Nov 17, 2012

Creativity - getting James past a writer's block

James in trouble...
I have to tell you about a very interesting tool which I learnt from a friend of mine, Carola Scharvogel. Carola  does a lot of work in the area of creativity and she taught me the Free Writing method recently. What’s interesting is that Free Writing is something that you can use to try to come up with possible solutions to any problem or issue that you might have. It got me past a small writing block that I ran into last week and helped me generate some interesting ideas, when I used it to analyse the marriage of Madeleine and Gottlob Thomas, two of the novel’s central characters.

After I had outlined the main characters in my post on November 10 I found I wasn’t really clear about the relationship between these two. I had said they were separated but were still friendly with each other. What had gone wrong? I thought about this when sitting on the train for a couple of days on the way to work but found my ideas were going nowhere. Boring sex life, affairs, incompatibility, work pressure, scurvy, leprosy, dengue fever (these are some of the thoughts that come into my mind when I sit on the train which is bringing people back from the airport…), all my ideas seemed too obvious.  But after sitting down one day and using the Free Writing method on the question “What is the problem between Madeleine and Gottlob?” I managed to reach the following conclusions in only ten minutes:

1) The two still love each other. There is actually a large amount of affection and respect between them, but…
2) Gottlob is impotent. He says it’s down to a distaste for the 21st century and its sexualisation of everything. But actually it’s more to do with leaving his job at the university in the philosophy department. He hates the fact that everything in contemporary life must pretend to have a financial ROI and the question that he and his students was constantly asked by other people – “What can you do with philosophy?” – has reduced him to a state of mental and physical impotence. Working on the railway is a way for him to escape this pressure.
3) Gottlob hasn’t explained any of this to Madeleine (partly because it’s not even clear to him that this is the problem), so she feels rejected. His impotence makes her feel unattractive and old. This makes the charm and flattery of Tomi (see cast list, earlier post) very appealing.
4) They are living in separate flats because Gottlob doesn’t feel it is fair of him to stay with Madeleine. She should be free to find somebody who can give her the affection and companionship she wants plus a sex life. Of course he doesn’t tell her this, so Madeleine is left guessing his motive. She gets this totally wrong and concludes he must be a closet homosexual.

I hope I’m not disappointing anybody here and you’re feeling “…and that’s it?!?” I see a lot of scope here: I think Gottlob’s excuse (oversexualisation of our society) is an interesting theme. I think the attitude of so many people that only through studying subjects like economics or business studies are you able to do anything worthwhile and anything else is redundant is appallingly common. And I think the problems caused by incompetent communication and making assumptions offer lots of comic potential.
I expect in the course of writing the novel these four pointers will be developed further or maybe even dropped, but the Free Writing technique managed to help me come up with some useful possibilities. The picture below shows what I managed in the ten minutes time I had:



If you want to try it with a problem of your own, this is how it works:

Free Writing

1 Take a large piece of paper (A3 is best).

2 In the centre draw a circle and write the theme, if possible reduced to one word.

3 Write down anything that comes into your head connected with the theme. Thoughts, emotions – anything. No corrections!

4 If you can‘t think of anything, write “I can‘t think of anything!“ or draw wavy lines.

5 After a max of 10 minutes (set an egg timer if possible, so you get a shock), stop and read everything that you‘ve written. Highlight anything that seems relevant to the issue. The time limit is very important. This small amount of pressure helps you to focus your thoughts.

6 Copy the interesting passages onto another sheet and think how they might be useful / developed further. If necessary, repeat the process with one of the new ideas.

Try it out; it works on anything.

9 comments:

  1. Luv'd the presentation at BESIG, but had no chance to chat at the end. Have used a similiar tool to Free Writing I call
    Redraft brainstorming. The distinct difference being you give the students at first 3 mins to produce only nouns, and then they start a new sheet with full phrases, idioms and extended nouns (compound or with an adjective). This method works when people or a group are slow off the block or losing their mojo. Cannie wait to use the Brain Pooling technique this week

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  2. Like the ideas, thank you. I'll see what happens.

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  3. Tried the Brain Pooling twice now on successive days.
    Inebriated creativity and CPM being resulting lingo from the first one. You can read about it here, and find out what the abbreviation means:

    http://www.goodopenenglish.com/2012/11/847/

    Just developed it into a role play, and repeated it with a group from mixed professions and companies this evening. So a sequel to come.

    Really has invigorated my lessons, especially this evening. A group I have had on and off for eight years now.

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    1. Wow! Sounds amazing. This is what is so great about these tools, it's like giving a group an adrenalin shot, suddenly they can come back from the dead. Like Uma Thurman in 'Pulp Fiction'.

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  4. Very good explanation for the lack of sex life in long-term relationships (the loosing control over circumstances which gets more evident once one gets older) and you are right it offers a lot of interesting options to discuss the various aspects of Gottlob and Madeleine's relationship including the assumptions they make about each other. How easy talking would be, however few people result to the obvious solutions in the first place. With each piece you write I get more curious about the whole book!

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  5. Surely this poor guy Gottlob has a lot of problems! And on top of it all you've chosen to burden him with such an old fashioned and pretentious first name like Gottlob... Consider making things a little bit easier for him by naming him something like Alex or Michael.
    ;-) Lotte

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    1. Would you really? I've already taken to Gottlob exactly because of his name. It is old fashioned, yes, but in me this evokes comfort and trust. :-)

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    2. Life isn't going to be easy for Gottlob I'm afraid Lotte. He's got to suffer and no Michael or Alexander (with all due respect to any Michaels or Alexanders out there) would be able to deal with what he has to go through.

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    3. It is interesting, how a person's name can evoke a picture of that person in one's head - and also quite different pictures in different person's heads :-)
      Your blog inspires a lot of thoughts about the process of reading and the process of writing, James. And I am eager to read how Gottlobs story will continue.

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What do you think?