What Lack I Yet...Creatively?

Aerial view of Mt. Rainier at sunset. Photo: rabid83

Two friends and I once climbed halfway up Mt. Rainier in a whiteout. It was a pretty nerve-racking experience as you can probably imagine. We wanted to do a route called the Fuhrer Finger and, to get to it, we had to cross the Nisqually Glacier. The visibility was only around ten feet, and with every step I thought I was going to plunge into a gaping crevasse. I was roped to my usual partner in crime, Gary Davis, and another good friend, Kent Riplinger, so I probably wouldn’t have died if I fell in a crevasse, but it was still scary.

I used a trekking pole to feel my way across the glacier the way a blind person uses a cane. I plodded along poking at the snow ahead of me trying to feel if it broke through into nothingness. At one point, I nearly wet myself when I blindly walked off a small snow drift. I only fell a few feet, but for a split second I thought I was about to plunge into an icy abyss. Getting to our camp that day was a long, steep, journey that I thought would never end.

Thankfully, this never happened. Photo: Matt Lemke

In an October 2015 L.D.S. General Conference talk called “What Lack I Yet?”, Elder Larry R. Lawrence compared discipleship to a long, steep journey. He said, “The journey of discipleship is not an easy one. It has been called a ‘course of steady improvement.’ As we travel along that strait and narrow path, the Spirit continually challenges us to be better and to climb higher. The Holy Ghost makes an ideal traveling companion. If we are humble and teachable, He will take us by the hand and lead us home.”

I think that our creative journeys are the same. They should be a “course of steady improvement” where we are challenged “to be better and to climb higher.” And the best companion we could have along our creative journeys is also the Holy Ghost.

As my friends and I were climbing Mt. Rainier, we navigated using a map, compass, and an old analog altimeter (GPS was still pretty new back then and only for people who actually had money). I had used a compass and altimeter before, but I’d never had to rely on them so completely. In the whiteout on Rainier, we couldn’t see anything. There were no trails or foot prints to follow. Every few steps I had to make adjustments in our direction based off compass and altimeter readings. These tools were vital to our success and safety.

This sums up our view of the stunning Mt. Rainier that first day. Photo: Teton AT

Just as I was constantly checking my compass and altimeter to be sure I was still on course, we need to be constantly checking with the Spirit to be sure we are heading the right direction in our creative journeys. Elder Lawrence said, “…we need to ask the Lord for directions along the way. We have to ask some difficult questions, like ‘What do I need to change?’ ‘How can I improve?’ ‘What weakness needs strengthening?’”

Elder Lawrence went on to say, “I would like to suggest that each of you participate in a spiritual exercise sometime soon, perhaps even tonight while saying your prayers. Humbly ask the Lord the following question: ‘What is keeping me from progressing?’ In other words: ‘What lack I yet?’ Then wait quietly for a response. If you are sincere, the answer will soon become clear. It will be revelation intended just for you.”

Elder Lawrence’s suggestion works equally well when we sincerely desire guidance in our creative journeys. If we humbly ask, “What is keeping me from progressing creatively?” we will receive specific, personal revelation.

To be totally honest, I was a little frightened to try this. I think it was because I was afraid the answer would be something really difficult or overwhelming. But Elder Lawrence reassures us that “the Holy Ghost doesn’t tell us to improve everything at once. If He did, we would become discouraged and give up. The Spirit works with us at our own speed, one step at a time…” Furthermore, it’s okay if we’re not progressing on our creative journeys as fast as we would like. Elder Lawrence said our Heavenly Father, “…rejoices every time we take a step forward. To Him, our direction is ever more important than our speed.”

With Elder Lawrence’s reassurances in mind, I got up the courage to kneel in prayer and ask, “Heavenly Father, what lack I yet when it comes to my writing and art?” Almost immediately, the Spirit whispered in my thoughts a single word: confidence. I was surprised. This was not the answer I was expecting, and yet it was exactly what I needed to hear. I highly recommend you try this experiment for yourself and see what happens.

On my journey up Mt. Rainier, my friends and I eventually made it across the glacier and up to our camp without mishap. When we woke up the next morning to clear blue skies, I was truly astonished to see that we were exactly where we were supposed to be. By being humble enough to pay close attention to my map, compass, and altimeter and then acting on what they told me, we were able to journey safely and successfully up the mountain through hostile conditions.

The same is true for us on our creative journeys. If we are humble enough to heed Elder Lawrence’s advice and ask, “What lack I yet?” and then act on the promptings we receive, we will be rewarded with individualized guidance and startling successes.

Need to Get Somewhere? Try Walking in Circles.

William Blake's depiction of "Jacob's Ladder"

I once had a professor describe the difference between the way men think and the way women think. She drew a letter “A” on one side of the board and a letter “B” on the other side of the board. She said, “Men are typically linear thinkers. If they want to get from point A to point B, they go in a straight line.” She drew a straight line from the A to the B. Like this:

 “Women,” she said, “are typically nonlinear. If they want to get from point A to point B, they will wander in circles around it before they eventually get there.” She drew a line that started at the A and then wrapped around and around the B slowly spiraling inward. Like this:

My professor was mostly kidding, but it proved to be a moment of realization for me: I had a woman’s brain! Okay, not really. What I meant to say is that this was the first time I realized (A) I was a nonlinear thinker and (B) that was okay. I guess I just assumed up to that point in my life that everyone in the world was supposed to be linear thinkers. The better you were at it, the smarter you were. If you didn’t think this way, well, you either had ADD or you were dumb. It had never occurred to me that there was value in the whirlpool-like way that my brain worked.

The best way I’ve heard nonlinear thinking explained was by Chuck McCumber. He said, “It’s kind of like letting a puppy run wild on a walk up a mountain – anything of interest will be thoroughly investigated (and perhaps peed on) before jumping to the next, possibly non-related subject!”

I love this description for several reasons.

First, I like that he used a puppy and not a dog. A puppy implies playfulness, excitement, and energy. The childlike fascination with the world I feel is so integral to creativity.

Second, the puppy pees on stuff. That’s just funny. Also, I just happen to have the world’s smallest bladder and have to pee all the time!

Third, both the person walking the puppy and the puppy are going to the top of the mountain. The difference is, the person (linear thinker) will stay on the established trail and methodically work his/her way to the top. The puppy (nonlinear thinker), on the other hand, is wandering all over tarnation, and it’s going to see a whole lot more of that mountain. There’s a lot of exploring to do!

And fourth, McCumber’s description highlights the danger of being a nonlinear thinker. Namely: the puppy is going to take a lot longer to get to the top…if he/she ever makes it at all.

Not surprisingly, it turns out a lot of creative people tend to be puppies, or nonlinear thinkers if you prefer. (Someone should do a study to find out if creative people tend to have smaller bladders, too. I’ll bet there’s a correlation there.) Anyway, there’re a lot of people who are a whole lot smarter than me that have written on this topic. Go check them out if you’re interested. What I want to do, is show a few ways I use nonlinear thinking to help me come up with creative solutions when I run into problems.

First, the classic “idea web”. Boring, I know. You’ve already heard of it and already done it a million times. If it works for you, great. That’s probably because you are good at obeying the prime directive of brain storming: Don’t judge.

If idea webs don't work for you, that’s probably because you can’t get that stupid critic inside your head to shut up. He’s always saying things like, “That’s a dumb idea. That will never work!” Or “If you actually write that down, everyone within a ten mile radius will think you are the biggest idiot on the planet.” Or “If you actually write that down and post it on your blog, then everyone on the planet will think you are the biggest idiot on the planet.”

This is why, when you’re making an idea web, you need to kill your inner critic. That’s right, murder him. Don’t worry, he’s a jerk anyway. Plus, he’ll just resurrect himself in about two minutes and you’ll have to kill him all over again. On the bright side, I have noticed that the more times I kill him, the better I get at it, and the longer he stays dead. So, go ahead, murder your inner critic and let the ideas flow.

This is an idea web that I did while brainstorming ideas for this blog post.

Second, get a therapist. Not literally, of course. Although, to be fair, I've never tried talking to a real one and that might work as well, but it's a lot more expensive than my way. Instead, I pretend to write a letter to an imaginary "creativity therapist". In this letter I explain my problem in as much detail as I can. (Preferably, I do this while lying on a chaise longue to get the full effect). There’s just something about articulating your problem in writing that helps you to organize your thoughts and find solutions. Below is an example from my journal when I got stuck while writing my current novel. The three sections are three different days when I had to discuss things with my "therapist".

As you can see, it's not really in the form of a letter.
I just find that's a useful way to think of it.

I like to imagine that my therapist is the ghost of Yoda. He mostly just stares thoughtfully into space while I rant about my writing. Every once in a while he might nod or say, “Hmmm,” in an elusive way, but he otherwise never says a word. He just sits there all translucent like and listens. By the time I’m done going on about my problem for a few pages, I usually have a solution. As soon as I have it, I say, "Thanks, Yoda. Say hi to Obi-Wan for me. See you next time!" and he goes back to doing whatever the ghost of Yoda does when he's not listening to me.

Apparently, Kermit uses my same therapist.
"Easy Being Green, it is Not" by Peter Deseve.

Third, ram the brick wall. Yep, just put the pedal down and drive your car straight at that brick wall. I hate this one for obvious reasons. While it usually works, and I break right through that brick wall, sometimes it doesn’t, and then it really hurts.

Prize winning author Frances Itani said, “Write your way through all of the problems; don't sit around thinking about them.” Sure, okay, that sounds great and all except for the part where I take the chance of throwing several hours, days, or weeks of work in the garbage if it doesn't work out!

The "ram the brick wall" technique takes guts, a berserker mindset, and a lot of faith, but it does work...eventually. The only question is how much carnage we end up leaving in our wake along the way.

Fourth, the Taoist approach. Solve your problem by not trying to solve your problem. I’m probably totally misrepresenting Taoism here, but hopefully you get the idea. Walk away, go for a drive, do the laundry, pet the cat, make a bologna sandwich, most anything except your work. The more tedious the activity, the better. However, things like TV and video games are strictly off limits. We want monotonous activities that allow your mind to wander into a kind of meditative state, not mindless activities that rob us of our thoughts.

Done right, the Taoist approach is sort of like letting your problem soak in the dishwater for a while before trying to scrub it off. When you come back, you might be surprised to find that you have inadvertently come up with a solution. This one is always a gamble for me. It seems to work only about 50% of the time, but, hey, my wife really appreciates all the laundry I get done.

What a great opportunity for creative problem solving!
"Dirty Dishes" by Walter Beach Humphrey

Fifth, the extra-super-flowy chart. This is what happens when your linear self and your nonlinear self try to make a flow chart together and all they do is argue. It ends up being a flow chart that makes no sense. It’s intentionally chaotic, impossible for anyone other than you to follow, and kind of liberating. I stumbled onto this by accident while trying to think linearly. It went something like this:

My linear self said, “If our character is here, then logically the next step is to write a chapter in which he goes there.” So I drew a straight line from A to B.

Then my nonlinear self got kind of argumentative with my linear self and said, “Yeah, but he could also start here, here, or here, and then go there, there, or there.”

Then my linear self said, “Okay, calm down. If that’s the case, then each of those possibilities will lead to their own unique set of consequences like this, this, this, and–”

“Not necessarily,” my nonlinear self interrupted. “What if it led to this, that, or the other instead?" He  got more and more agitated as he went on. "What if it was upside-down, inside out, left-right-left-right-B-A-select-start? A butterfly flapping its wing in Utah causes a hurricane in China. The possibilities are endless! You don’t know!”

This went on for a while until my nonlinear head exploded. As my linear self searched through the debris, I was surprised to find that not only had I found a solution, I’d had a lot of fun doing it. Ever since then, this has become my “go to” technique for finding creative solutions.

This "extra-super-flowy chart" started as an attempt to
brainstorm characteristics of a new protagonist, 
and it ended up helping me to outline the entire plot
for my next novel. 

Sixth, doodle. My linear self is telling me that this is probably a subcategory of the Taoist approach. My nonlinear self is telling him, “Who cares? Why don’t you shut up and go make me a bologna sandwich or something?” I’m not sure why my nonlinear self is always so combative. Anyway, I doodle.

Doodling is another technique I discovered by accident, but it works really well. Better still, it works in combination with all of the other techniques I’ve listed except the “ram the brick wall” approach. I’ll be working on an idea web or an “extra-super-flowy chart” and start to run out of steam. Then, I doodle for a while and, suddenly, I have more ideas. Why? I have no idea, but it’s remarkably consistent in getting me results.

I've been thinking a lot about memory lately since it's a
major theme in my next novel. I started writing my 
thoughts, ran out of ideas, doodled the well/tree thing, 
got more ideas, and started writing again. 
It works almost every time. 

Seventh, think linearly. I know, I know, I don’t like it any better than you do, but sometimes you just need to get to the top of the mountain as fast and efficiently as possible, and leave the poor puppy at home. I don't like to think of him back there locked in the laundry room yipping and crying and pooping on the floor, either, but, the fact is, we need the linear side of us, too. Someone has to sift through the debris after our nonlinear head explodes. Someone has to organize, be logical, and set some limits for the trouble-making nonlinear self. We can brain storm all day long, but eventually we have to make a choice and buckle down. That's where the linear self comes in really handy. Otherwise, we might never get anything done.

For instance, did you notice the way I organized this post into two separate numbered lists? Yep, that was linear thinking for you. My linear self stepped in to put all the ideas into the form of something that was relatively coherent after my nonlinear self got done playing around and making a big mess.  If he hadn't, you would have been left trying to make sense of a doodled on idea-web-extra-super-flowy-chart-therapist-letter combo and nobody wants that...or do they?

A brainstorm I did for my next novel with little bit of everything thrown in! 

Feel free to share any of your techniques for creative problem solving in the comments below.

What a Poop-Eating Dog Can Teach Us About Creativity

As a child, the first real novel I read by myself was Call of the Wild by Jack London. I’m not sure how old I was. Around ten maybe. From that moment on, I wanted to be a writer. Also, I wanted a sled dog. Preferably one that was the size of a VW bug, half wolf, and named “Dagger”. Hey, I was only ten, okay.

I did eventually get a sled dog when I was in my early-twenties. She was a beautiful Alaskan Malamute who I named Kolob. Okay, I admit this name was not much better than Dagger. In my defense, I named her after Kolob Canyon in southern Utah because it’s one of the most beautiful places on the whole planet. I didn’t know at the time that the canyon was named after an important and sacred aspect of the L.D.S. religion. After I found that out, I always felt like I was being sacrilegious every time I yelled at my dog…which was a lot.

You see, the reason Malamutes make such great sled dogs is because they’re stubborn. Very, very, very stubborn. That celebrated tenaciousness that allows these hardy dogs to pull a heavy sled through the arctic, translates to complete and utter pigheadedness in normal, everyday life. That dog was virtually untrainable for two inexperienced dog owners like my wife and me.

Sure, she looks innocent enough, but under that
fluffy exterior is the stubbornness of a mule.

We got her as a pup when we were dirt poor, going to school, and still lived in a small, basement apartment that didn’t technically allow pets. We had no yard. The dog had to go everywhere we went. To work, to the store, on vacation, everywhere. To say it was inconvenient and irresponsible for us to have this horse-sized dog is an understatement.

A few of the highlights of this time included things like cleaning Kolob’s puke up off our living room carpet and seeing still living spaghetti-like worms squirming around in it. Or spending hours pulling porcupine quills out of her face with needle-nosed pliers. Or riding in the Jeep with her after she’d been sprayed by a skunk. Or, even worse, riding in the Jeep with her after she’d found and EATEN human feces. I might add that she liked to ride with her head poking up from the back seat between my wife and me where we could get a face full of her hot, moist breath!

Later on, we moved to a different apartment and we had to keep Kolob in a kennel at my father-in-law’s house. I had to take her for a walk every day or she would bark all night long and keep the whole neighborhood awake. Since I was both working and going to school full time, that wasn’t easy. On most days, the only time I could walk her was late at night. Sometimes I managed to get to it around 9:00 or 10:00 pm, but often it was after midnight. No matter the time, I was always exhausted and in no mood to walk my obstinate dog.

Kolob died several years ago on Easter Sunday. I thought that it would be a relief to finally be rid of that ridiculous dog. Instead, I cried.

In short, that dog was 100lbs of trouble, expense, inconvenience, and stubbornness.

And I loved her.

To the best of my knowledge, Kolob had not (recently)
eaten any excrement prior to the taking of this picture. 

My writing hasn’t gone much better. I remember in fourth grade, right about the time I read Call of the Wild and decided I would be a writer, I was put in some kind of group for students who were deemed “advanced writers”. Once a week, they pulled a few of us out of our regular classes, and we went with some strange lady I didn’t know to learn how to become the next Shakespeare.

At that time, I was obsessed with writing about potatoes. Yes, you read that right: potatoes. I can still remember the first story I wrote and shared with the others in the group. It featured potato people driving around in potato cars, and I thought it was the most hilarious and amazing thing, ever. I can still see the disappointed face of the teacher as I read. She had this forced smile that clearly said, “I’m just smiling to be polite, and I really can’t understand why a moron like you is in this group.”

In Jr. High, it only got worse. I was the perfect stereotype of the melodramatic teenager. I was convinced that nobody had ever been through the horrendous trials I was going through and certainly nobody had ever felt them as deeply and completely. I’m not sure what exactly I thought these trials were since I had a great life, two loving and supportive parents, and loads of good friends. Nevertheless, I poured out my "tortured" (by hormones, maybe?) soul into piles and piles of really embarrassing poetry.

At one point, my 8th grade English teacher actually called my parents in for a meeting because she was so worried about me. Not long after that, in a fit of adolescent angst, I burned everything I’d written up to that point. "I’ll show them," I said to myself. "I’ll never write again!" I kept writing.

In high school, I continued my downward spiral by writing sappy, cliché-filled love poetry into the wee hours of the morning and then sleeping through all my classes the next day. I also started writing short stories that usually featured withdrawn and disaffected rock climbers finding enlightenment in the middle of impossible free-solos just before they fell to their death. I never actually said what that enlightenment consisted of, but it was implied that it was a really big deal and made the whole dying thing totally worth it. As you can see, I was still leaning toward the melodramatic.

In college, I got into journaling. I liked to call these journals my “writer’s notebooks” because calling them journals sounded too sissy to me. These journals are full of lots and lots of rants about all the great things I would be writing if it weren’t for all the work and school that got in the way. It’s amazing how much you can write about not writing.

Since college, I have continued to work on my writing throughout my eleven year career as a teacher. Why? Like that big, dumb dog of mine, it doesn’t make any sense. There’s nothing practical or reasonable about it.

Or is there? When I think about it now, raising a pigheaded puppy, even when it sometimes bordered on nightmarish, gave me a sense of purpose. There was this nearly helpless little animal that needed me all the time. She kept me from focusing too much on just myself, my own wants and my own problems. When it comes right down to it, that dog might have saved me thousands of dollars in therapy. College was one of the most difficult and stressful times of my life, and I spent night after night walking my dog in the foothills of Ogden under the stars. As it turns out, that preposterous dog was exactly what I needed most.

Maybe our creative interests are the same. On the surface, they don’t make sense. They seem like they’re not worth the time, trouble, and expense. They’re not practical. They might make us feel like we’re being downright irresponsible. They may, at times, even seem like 100 lbs. of bad breath steaming up our glasses.

But, like my dog, as we look back over the years I think we’ll find that our creative endeavors paid off in subtle, less tangible ways. What at first glance might seem like a long string of creative catastrophes, will turn out to be exactly what we needed most.

Kolob in her element.

How to Hold Hands with a Rattlesnake

Last summer, my wife, Ruth, decided to run up Ben Lomond Peak, one of the toughest mountains in the Ogden area. As she scrambled up through the boulders near the top, she reached up and grabbed a good ledge. The rock felt strange. There was something about the texture that felt off. She used the ledge to pull herself up and… it kind of squished. That was not rock. Rock does not squish.

She turned to look at the ledge she was holding and saw scaly skin on a long slender body leading to a rattle on one end and a diamond-shaped head on the other. The snake slowly turned to look at Ruth, and then it rudely stuck its forked tongue out at her. Alone on the top of a mountain, eight miles from the trail head, Ruth found herself becoming much more closely acquainted with a rattlesnake than she would have preferred.

After doing the obligatory freak out which may or may not have involved some colorful language that caused the nearby  mountain goat mothers to cover the ears of their kids, Ruth took the snake’s picture. I guess she wanted evidence of the encounter. To most of us normal people, that’s like meeting a knife wielding murderer alone in an alley and saying, “Hey, since you didn't end up murdering me, would you mind if I took your picture? My friends are never going to believe this otherwise.” And the murderer is like, “Sure, why not?” Then he poses with you for a selfie before continuing on his way.

This is the picture Ruth took of her snake.

The thing is, with all the grabbing of rattlesnakes and all, Ruth kind of forgot to finish going to the top. Or maybe she just didn’t want to meet any more lethal animals up there like a cougar or something. Either way, after working her tail off for eight miles and gaining over 3,500 feet in elevation, she turned around and headed back down without standing on the summit.

When she got home, I asked Ruth how her run went and she told me the story. I know I’m probably not going to get the "Husband of the Year" award for this, but I started laughing. I mean, you have to admit, it’s a funny story. Who gets away with using a rattlesnake as a handhold without getting bit? I thought it was a pretty hilarious. Ruth didn’t agree.

After scowling at me until I quit laughing, Ruth said, “Well, at least I finally climbed Ben Lomond Peak.”

I said, “Wait. No you didn’t.”

She said, “Of course I did. Why would you say I didn’t?”

“Because you didn’t actually stand on the top.” Yes, that’s what I said. Apparently, after 17 years of marriage, I still hadn’t learned when I should just shut up.

“What are you talking about? I was only like 30 feet from the top.”

For some reason I couldn’t let it go. I said, “Yeah, but you didn’t stand on the top, so you can’t really say you climbed it.”

“There was a rattlesnake!”

At this point I was pretty sure Ruth was wishing she’d brought that stupid snake home so she could beat me to death with it. In a pathetic attempt to smooth things over, I said, “I know, and that’s totally crazy and it must have been really frightening and I don’t blame you at all for going down, but…” Seriously, where did that “but” come from?

“But what?!”

“But you still didn’t make it to the top,” I mumbled and then ran away before Ruth could strangle me. Lucky for me, she was still tired from running the peak, so I was able to outrun her.

Don’t get me wrong, I truly respect what Ruth was able to accomplish. She worked long and hard for the fitness she needed to run up a big mountain on rugged trails. She navigated her way up there, negotiated the steep and slippery snow drifts blocking her way near the summit, and planned accurately for how much food, water, and time she would need. She just didn’t quite get past the rattlesnake guarding the top and endure to the end.

When it comes to creative projects, I, too, have a hard time enduring to the end. For every project I finish, there are a dozen I don’t. Just like Ruth's run up Ben Lomond Peak, I often put a ton of work into a project only to abandon it right near the end. There’s usually some seemingly small obstacle that gets in my way and I become too frustrated to continue. At least Ruth can say that she was stopped by something that could easily kill her. I don’t have anything near that good of an excuse.

I have sketch books filled with thumbnails and rough drafts for art projects that never came to fruition. I have notebooks filled with abandoned poems and stories that never had a chance to reach their potential. Even my yard is filled with unfinished creative projects like the big area that I call my “rock garden”, but it’s actually just a patch of weeds and dog poop because I never finished it.

Just as you can’t climb a peak without exposing yourself to the inherent dangers that come with the mountains, we can’t set out to do creative work without “delivering ourselves up to be afflicted” (Matthew 24: 9). Maybe we’re not facing rattlesnakes, but we are in danger of being poisoned by criticism, rejection, negativity, and many other afflictions (like callous husbands that laugh at you, for instance). These things can easily undermine our confidence and faith in our talents and abilities if we let them.

One of the best ways I know to overcome these obstacles is by remembering the revelation given to Joseph Smith in the Doctrine and Covenants. In it we are promised “…all things wherewith you have been afflicted shall work together for your good” (D&C 98:3), and “…thine adversity and thine afflictions shall be but a small moment; And then, if thou endure it well, God shall exalt thee on high; thou shalt triumph over all thy foes” (D&C 121:7-8).

I suppose this is a little like the Mormon version of "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" but only “if thou endure it well”. If you do what I usually do and get angry, frustrated, throw a temper tantrum, and quit, then it will all be for nothing. That hardly qualifies as enduring it well. But if we put our trust in God and continue in diligence and faithfulness, we are promised that the afflictions we face, even the one’s involving our creative work, will end up being for our benefit.

That same summer, Ruth successfully summited several other peaks. Some of them went smoothly. Others, not so much. On Lewis Peak, she was nearly struck by lightning while running down a trail that had turned into a cascading stream in the downpour (just for the record, I did not find this one funny at all). On Mount Ogden, she ran out of food and water and had to practically crawl back to the car (okay, that one’s a little funny).

You might be wondering why Ruth kept running up mountains that seemed bent on killing her. It's true that you can’t climb a peak without exposing yourself to the inherent dangers and challenges that come with the territory, but that doesn't mean it isn't worth climbing. Ruth knew the same thing James did when he wrote, “Behold, we count them happy which endure” (James 5:11). Likewise, completing our creative goals might be fraught with affliction, but these hazards are well worth facing because "...he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved" (Mark 13:13).

This is the Ben Lomond Peak trail. You can see why it's worth it. (Photo: sisoutah.com)

 P.S.

In case you're wondering why Ruth's rattlesnake didn't bite her, it was most likely because it was early in the morning and the temperatures were still quite cool. Being coldblooded, the snake simply wasn't warmed up enough yet to strike. The snake was sitting on an east-facing rock waiting for the sun to rise and heat it up. If Ruth had slept in a little later, this might have been a very different story! One that even I would not think was very funny.

Mr. Rogers, Face-Plants, and Creative Progress

On the first day of my Creative Writing classes, I always take the students outside. I go to the trunk of my car and pull out my skateboard. This gets their attention real quick as they try to figure out what an old fogey like me is doing with a skateboard. Then, in what I like to think of as a Mr. Rogers-kind-of-way, I start changing from my dress shoes into my skating shoes. This really gets my students going.

The comments I hear from them range from concern for my well-being like, “Um, Mr. Robb, I don’t think you should do that. You’re going to hurt yourself,” to a desire for my demise like, “I hope he falls on his face!” to sheer unbelief like, “No way! Mr. Robb skates?”

Once my shoes are on, without warning or explanation, I run and jump on my skateboard (a fairly simple trick that I think kids are calling a “Bomb Drop” these days). Now my students are really freaking out because they never imagined that their boring English teacher could possibly have any skills beyond correcting essays.

This is not me, but it is a "Bomb Drop"
Photo: howcast.com

But I’m not finished yet. I follow my Bomb Drop with a trick called a “360 Pop Shove It”. This is a fairly impressive looking trick that has become second nature to me over the years. I can practically do it in my sleep and I stick it every time. Now the student’s minds are totally blown.

I roll back up to them and ask, “Do you think this is the first time I’ve been on a skateboard?” Of course they all say no. “Why and how was I able to do that?” I ask. Sometimes a student will think that I just got lucky. If that’s the case, I do it two or three more times so they know that luck has nothing to do with it. After a little discussion I get the point across that it took a whole lot of practice. That I’ve worked on that trick about a million times over the course of several years and that’s why I could do it in a way that looked effortless.

Now I head off down the sidewalk on my board again. This time I intentionally try a trick I know I can’t do very well. For me, it’s usually a “Heel Flip”. It’s not even that great of a trick, but for some reason, I’ve never gotten the hang of it. It’s the kind of trick that I can land maybe one in ten times. So I try a Heel Flip and I fall. I try it again and I fall again. I keep trying and keep falling. Some of the falls really do hurt. This isn’t acting. I’m genuinely trying to land this trick and I’m genuinely face-planting on concrete. There’s always a combination of laughter and sympathetic groans coming from the students. Eventually, I always land the trick. Sometimes I even get cheers.

I roll back up to the students and ask, “Why did I fall so many times before I could do it? Why couldn’t I stick that trick just like the other one?”

After a few requisite smart-alecky remarks someone will usually say, “Because you haven’t practiced it as much.”

“Exactly,” I say. “If I want to get better and learn more tricks, I have to practice. If I want to improve, I have to fall down… a lot. It hurts, it can be embarrassing, I might look like an idiot, but that’s the only way to make progress. Even the pros were once beginners who got laughed at for falling on their faces.”

I go onto explain that writing (and all other creative endeavors, for that matter) is the same. I quote Julia Cameron when she said, “Mistakes are necessary! Stumbles are normal… Progress, not perfection, is what we should be asking of ourselves… It is impossible to get better and look good at the same time… Give yourself permission to be a beginner.”

After this little object lesson with my class, we go back into the classroom and do our very first assignment for Creative Writing: Write a letter of permission to be a beginner and sign it. This letter serves as a reminder that it’s okay to write badly so you can eventually write well. I have the students put it right in the front of their portfolio where it will be the first thing they see every day when they open it up for class.

We all need that reminder. I highly recommend you write yourself a letter like this. Write it literally and, more importantly, write it in your core beliefs. A letter of permission to fail, fall down, look like an idiot, embarrass yourself, AND progress, improve, learn, grow, and have a lot more fun and creative life in the process.

...And a Little Child Shall Lead Them

My wife and I once had a six-year-old foster son that we took down to Capital Reef National Park. As far as we knew, he had never been to Southern Utah and we were excited to take him camping, hiking, and sightseeing in that beautiful country. We loaded up the car with all our gear and started down the road. An hour into the drive he asked, “Will we ever see our house again?”

“Of course,” I said. I was confused. Why would he think we might never see our house again?

My wife reassured him, “We’re just going camping for a few days and then we’ll go right back home.”

“Oh, okay,” he said and then went back to saying and doing all the normal things six-year-olds say and do on long road trips like constantly needing to pee and repeatedly asking, “Are we there yet?”

But my wife and I were concerned. Did he really think we were leaving our home forever? After we talked it over together, we realized that was exactly what he thought. You see, before he came to us, his family had been homeless off and on for his entire life. When they went “camping” that meant they were living out of a car or tent indefinitely and he would never see the place they had formerly called home again. As far as he knew, we’d been kicked out of our house.

The amazing thing to me was that he’d helped us pack our stuff and climbed into the car without complaint. He was completely trusting and willing to come with us even though he thought we were leaving home forever.

How many of us would be so trusting? How many of us have the faith to so cheerfully submit and take a journey like that? Would we have the courage to wholeheartedly believe that we would be cared for and guided by a loving parent? Would we obediently leave on a journey like this if it was asked of us?

Every creative act is a journey. By emulating the qualities of children like my foster son, we are far more likely to find success on these journeys. Furthermore, it’s no coincidence that the things that make us more creative people are so often the same things that make us better, happier, more successful people in all aspects of life.

Consider Matthew 18: 2-4 which reads, “And Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them, And said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”

The words of King Benjamin in Mosiah 3:19 also that teach us that we must “…becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father.”

Even Pablo Picasso said, “All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.”

Another child we can all learn from: Roald Dahl's Matilda
Illustration by Sir Quentin Blake

While it's clear that we need to “become as little children,” this doesn’t mean we should be childish. It won’t help our creativity to throw temper tantrums or pick our noses. However, it will increase our creative capacity if we try to be like my foster son on that camping trip. Namely, trust, have faith, submit, be obedient, and believe.

• Trust that you have been given important and useful talents, and you have been given them for a reason.
• Have faith that you will be guided and cared for by a loving Father in Heaven as you strive to develop and use those talents. 
• Be humble and submit to the will of Heavenly Father by doing your best to use your talents as He wants you to use them. 
• Be obedient to the promptings of your heart as you work so that your Heavenly Father can continue to work through you.
• Believe that you can accomplish all these things with His help. 

Later on that same trip to Capital Reef National Park, our foster son was filling out a worksheet so that he could earn his “Junior Ranger” badge. One of the questions he had to answer was, “Where do crows live?” The answer they were looking for was in nests. But this six-year-old had a much more profound answer. He said, “In the wind.”

I thought about this for a moment and said, “Yes, yes they do.” Because it was true. Where do crows really live? Where they are doing what they were designed to do: soar on the wind. The same is true for us. We are creative beings. We are given talents so that we can use them. We need only become as little children so that we can begin to live. And where do we truly live? Where we are doing what we were designed to do: using our talents to create and serve.

Buried Giants and Other Lost Things

I just finished reading The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro. At the end I cried. I was immediately filled with an intense desire to hug my wife and tell her how much I loved her. Unfortunately, she happened to be 1,300 miles away at the time, so I settled for a text.

I was surprised to find myself so affected by the book. It’s about an old, frail couple traveling across early medieval England on the way to meet their son. Not exactly my normal cup of tea. I suppose I cried because Kazuo Ishiguro is a literary genius and wrote in such a way that I was deeply invested in the two main characters, and I cared about what happened to them. But there was something more.

I think the real reason The Buried Giant resonated with me is because I have a worthless long term memory. Yep. I can’t remember squat. Everything just fades to black after as little as a few days. Well, okay, not everything, but, when it comes to memory, I’m somewhere just shy of senile. And it just so happens that one of the major themes in The Buried Giant is loss of memory, so this hit close to home for me. It’s not just the old couple in the book that has lost important memories, either. There is this mysterious collective amnesia that’s afflicting the entire land through which the main characters travel.

"The Awakening" by Seward Johnson

The Buried Giant reminded me of one of my favorite children’s books. A picture book by Shuan Tan called The Lost Thing. In this book, the main character finds a strange creature that he befriends. He spends the whole book helping this creature to find the place where it belongs. At one point, after exhausting all his other options, he takes the creature to the sinister feeling “Federal Department of Odds and Ends” where they promise to “find a pigeon hole to stick it in.” While there, another mysterious creature warns him, “If you really care about that thing, you shouldn’t leave it here. This is a place for forgetting. Leaving behind.”

An illustration from The Lost Thing by Shaun Tan

These two books illustrate that we are living in a world afflicted with a kind of amnesia. This is, unfortunately, a place so often used for intentional forgetting. It made me wonder about the important things I’ve left behind, forgotten, lost. Things that would not only help me to be a better writer and artist, but that would also help me to live a fuller, happier, more interesting life.

Together, these books form a kind of yin and yang for things forgotten. The things hidden, and the things missing. The things we are running from, and the things we dropped or lost as we ran. The things we buried deep within us, and the things we misplaced or left behind. I don’t want to turn this into a psychology article, but we all have some of this going on in our minds, and I think we can learn a thing or two from these books that will help us in our creative endeavors.

In The Buried Giant, Kazuo Ishiguro warns us of the difficult experiences, painful memories, and unresolved issues we’ve tried to run from. The title itself references the buried memories we’ve hidden deep within ourselves. It almost sounds like an act of excavation is required to unearth these old skeletons. But that’s exactly what we need to do. If we don’t, they begin to fester within us inhibiting our creativity. This is the “cellar” I talked about in my blog post “Navigating the Labyrinth with Brian Kershisnik”. You know, the one where the monsters live.

The point is, these buried giants often prevent us from doing our best creative work. They make us feel that we aren’t talented enough, people will make fun of us, or our ideas are just silly. All the things that prevent us from reaching our full potential or make us fail before we even start.

So how do we excavate these giants? Well, a good place to start is by reading The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron and follow her advice. She specializes in “unblocking” artists after “creative injury”. There’s not a person I know that hasn’t suffered a creative injury at some time or another in their life. These injuries often get buried within us and begin to poison our creativity. Julia Cameron’s book provides the tools to help us to heal. It’s a beautiful and powerful book that says it all far better than I can. Go check it out.

So what about the other missing things? The things that make uncomfortable holes deep in our chests once they are gone and leave us wondering what might fill them? How do we recover these lost things? Well, Shaun Tan’s book can help us with this. It was also made into an Oscar winning animated short film that you can watch below. (If it doesn't work, you can watch it on YouTube here.)

I have an eleven year old that is constantly losing things: shin guards, socks, jackets, you name it, he’s probably lost it at some point. Every time he loses something, he looks for it for about five seconds and then gives up, throws his hands in the air, and says, “I can’t find it!” My response is always the same. “Well, you’ll only find it if you look for it.”

Shaun Tan gives us this same simple, yet profound advice in The Lost Thing. The story begins with the protagonist out looking for “bottle tops” for his collection. If he hadn’t been out wandering around with his senses open and alert, he never would have found the “lost thing”. You have to be looking, noticing, trying to see the things you’ve missed. I’ve talked about the fine art of noticing before in a post called "Wondering at Weasels". It’s a talent we all once had as children before we lost our sense of wonder with the world. Somewhere along the way to adulthood, most of us misplace it and have to go looking for it again.

This is probably because, as Shaun Tan points out in his book, there’s something about growing older that makes us want to make everything fit into a category, stereotype, or classification. We want everything numbered and filed in its proper place in our head. In The Lost Thing, you notice that everything has a number (even the people), there are signs directing people where to go and how to get there, and there’s even the huge, ominous “Department of Odds and Ends” designed to sweep under the rug anything that doesn’t quite fit.

Image from the animated short film "The Lost Thing".
The TV and camera-headed sculpture says it all!

Admittedly, this desire to organize everything is a side effect of trying to make sense of a very complex world, but what is lost when we do this? The magic of the world, whimsy, the beautiful complexity of human beings, and so much more. Tan’s story teaches us that we need to embrace the “objects without names”, the “troublesome artifacts of unknown origin”, and the “things that just don’t belong”. By giving up our desire to pigeon hole and simplify, our creative work will become more enlightened, rich with texture and depth, and sparkling with originality.

For example, think of the flat, stereotyped characters so often found in Hollywood movies. The action hero with the bulging muscles and chiseled jaw who is always rescuing the beautiful damsel in distress (who by some miracle never seems to have a hair out of place despite the fact that she just survived a high speed chase on the back of a motorcycle). These characters are nothing more than walking clichés and they are the result of the lazy thinking of people who want everything to fit into a specific category, numbered and filed.

In contrast, think of the achingly real characters in books like To Kill a Mocking Bird, Of Mice and Men, or even Harry Potter. These are the characters that feel so real I wouldn’t be at all shocked to see them walking down the street or sitting on the couch in my living room. They were written by authors who were unwilling to number and file the world away. We have to find the lost thing if we want be able to write this way.

"Migrant Mother" by Dorothea Lange

Photo: Vogue Magazine

Consider the two iconic photos above. The one on the top is by famed Depression era photographer Dorothea Lange and the one on the bottom is from Vogue Magazine. Both are undoubtedly masterful photos in their own right, but while the Vogue photo merely seduces the eye with its surface beauty, the Lange photo invites us to feel the profound struggle of a migrant mother during the Great Depression. It, too, is beautiful, but its beauty comes from its depth, texture, and reality, not the illusion created by the perfect makeup, hair, and pose.

So what exactly is “the lost thing” we need to help us write like Steinbeck and take photos like Lange? I would argue it’s our childlike fascination with the world that keeps us alert, interested, present, and noticing. It’s the ability to see through the innocent and fresh eyes of a child and perceive the magic, uniqueness, and complexity of the world without trying to categorize, classify, and pigeonhole. It is, quite frankly, the ability to better grasp and understand reality. It’s funny to think that we intentionally lose this ability as we “mature”.

These two seemingly very different books, both teach us about the impact of things forgotten and how important it is to rediscover them. Taken together, these books show us that as we strive find what was lost, we will necessarily uncover what was buried. Likewise, as we struggle to excavate the buried giants within us, we will find many of the things we’ve lost along the way to adulthood. If we can recover these memories, if we can remember how we once were as children, we will not only become better writers and artists, but better human beings.