Creativity: Making Connections, Part I

 I’ve blogged about creativity a couple of times, and literature on the subject abounds. Still, after I wade through what’s been written on it, I’m left with only a vague, hazy image of what creativity is—and a hazier idea of how you obtain, bring about, and generate it. How do you “do” creativity? How can you write a fantasy, sci-fi, paranormal story that is truly creative?  These questions lead us into the swamp of uncertainty. But a swamp isn’t all bad if you’re an alligator or a hank of Spanish moss. The first step in writing creatively is to get outside of the usual paradigms.

I talked about Neil Gaiman’s novel Neverwhere in another blog ( link to blog). Here is a link to one more blog on this (Trains of Trust ). You can read about it in detail there. I would only say that when he was given an assignment, he did not do the thing people usually do. He did something completely different. He wrote about homelessness by creating a fantasy world. How did he think of this? I can’t get in his head, of course, but I do notice that he perceived certain analogies and similarities and exploited these in his writing. These were the stuff of his creative approach to a discussion of the topic. And it became one of the most powerful and moving statements about homelessness I’ve read even though the world is not once used in the novel.

What did Gaiman notice? He noticed the link between magical creatures and the homeless. He worked with these points. I’ll attempt to illustrate.

 

Very often, supernatural creatures are marginalized. Elves, dwarves, orcs, leprechauns, angels, werewolves, vampires, lamia—such beings are not a part of society. Try going to a job interview at a corporate office and explaining that when the full moon comes out you transform, so you can’t work on such nights; or that your blue-green skin is not a genetic condition because you’re not human, you’re a naiad. Supernatural beings such as inhabit the “London Below” of Neverwhere are emblematic of the homeless, the marginalized—of society’s outcasts.

Very often, supernatural beings are exploited. Why do people want to capture leprechauns? To get their gold! Werewolves and vampires are hunted down and destroyed because they threaten human beings. Elves, dryads, satyrs, ancient gods and goddesses are driven out as humans develop land, cut down forests, and build houses. King Kong was made a show, “The Eighth Wonder of the World.” This happens to the homeless too. Exploitation is often their lot. Gaiman made the connection.

We could go on and on about this. My point, however, I think is clear. Neil Gaiman wrote the most creative book I’ve ever read by perceiving and working with analogies and similarities. If I want to write successful paranormal literature—successful because it opens up fantastical worlds—I’ve got to exploit such connections and shape them into stories. So do you. In calls for submissions I always read things like “startle us,” “take us somewhere we’ve never been before,” and similar phrases. A writer does this by creatively shaping the material of life—by seeing connections and creating something that is new but oddly recognizable.  

I’ll give an example from my own writing. I am a guitarist and a fan of sixties music. Cream, one of the great rock groups of all time, released a song called “Strange Brew.” It had the line in it, “She’s a witch of trouble in electric blue. / In her own mad mind, she’s in love with you. / With you! What are you gonna do?  Strange Brew:  kills what’s inside of you.” I—and most people, I think—interpret this as a song about a trouble-making girl who has latched on to a guy and is going to make lots of trouble for him through her clingy behavior. What is he going to do with this disruption? How is he going to handle it?

But I got an idea. I made a connection. What if the woman in the

Vintage 1970

song was, literally, a witch? What if she had gone mad? And what if she fell in love with a guy? What would you do in a case like this? Moreover, the witch is not just any witch. She is the Sorceress of the Northern Seas, the most powerful witch in England. And she is not above using her magic to make sure the man she love sticks around. What is he going to do? As for her “mad mind”—well, it’s the 1970s in my novel, and Lybecca the sorceress has become a part of the drug scene and deranged herself to an extent on LSD, mescaline, psilocybin, and all those wonderful hallucinogens people took back then. The plot thickens. What is he gonna do?

The creative move is to take the supernatural and connect it with pop culture, drug culture, rock culture, and music. The story develops from a funny, quirky one into a more serious one as Lybecca takes Andrew (the musician) back in time to seek a cure for her infirmity. They end up in the pre-civil rights south, meet blues icon Robert Johnson, and plunge into a harrying adventure that might or might not free Lybecca from her troubles.

The creative edge lies in making the connections:  take pop culture—drugs, the 1970s, the pop music scene, miniskirts, big hair on male rock singers—and connect it with magic, witches, and the supernatural. Irony, humor, and, in the end, a poignant story of love and healing come about.

So if I have a how, this is it. Notice the connections. Connect the dots that maybe aren’t visible, but

are there. Neil Gaiman did this with the supernatural and the homeless; I did it with early pop culture and the world of magic and sorcery; Kenneth Graham did it with proper Victorian society and animal behavior in The Wind in the Willows. The connections are there, waiting to be lashed together. Look for them. Read voraciously to notice how other paranormal writers, old and new (Shakespeare was great at doing this), have exploited connecting points between the mundane and the fantastical.

More on The Wind in the Willows in the next blog.

And by all means get a copy of Strange Brew

Check out my Writer’s Website:  David W. Landrum.

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