Wiley Wednesday: Mind Mapping

Writer Zen Garden Posted on by

It’s my week to write a Wiley essay, and as I was planning it, it hit me: I can write a Wiley about how I write a Wiley!

All kidding aside, there’s a very useful tool called a Mind Map that can help with anything from what topic to pick for an essay to where to go on vacation to what are the critical issues the Board of Directors needs to solve in the coming year. Let’s walk through one together!

This is a Mind Map that I drew up this morning as an example of how to do one; it focuses on “Wiley Wednesday.” See picture, below:

The first thing to notice is that the focus is at the center of the drawing, which starts out as a blank page. In this case, it’s “Wiley Wednesday.” When I’m writing these for actual use, I do not switch colors because it causes too much distraction from the process; I used different colors here to illustrate different trains of thought.

The key thing, and in my opinion the most important thing, to remember about Mind Mapping is that it’s Brainstorming (I capitalize that since I’m using it in this context as a topic). Brainstorming is about idea generation, it is not about idea selection. As such, ALL ideas go into the hopper, not matter how applicable. You never know. You might throw the idea “Zombie Movie Monster Mash” into the hopper and it sparks four new, solid ideas right on its heels.

Once you have your focus, just relax a moment and breathe.

No, I’m not kidding. Try it before you argue with me!

Seriously, this is a right-brain task, not a left-brain sequential one. The right-brain doesn’t think in the same way as our cognitive brain, and we need to work accordingly. By this time, you may have an idea or a glimmer of an idea. Great! Draw a line and write it down.

The lines radiating from the focus are the main topics. The lines radiating from the topics are related to that topic. When you’re working on a topic, like “Writing” or “Productivity,” and you get an idea that fits neither one of those two subjects, draw another main line from the focus and start a new sub tree.

You might find, like I do, that a normal letter-size piece of paper isn’t large enough. I like to use large placemats from restaurants, ledger size paper (11 inches by 17 inches), and I even have a roll of butcher paper at home that is fun to use (that’s about 36 inches wide and, well, a roll of paper. How much is there? Well, I’ve had this roll of paper since I was five, if that’s any indication, and I’ve still not used it all…)

Once you have as many ideas as you and, if you’re playing with friends, your group can come up with in a reasonable amount of time (don’t go for more than a half hour at one sitting), you’ve got your idea hopper. And I’ll wager you have a LOT more ideas than you’ve got time, which is always a better problem to have than an expanse of blank paper and no ideas at all.

Now go forth and Map your Mind!

Internet Addiction – Who? Me?

Writer Zen Garden Posted on by

Today I arrived at the office with the usual morning ritual in mind. My workday starts with checking the company customer service inbox. Fine. I read a few emails and replied to confirm orders as I entered them into the computer system.

Then a strange thing happened. Every confirmation came back as “Undeliverable Mail”. And none of the emails were received later than last night! Not good. Our IT department informed us the communications company suffered “a major fiber connectivity outage” to the whole area.

I could have stayed in bed! My presence was totally superfluous at this point. I felt like an appendage with no sense of touch or purposeful function.

Since the phones were likewise down, I decided to go online and check my personal emails. Writing took precedence last night so I expected quite a few replies were in order.

Oh, I realized, that’s right! We have no voice or data service. Duh…

So I considered checking into spring vacation reservations. I have my cell phone. Would it be so bad talking to a real live person for verification? But then I remembered that all the information was accessible only via the internet. Not even the resort name had been scrawled on a scrap of paper.

I went back to my latest story as a result, which saved an otherwise pointless morning and turned out to be time well spent. This helpless feeling got me to think about my habits, though.

Months ago this part of the US went through an extended power outage and I felt proud occupying my mind just fine with pen and paper. Electric lights weren’t really missed as long as I had a candle. If ink ran out I could switch to pencil.

Today I discovered that things are very different when the electricity is on. Having a world of information at my fingertips has become an unconscious expectation.

Sure I didn’t suffer withdrawal in this morning’s on-again, off-again moments without connectivity. Yet I can’t help wondering how I’d react over a long term lapse. I think instead of questioning my weakness, I’ll post this blog and go check a writers’ forum.

What coaxed the creativity inside me, out?

Writer Zen Garden Posted on by

I know exactly what did. I love to read and read obsessively for a number of years. At some point I began to notice peoples particular styles of writing and how they used words. Along with the unfolding interest in how authors wrote, I discovered I wanted to write romantic fiction and did. I didn’t much like what I wrote. Until I discovered poetry. That changed everything. And while writing poetry, photography attracted my attention.

I scoured the Internet looking to grow, learn, and draw my shy artist out of hiding. While hunting for images and photographs to accompany my poems, I found myself thinking about what makes up an artistic photograph, and wondered what it would be like to make art with a camera.

So, I take photos and write poetry and everyday is a discovery of what I’m capable of and what I’m not. I was surprised enough when I discovered I can write poetry, even more surprised when I started to get behind the lens of my camera and produced some photos I like.

There are advantages to having two strings to my bow. If my writing is struggling, I go take some photos…simple. Writing is a deeper digging into the well of self, photography is a lighter avenue of expression. A good release if I’m tense and can’t find any worthwhile words.

Creativity is sometimes hard to access and open up inside ourselves, but so worth the effort. I can’t help myself…it’s too late to even pretend that I don’t have a desire to explore what talent I have. Whether it’s good or not, whether I have that special spark in my work or not, I have a flame inside me and the process of getting that flame to come to life in poetry or in a photo is my burning challenge.

The girls of Artist’s Retreat are partly responsible for me making art of any kind. They have always encouraged me, read what I wrote and looked at what I captured through my lens. We don’t live in each others pockets, sometimes it is weeks that we don’t make contact. But to have support of others who are living their creativity is a must for when it gets tough. And it does get tough, your muse dries up or nothing looks worth a photo anyways, some days are bent on being non-creative. That’s where like minded friends help carry you through to the next phase of expression. We complete each other – syrupy, but true. 🙂

The photos below are from a current study in my back yard, a giant Sunflower my eight year old daughter named Linda.

*Click on the Pics to see the details*





Love,

Eaton

“War is the father of all things”

Writer Zen Garden Posted on by

One thing my creative writer has said numerous times is this quote by Swiss health economist and author Gerhard Kocher: “War is the father of all things.”

Also, one of his own quotes (I believe) derived from it. I’m afraid I can’t remember the correct wording, but it is something along the lines of: “writing is war.”


Writing is war, I can truly believe that from my own experiences with it over the past 8 years. It also happens to be a war with multiple fronts that an author must fight simultaneously.

The first (and most obvious) front, is the one with the page. Writing isn’t simple, it’s not just sitting down and typing… well, it is, but it is so much more than that, too. Or, rather, it is far more difficult.

Words don’t always come right out onto the page as willy nilly as a breath escapes our lungs. Finding a word, the right word, takes time, and effort. As Robert Frost said: “I never knew what was meant by choice of words. It was one word or none.”

We need to search through our own minds, our dictionaries, to find the right word for the right situation. The one word that fills the the hole completely without anything extra left behind. The perfect fit. It’s not easy, it takes time, effort, and lots of (re)writing.

The second front is the one with time. As a full time university student in his third year (with a job, now, by the way), I don’t think I really need to tell you that my time is taken by many different obligations, duties, and personal pass times. So, days like today (where I was on campus for 12 hours) how do I find time to write? Well, I haven’t, really… I’m, personally, losing this front, badly.

But, that’s part of the point. With all the hustle and bustle of everyday life, we still need to find the time to write. It’s not easy, but then again, anything worth doing isn’t easy.

The final, and most important, front is the home front. In war, sometimes you have to fight various aspects on the home front. In wars between countries, this includes rationing gasoline for use by the troops, or fighting for support of a war that the populace doesn’t want to be in.

In writing, the biggest, and worst, manifestation of the home front is the inner critic.

This is the little voice inside your head that speaks nonsense about how bad your writing is, and throws other insults into your face while your down that doesn’t have anything to do with your writing.

The harsh, wild critic is hard to break. He creeps behind every word, lives beneath every sentence, and has friends he invites over for drinks in your story.

This war is just like every other. To win, you need strong troops and high morale. You need to look at the big picture, see the small picture, plan ahead and live one day at a time. Sometimes, you win battles, other times you lose them. You must remember that when victory is in sight, defeat can come far easier. Success in one front can mean disaster in another. It’s not easy, and it’s definitely not pretty.

“I am sick and tired of war. Its glory is all moonshine.
It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard
the shrieks and groans of the wounded
who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation.
War is hell.”
From “On Killing” by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman

Tired of Wiping Out Words as You Type?

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A while back I became completely frustrated with the insert key on my keyboard, particularly when editing an existing story. There is little more counterproductive than typing merrily away only to discover that it took out a bunch of other material.

So I looked it up and finally found this magical tidbit of information. Somehow I have misplaced my file, so I owe Tech-Reciipes.com for supplying the information this go round. Anyway, here is what you do, as listed on the website:

1. Start Microsoft Office Word (opening a document is fine)
2. Click on the Tools menu
3. Click Customize
4. Click the Options tab
5. Click Keyboard
6. Under the Categories dropdown box, select All Commands
7. Under the Commands dropdown box, select Overtype
8. Under the Current keys downdown box, select Insert
9. Click Remove
10. Click Close until the dialog windows close.

Voila! I hope this saves someone else some time and heartache.

Now that I shared this trick, can anyone tell me how to shut off the grammatical symbols created by the apostrophe key? I seem to turn this function on and off at random. Today I have been ending up with things like Ïwent to the store,” she said, änd picked up those apples you like.” When what I meant to type was, “I went to the store,” she said, “and picked up those apples you like.”

It gets annoying having to hit the space bar an extra time to avoid the Ï, ä, and the like every time. Anyone else have this problem or know the fix? Well, in the meantime I’m going to go back to my current WIP and see if I hit the right key strokes to turn this annoying “shortcut” off again. Happy writing!

Axioms

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So, I’m taking a Creative Writing course this quarter, and the teacher listed eight axioms in his syllabus that I’d like to share, that I think we could all learn from as artists, even if we don’t necessarily agree with all of them (I don’t, not really).


An imperfect sentence is an imperfect thought.
All fiction is information.
The way to be boring is to leave nothing out.
To be interesting is to be interested.
Well-used, language is a precision tool.
There’s no such thing as content without form.
There are no dull subjects, only dull writing.
“Never to be satisfied”- All art is contained herein.