Little Rituals

Rituals help in creative endeavors. I’m not sure why.

At the point in my life when I was at my absolute most effective at writing, I was writing about four or five thousand words a day. Looking back, I have no idea how I did it. I must have had no life. No, correction – I remember puttering along with a typical course load for a sophomore in college, and I also recall having a social life, even if it was slower-paced than most. As far as writing went, though, I was sprinting. I knew exactly where I was going and how I was getting there. I wrote the last two-thirds of a novel in two months. (I will not say anything here about the quality of the novel, but it was a first attempt. As far as I’m concerned, it was the completion of the attempt that mattered to my future as a writer, not the quality of the attempt.)

My secret writing ritual during those two glorious months was a black bathrobe. The background: my basement apartment was freezing, my roommates and I were trying to be cautious with our outrageously priced utilities, and so it came about that during the hours I was sitting in the apartment, trying to gain both inspiration and heat, I discovered that a bathrobe over my traditional sweatshirt and jeans proved less of a hindrance than a comfortable but cumbersome blanket (those blankets with sleeves hadn’t been invented yet). It became a ritual. If I was sitting down to write, I had to be wearing the black bathrobe. It set the mood – on donning the black writer’s robe, I was suddenly the freezing, broke yet talented writer, à la Vie Bohéme, cliché as it was. But for me, for then, it worked. And the words just appeared.

When I think ritual in everyday life, the topic that jumps to mind is religion. I may be drifting into the controversial here, but let’s just say that with religion – any religion – practices are observed, which, when effective, calm the mind, separate self from the outside world, and allow . . . well, call it what you like: revelation, intuition, meditation, communication with the Divine or with the inner self. Etc. Creative rituals function along the same lines. An outside practice is meaningless on its own, but it’s kind of amazing how it can prepare the mind to reach its most creative state.

It’s been a while since I’ve donned the black writer’s robe. Probably because answering the door in a shabby black robe got a bit embarrassing after a while. Especially after the colder months passed. And moving house a few months later kind of messed up the ritual, too. I have yet to find another ritual that works as well, but I’ve considered using a hat. Or possibly a creativity-empowering ring, à la Tolkien. Writing at a certain time of day sometimes works. Or in a certain place. Heck, I’m guessing I could turn widdershins three times before sitting down to write, and the absurdity of the ritual would do something to stir the imagination. The object or the type of ritual is not the important part. The important part is the ritual itself, which echoes the invocation of the muses in classic literature. Creativity isn’t a god, but sometimes it’s pretty closely related to revelation.

The Blank Slate Syndrome

Beginnings are terrifying. There is nothing quite as intimidating as a blank piece of paper, a blank computer screen, or a freshly primed canvas. I think it's the plethora of possibilities. Blank white anything can turn into a success, a failure, a surprise, a disappointment, a miraculous mutation of ideas. Someone once said that success frightens people more than failure. While I'm not sure if that's true, I think success is definitely frightening. Blank white is the essence of every "what if" question. What if what we create is fabulous? What if it's fabulous, but not what we thought, or not as fabulous as we thought?

And, to a certain extent, I think any creative person must train himself or herself to ignore or get past what I shall hereafter call the Blank Slate Syndrome. I'm calling it that because: A) it's got the word slate, which I have a certain liking for, given its lexical relationship to my surname, and B) I can also refer to it as the BS Syndrome for short, which references the cure for the Blank Slate Syndrome: BS.

The fact is, most of us creative types really don't know what we're doing. Every creative endeavor is a stab in the dark, if blank-white-ness can be metaphorically connected with the dark. Even geniuses feel like they're failing every now and then. Sometimes every second. The idea gives me hope as I start out on this slightly mad endeavor of keeping a creative blog. The scary secret: I've got no success stories when it comes to keeping a journal. And so I start this blog with the fear that permeates every blank canvas and computer screen: I could fail. Very easily. Very, very easily. So, I return to the solution I listed above: BS. Yes, this is it. Complete BS. Every word you've read thus far. It goes back to a quote that I love, from the TV show Doctor Who. A character accuses the Doctor of "making it all up as you along." And the Doctor says, "Well, yeah. But I do it brilliantly." And that's what artists, writers, poets, screenwriters, and musicians (especially jazz musicians) do all the time. They make it all up with the attitude that it's going to look (or sound) brilliant as they go. Being a creative person is a careful balance of enough humility to change things and a really obscene amount of vanity.

Case in point on BS and the Blank Slate Syndrome: this doodle.

It took about an hour, all told. I was listening to a lecture-type thing and wanted something to do with my hands that wouldn't detract from my listening (doodling helps with listening, by the way - audio memory is reinforced by visual memory). I opened my sketchbook, had no clue what I wanted to draw, and started moving pen on paper anyway. What came out was chaotic, insane, Dali-esque, and more brilliant than anything I've done in the last month. Although that's not saying much, because it hasn't been a great month, creatively speaking. But there it is: Blank Slate to BS to Brilliant Stuff. Or so I'm going to label it, anyway. And if you say it with enough confidence, people believe you. Blank Slate conquered.