Aline Soules

Feb 09 2020

Research and Creativity

As my blog readers know from previous posts, I believe in deep research for fiction, particularly historical fiction, which naturally calls for research. I’m not satisfied when others in the writing business suggest that I can get what I need on Google, Google images, Wikipedia, etc. Of course I use these tools, sometimes to get started, but more often for “place holders” to note where I need to dive into resources that will give me either answers or show me that what I propose to include in my fiction “could” have happened and is viable to include. It is fiction after all.

On Medium today, Jeff Ryan published an article on Medium: Honoring the Critical Link between Research and Creativity. https://medium.com/@19RoadsLessTraveled/honoring-the-critical-link-between-research-and-creativity-5c2dc38fe9c4

Ryan speaks about standard factual research (records, documents, etc.) which he uses extensively, but he also talks about “contextual” research, i.e., researching beyond needed facts to understand what else was going on in the worlds the characters inhabited. I’ve always thought of my research as all of a piece, but I find his separation of factual and contextual research very helpful. He also shows how the discovery of a very small detail can change the direction of a novel.

From now on, I plan to tag my “place holders” with F or C or FC to indicate the type(s) of research I need in a particular section. This will help me to decide where I need to introduce some element from world events occurring at the time my characters live, where I need backstory, where I need speculation, and so on.

Ryan says that adding contextual research to his process enables him to create more multi-dimensional characters and provide his book with urgency.

I also recommend Paddy Sutton’s Research and Creativity Go Hand in Hand. https://www.research-live.com/article/opinion/research-and-creativity-go-hand-in-hand/id/5028992 Written in 2017, Sutton, a creative director at Argo, talks about researching for ads. He believes creativity is about questioning and challenging. “As the legendary Robin Wight of WCRS advised, ‘interrogate the product until it confesses to its strength’. That’s research.” He describes research as analytical, creativity as intuitive and gives examples of how the two work together.

Perhaps that’s why I like writing. It uses my whole brain—left and right. What could be better?

I highly recommend you check out the above links. They’re quick reads and impactful.

Image credit: https://www.research-live.com/article/opinion/research-and-creativity-go-hand-in-hand/id/5028992

Dec 30 2019

Finishing the 30/30 Project

I just completed December’s 30/30 Project for Tupelo Press, along with nine other poets. On previous occasions when I’ve participated in this event, I’ve worked from a theme, thinking that some structure, however fluid, would help me to generate new work. This time, I didn’t do that. I roamed the multiple and varied subjects that crossed my brain. As I look back on my work for this month, I realize that free-range has been a better option, at least this time.

I retired about a year and a half ago to write full-time. When I was writing while holding down a full-time job, structure helped me stay on track. Now that I write every day for longer periods of time, I’m moving away from early structure and finding my generative self growing more creative in a free-ranging way. While some of the pieces I wrote for the project will likely not develop further, I’ll definitely develop and revise some of this work to send out to publishers for consideration.

At some point, structure becomes important, but, for me, that’s further down the line, after a longer period of exploration. That said, this year, I submitted a sonnet, certainly “structured,” to the Kelsay Books Metrical Poetry Contest and won second place, but I don’t think that would have happened if I’d not had a longer generative period before fitting the work into a sonnet form.

This has led me to wonder about the roles of free-form thinking and imposed structure. How do I work with each poem to find the right balance between the two?

Many years ago, when I taught high school, working particularly with students who faced multiple challenges at home and in life, I found that the more rules there were to a poem, the more amazing were the students’ results. I taught forms like the cinquain. See https://mickhispoetry.wordpress.com/2017/04/05/modern-traditional-cinquains/ for the rules and some examples. See https://www.writersdigest.com/whats-new/list-of-50-poetic-forms-for-poets for a list of many poetic forms, some of which are very complex. If I didn’t provide structure, the students were lost and had trouble writing anything at all.

So where’s the sweet spot? The place where you’ve free-ranged enough and it’s time to explore a structure, whether it’s a formal structure or a form that emerges organically from the work itself. I may look for that sweet spot for the rest of my writing days, but this month has led me to a closer understanding of both approaches and the importance of finding the right moment to move from one to the other and back again.

Dec 02 2019

Inspiration, Motivation, and Supporting a Small Press

December 1 and the Tupelo 30/30 project starts for this month. This project has been running for a number of years. The goal for participants is to write 30 poems in 30 days. This is my third time participating in this project and it’s always a thrill. It inspires me, motivates me to generate work, and allows me to support an important small press. Each of us commits to raising funds for the press through donations to support the poems.

The first poems are up at https://www.tupelopress.org/the-3030-project-december-19/ and will be added to daily until the end of the month. Please read and enjoy them. If you’re inspired, please donate (you’ll find a donate button on the page. I’m honored to be a fundraiser for Tupelo Press this month, even more so when I read my fellow writers’ bios (https://www.tupelopress.org/3030-project-contributors/). They’re amazing and I’m happy to journey and write with them this month.

Nov 10 2019

How Writing Poetry Improves Prose

Wislawa Szymborka–one of our Nobel Prize winning writers (a poet)—earned that prize with every word. She’s come into my consciousness a lot lately, as I’ve been wrestling with my novel. If you’re interested, Narrative Magazine has some of her work featured at the moment. I think her writing’s amazing.

https://www.narrativemagazine.com/issues/fall-2019/poetry/joy-writing-and-other-poems-wislawa-szymborska

As for wrestling with my novel (don’t we all?), I start every day with poetry. I read something, like Szymborka’s work, and I write poetry. Perhaps I start something new. Maybe I work on a poem I’ve been working on for weeks. Maybe I prepare a poem to send out. There’s something about working in a medium that requires me to be concise, exact, and imagistic that gets me in the mood for my writing day.

Whether I work on it for only a few minutes or even an hour or two, when I reach my natural stopping point, I’m ready to work on my novel and I know that my poetry work improves my prose. Its heightened language is the perfect jumping off point for writing anything else.

When I worked in an academic library, with responsibility for research and publication, I started with poetry before writing that form of writing, too. My poetry work had the same effect.

This is the infamous month of NaNoWriMo, which I’m using to spur me on to the next draft of my novel. The requirement to write 50,000 words in a month can be daunting and logic dictates that spending time on poetry rather than plunging in and writing my novel lacks sense, that it would be better to take that fifteen minutes to two hours in order to clack out more prose. But it doesn’t work that way for me. Poetry first. Better and more productive prose second.

Won’t you join me?

Oct 02 2019

The Satisfaction of Writing Poetry to Start the Day

For various reasons, I’ve been largely offline for the last month or so. I’ve been working on my novel, but I also write poetry and spend time on sending out work and marketing and so on. I find that I don’t do enough of sending out or marketing, both of which frustrate me considerably. That said, I’ve had successes this year, winning a contest for my poem “Ephemera.” You can read it at http://www.yuleloveitlavenderfarm.com/p/poetry-contest.html, at least for the next few months until the next contest, when it will be supplanted by next year’s winner. I also wrote a short ekphrastic piece, “Forever Dali,” which you can read at http://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic/forever-dali-by-aline-soules.

All of this sounds like a distraction from writing my novel, but it’s not. I start every day with poetry, which I consider one of the highest forms of wordsmithing (among other characteristics). I find starting my writing day with poetry gets me “set” in some way for working on my novel. Sometimes, I spend only a few minutes on poetry; other times, I might spend an hour or two on some poem that’s either in my head wanting to get on the page or already on the page, but pushing me to craft it into a better poem. Regardless, when I turn to my novel, I’m in my mental “writing place” and can work on my novel more effectively.

The other benefit of writing short poems or prose pieces, sending them out, and, if lucky, getting them published is affirmation. A novel takes a long time–at least, it takes me a long time–and I need to know that my work can be “out there” and read by someone, even as I spend months, even years, on a novel.

When I retired to write last year, I found that my novel to that point was too fragmented because I would promise myself that I wouldn’t get subsumed by the academic term (I worked in a university) and, every term, I got subsumed by the academic term. Three weeks into the term, I’d find myself working from 7 a.m. to midnight every day, even weekends. At the end of the day, writing on my creative work was impossible. I was spent. For the last year (I retired in Aug. 2018), I’ve been able to work on my novel almost every day and it’s brought consistency to my drafts, for which I’m grateful.

I had hoped to finish the novel this year and I may still do that, but I think it’s better to say that I will finish the novel in 2020 and move on to my next one.

Finding the time to write consistently and engage in BIC (butt in chair) has been a real gift. I hope all you writers out there can enjoy the same sense of focus that I’ve found in the last year. It’s so much fun to see your work emerge out of the fuzz into the light, to shape that work, and to create a piece of writing (of whatever length or genre) that satisfies you and, in turn, satisfies your reader.

Next month: Back to Historical Fiction and its language.

Image: Courtesy of Jan Kahánek, https://unsplash.com/photos/g3O5ZtRk2E4