personal – Speculative fiction and art from Thea Dee

Out of the Chrysalis, Into the Fire (A-CM index)

Don’t let these insidious myths block your creative success! (an index)

Have you ever noticed? When the hero finally decides that he’s going to pursue the quest, it is just the beginning. The beginning of the fight. The beginning of his struggle.

That’s how it has been for me.

>Come on, of course I’m the hero in my own life’s story. Aren’t you?<

Just because I made the decision to commit to my dreams, the doubts and fears didn’t stop bombarding my mind. In fact, they doubled up!

But, now that I’ve decided, I’ve committed, nothing can stop me. The doubts and fears hit me like mosquitoes throwing themselves on a bug zapper.

Dddzzzzzzztt!
There goes another one.
Mmm… Smells a little acrid.
Like roasted mosquito wings.

Ha!

You’ll find that the fight is just beginning when you take your leap of faith.

Sometimes the fight seems to intensify.
As if something in the universe doesn’t want you to succeed.

Ha!
Just remember the smell of mosquito wings.

The anti-creative myths

There is an unending series of thoughts that will resist your decision to follow your creative dreams. Don’t you believe them.

To help expose the lies, I’m starting a series on the “anti-creative myths” — those ideas that pop up and try to become our pet excuses for not creating what fires our imaginations.

This series is not in order of importance or frequency or anything other than “as I think of it”. Please join the conversation by commenting — what anti-creative thoughts tend to stop your creative efforts cold? How do you combat your worst anti-creative thoughts?

This post will serve as an index for the series. Enjoy! And may these myths fall ineffective before our collective defenses, exposed now as the lies they are!

why do we remember movies?

is entertainment media really just a frivolous way to pass the time? or can it be more?

Transformers

as someone born in the latter half of the 20th century, i grew up with TV and movies. i watched a few cartoon series (yes, Transformers was one of them).

well, more than watched them. i remember memorizing whole episodes so i could relate them to my dad when he got home from work — the dialogue as close to word-for-word as i could get it. speaking of my dad, i’m a second generation Trekkie because of him. i’m probably a lover of sci-fi because of him, too.

(thanks, dad!)

my interest in storytelling, story making and even things like memorizing dialogue was either a reflection of my creative passions or perhaps my environment shaped them a bit. whatever the case, certain scenes have become ingrained in my consciousness and stayed with me over the years.

why do movies have such impact?

have you ever wondered why movies, or even books, have such impact on our lives? i believe it is of great significance and deserves more than a passing thought.

especially for anyone in creative endeavors.

why do i remember a Japanese hobo cooking a stolen egg for a little boy every time i make an omelette? it’s Tampopo’s fault.

every time i hear the word “inconceivable”, why do i hear a wiry swordsman’s Spanish accent: “you keep using that word. i do not think it means what you think it means.” because of The Princess Bride, of course!

okay, so they’re great movies to me. but not everyone would agree. everyone has different life-impacting movies.

is it because they’re funny? well, they are, but Tampopo is serious, too. so that’s not the only factor.

personally, i believe it’s because the human brain is such an amazing and faithful machine: it takes what it sees and hears and incorporates it as a memory. a slightly less-intense memory than something that happened to us directly, but still a memory.

a vicarious experience is an experience nonetheless,

and it shapes us just as living shapes us. especially if our living isn’t especially exciting on its own. we walk out of a theater triumphant, angry, depressed or inspired to greatness.

shared experiences

even more powerful are shared experiences. the movies and one-liners that i remember the best are ones i shared with others. my friends and i would quote favorite scenes from the Princess Bride back and forth, until we got distracted or laughed ourselves silly. there’s hardly a line in the movie i cannot complete.

*sniff*
“iocane powder. i’d bet my life on it.”

i mean, seriously, i’m still laughing, just typing the line above. now there was a character you were invited to despise, no question. he was begging for it, and didn’t even know it.

i’d dissect everything i watched in great detail afterwards from a writer’s perspective. talking it over with friends just cemented it all in my mind. especially the ones i watched again and again. heh!

there are many, many whole books i’ve read out loud to friends and family. the LOTR series, multiple times. the Vorkosigan series by Lois McMaster Bujold (i simply cannot recommend these enough or run out of good things to say about this author! the woman is not a multi-award winner for nothing!).

sharing the experience with others makes an amazing collective consciousness effect. everyone catches different angles on a story. hearing their viewpoint fills in holes in your own observations and brings epiphanies even after the movie or book is long over.

and after all,
when you love something,
who doesn’t want to share it
and talk to others who share your passion?

thus we have fandom.
a topic for another time.

the garden

there is a concept that is quickly becoming central to my philosophy of life.

my heart is a patch of soil.
it could be a garden.

my life grows out of the soil of my heart, using the seeds i plant in it. the soil is as moist and rich or as dry and sterile as i make it. everything i create is, more or less, coming out of my very innermost being. but what is in me?

> a gatorade commercial comes to mind…
successful marketing, right there:
is it in you? <

what am i experiencing every moment of my day? what passes in front of my eyes? how is it being connected to everything that has come before?

is my garden thick and overgrown, cluttered and choked?
or is it well-tended,
rich in nutrients and things that will make for yummy fruit?

what we watch becomes a part of us.
what we read becomes a part of us.
what we experience becomes a part of us.

DON’T MISS THIS: what we create and others ingest… becomes a part of them.

we become a part of them.
because what we create is a part of us.

doesn’t that trip you out?
it boggles.

slow motion doom

Yeah. I dropped my coffee.

(Mine was a to-go cup, but you get the idea…)

!!! sploosh !!!!!

“Aaaaaahhhhhhh…. NOOOoooooo!”

I wouldn’t say this is “one of those days”,
but that moment was surely
“one of those moments”.

There are few smells in the world better than quality roasted coffee beans. in fact, the smell is so good that the brewed coffee itself rarely lives up to the olfactory ecstasy that precedes it.

>closes eyes and breathes deeply of remembered bean bliss<

Ahhh, yes! Coffee! Many people cling to coffee for its stimulation. They consider themselves totally dependent on the substance for waking up, being creative, staying awake, etc, etc.

But I object, your honor! I object to the idea of being dependent on some natural physical substance to bring my body and mind to a state of heightened energy or awareness. It bothers me to think that some mindless, non-sentient chemical might hold such power over me.

Heh-heh.
Funny to think of it that way.
Especially since I choose dependence on a more intangible source, something I can’t even see or touch.

I can sense him sometimes, though.
And that means a lot to me.

Somehow I don’t mind waiting on a sentient spirit for ideas, even if he’s invisible. It’s a totally different thing. And there’s an excitement of the dance, the interchange and exchange of thought and idea from something other than myself, and someone with ideas far outside my own range of experience.

Oh, but that’s not what I was going to write about!

I was talking about my coffee.
Coffee lovingly roasted at the local coffeehouse. Flavored to perfection.

And splattered in one slip of the hand all over my refrigerator, groceries and floor.

>sigh<

I can still see it, like at the peak of a movie action scene when the whole thing slows down and you see the awful moment when the treasure falls from the hero’s hand, plummeting to the depths below.

The paper to-go cup.
Plummeting.
Hitting the floor with enough force to pop the lid completely off.
And then the (quite artistically) splattered
dark chocolate brown liquid
all over the ketchup bottle.
The salad dressing.
The fridge door.
The glass over the veggie drawer.
The kitchen linoleum.

I snatched up the cup, hoping to save something. And all that was left was one swallow.

And some rich, dark sludge.

>yum! licks lips<

The world sped back up again, and I stared at the mocha dripping into a pool, slowly spreading across the floor.

>considers licking the coffee off the floor on hands and knees<

>rejects the idea with a sigh<

Ah, well. Say la vee.

I didn’t need it anyway.