way you view all the tensions you are experiencing as you do your creative work.  And I hope you can channel them into groundbreaking work. 

One of the most prevalent tensions inherent in my work as a writer is the tension of process vs. product.

My desire to produce great work (i.e. products) makes me want to spend too much time and energy within my processes: researching, re-writing, proofing, editing, etc.

At the same time, I can't call myself a writer without a portfolio of published work, right?

To acquiesce to product would result in a surplus of crappy, drafty products due to unrefined, rigid processes.

And to acquiesce to process would result in a spin-cycle of projects that get tweaked to death and never actually produced.

So what to do?

The fact is there is no right or best answer.  I need both my processes and my products as a writer.  It’s simply a tension I must recognize, accept and manage.

If you are trying to rid your creative life of tension, please stop.

The tension is your energy source.  Your secret sauce.

Not just the tensions surrounding you as you do your work.  But the tensions your work hopefully creates in the world.

And great work creates tension.  Debate.  Study.

So please take note of the tensions in your life.  Accept them and try to figure out how to use them to your advantage.

After all, no tension…no attention.

It’s that simple.  And hard.

This week’s essays focused on “the circumstances” and “the tension” that surround our creative work.

Our natural tendency is to see these as threats to our creativity.

But I don't believe they are.

I believe they are root ingredients in our creativity.

(Photo by Scott Anderson on Flickr. Used under Creative Commons.)

Keitharsis is a blog about creativity, roots and the portfolio life.  It is written for writers and artists from all walks of life.  Please tell you friends about this blog.  Also, save time and join others who receive these posts via email, click here.

Word-in-a-Word Wednesday: "Generation"

Today's word is "generation".

The word within it is "era" - genERAtion.

Does a generation define an era? 

Or does an era define a generation?

If this is the first time you are reading a "Word-in-a-Word Wednesday" post, click here to learn how it works.

Keitharsis is a blog on creativity, roots and the portfolio life.  It is written for creative writers and artists.  New essays are published each Tuesday and Thursday.  Creative exercises and challenges are offered on Wednesdays.

The Circumstances

"It's not how well you are able to make a movie.  It's how well you are able to make a movie under the circumstances."  George Lucas

 

Eighteen years ago, I spent my evenings sitting on the roof of an old Civil War-era mansion in the Garden District of New Orleans.  I was a 23-year-old with a head full of poetry and ideas and images and stories.

I would sit for hours listening to the sounds of the night. The muffled small talk of strangers.  The wind in the trees.  Passing cars.  The patter of rain.  Occassional gunfire.

And I would write.

Not a week passed that I didn't walk or drive past the house in which F. Scott Fitzgerald once lived.

Not a week passed that I didn't walk up to the courtyard gate and look at the house once occupied by George Washington Cable.  A house that Mark Twain visited.

Not a week passed that I didn't stalk Ellis Marsalis and the other local jazz gods playing clubs, hotel lobbies and funeral parlors, among other nooks & crannies.

If I could go back in time and have a conversation with myself, that time in New Orleans would be my moment of insertion.

It was a defining period for me.  It's where I honestly felt that I was put on this earth to be a writer and poet.

By the end of that year, I would put that dream on a shelf and not acknowledge it for another three years.  And I would struggle for an additional ten years after that trying to rediscover my voice...the voice I had found in New Orleans.

Know what I would tell myself?

I would say, "Befriend the circumstances."

Somehow find comfort in the discomfort.

Because you will never have enough time.

You will never have enough knowledge.

You will never have enough energy.

You will never have enough skill.

You will never have enough courage.

You will never feel ready.

And you will never have enough support to write the perfect book.  Or article.  Or essay.  Or poem.  Or song.

It's not how well you are able to write something.  It's how well you are able to write something under the circumstances.

That, I think, is what separates professional writers and artists from aspiring ones.

And, as I'm certain you have discovered, there are always circumstances.

Right?

 (Photo by Ben Bitzenhofer on Flickr. Used under Creative Commons license.)

Keitharsis is a blog by a writer for writers, poets and artists.  New essays are published each Tuesday and Thursday.  A new creative challenge is published each Wednesday.  Please tell you friends!

Cross-pollination & Your Creative Work

Do you use cross-pollination techniques in your creative work?

It's an effective way of working from a portfolio-orientation rather than a path-orientation.  Because it allows you to work on multiple projects, rather than focus exclusively on just one.

I work on multiple writing projects throughout the day in a nonlinear way, rather than move from one to the other in a linear fashion.

Plus I don't "batch" my writing by working on pieces with common themes.  I may be working on a thought leadership article on hospital marketing, a poem or two, an essay on the relationship of faith and creativity and a blog post on the same day.

I work like a bumble bee in a patch of clover flowers in the early summer.  Bouncing from one to the other in an intuitive, but random way.

This has had serendipitous effects on my creative writing.

I believe one of the secret sauces in my blog - one of the things that make it stand out - is that I am a poet, not a "blogger".  And I spend a lot of time working with metaphor, figurative language and acrobatic juxtaposition rather than "how-to" pieces.

And the fact that I work on poems and blog posts at the same time influences how I write and what you read here.

This cross-pollination not only occurs in our creative work, but our everyday life as well.

I was watching a PBS documentary on the bioregional history of Appalachia and one of the academians talked about disjunction.  He said the exact same species of tulip poplar exists in Southern China and Appalachia, and no where else in the world.

At the time I was watching this, I was rocking my sleeping daughter, who happens to be from Southern China.  (And I'm a Southern boy.)

The TV show cross-pollinated with my family's reality and gave me the idea of a poem on the tulip poplar and disjunction referencing not just trees, but families.

However, as I was working on that poem, it cross-pollinated with an idea I had sketched as a blog post on the benefits of working on several projects at the same time.  And, right now, you are reading the results of that!

So how are you allowing for serendipity in your creative work?

Do you tend to work on one thing at a time?  Or do you tend to float between multiple projects throughout the day?

There's no "right" way, of course.  But I hope this cross-pollinates with some ideas you're already working on and yields creative gold for you.

(photo by Dan Pearce on Flickr)

Keitharsis is a blog about creativity, roots & the portfolio life.  It is written primarily for writers and artists.  New essays are published each Tuesday and Thursday.  Creative exercises are offered each Wednesday.

Word-in-a-Word Wednesday: "Request"

If you are a regular reader of Keitharsis, you are used to the long-standing Tuesday/Thursday pace.

Well it's time to change things up.  Sort of.

In addition to my regular Tuesday/Thursday essays on creativity, roots and the portfolio life, I'd like to introduce a series on Wednesdays for those of you interested in PRACTICING creative thinking.

Yep, practicing.

It's the way to Carnegie Hall, right?

I'm calling this new series, "Word-in-a-Word Wednesday".

Here's how it works.

I will introduce a word, then point out a word within it.

Your challenge is to take each word in a word and figure out a creative way the two words connect.

For example, the word "art" is in the word "earth": eARTh.

If this were the Wednesday word, I would ask you questions about how art relates to the earth, for example.

You can either respond in the comments on this blog, on my Facebook page for creative writers & artists, in your head, on your blog or where and how you like.

Make sense?

Today's word is "request".

The word "quest" is in the word request:  reQUEST

Are requests from others quests?

Can they be?

How has someone's request become a quest in your life?

(I hope you enjoy this!  I hope it challenges you.  And, don't worry, Word-in-a-Word Wednesday posts going forward will be VERY short!)