Your idea of bliss is to wake up on a Monday morning knowing you haven't a single engagement for the entire week.

"... You are cradled in a white paper cocoon tied up with typewriter ribbon.”

WRONG, Edna Ferber!

Wrong about my idea of bliss and Wrong about being cradled in a white cocoon tied up with typewriter ribbon.

I've already shown you what I wear when writing.



My idea of bliss is to wake up on a Monday morning and know I've got lots of work - work that I enjoy doing, which is most of it - but also that my brain is firing on all cylinders so that I'll have a little mental energy left for my own creative writing at the end of the day.

As a freelance writer, the thought of no engagements all week is a little scary...both worrying about where the next pay cheque is coming from...

 ...and knowing that a) I'll have to do some more hustling for commissions and b) I have no excuses NOT to get on with my own writing.

Work-work (as I call it) is a GREAT excuse to explain away lack of creativity.

The trouble is, I don't believe my own excuses anymore. I am CONTEMPTUOUS of such excuses.

Dedication involves making the space to let young ideas take hold

The unusually-named Zephyr Bloch-Jorgensen said this. Unusual job title, too. 'Australian guru.' What does that mean? He knows a lot about Australia?



Oh well...

Yesterday, I was dedicated. For ages I've be yearning to get on with some of my own writing, namely the novel, already started in my pre-own-voice days (shudder)

So...I finished up a lot of projects, tied up a bundle of loose ends and suddenly...there it was...space. Not The space as in Space, the Final Frontier but A Space where I was free to be creative without any work-related deadlines.

Space...wonderful, uplifting, full of possibility? No. Space...scary.

What did I do? I fiddled about a lot with urgent procrastination. I'll just answer that e-mail...I'll just check over that document...I'll just dust my desk...I'll just make a cup of tea...

But finally, FINALLY, I dared to look at the start of the novel - which is called Falling Awake - and it was...definitely me writing to please a putative audience, in fact... was it really me who wrote it at all or was it somebody wearing a cardigan with buttons done up tightly to the neck? Not a me I'd recognise, in any case.

Start from nothing. All there is, then, is nothing and infinite possibility.

“The opposite of creativity is cynicism”

Esa Saarinen, Finnish philosopher said this - probably in Finnish. Vastakohta luovuus kyynisyyttä - in case you're interested. 

(I wonder if Google Translate plays dreadful tricks and 'Vastakohta luovuus kyynisyyttä' actually means 'Your mother has the face of a hamster run over by a dustbin lorry' - which Google Translate claims to be 'Äitisi on edessä hamsterin ajaa haltuunsa kaatopaikka kuorma.' I'll never know...unless...)

Mercifully, there was no picture of a hamster run over by a dustbin lorry on Google Images. I did check. This will have to do.

 Back to the idea that the opposite of creativity is cynicism.

Wrong!

To me that's like saying 'the opposite of happy is tulip' or 'the opposite of enormous is strawberry jelly.'

I was thinking about cynicism in the following context...I've written a (very creative) screenplay called 'The colour of her scream' for which funding is not forthcoming. In order to give it more exposure, I'm entering it into some contests. I just heard it got through the first stage of the British Short Screenplay Contest.

At one time, I would have been shouting that from the roof tops. Now my attitude is 'Oh yeah. Along with the hundreds of others. I suppose that means it's properly formatted and the reader got out of bed the right side.' 

Cynicism is the opposite of being disappointed.

Creativity is the opposite of...atrophy? Or, as Esa Saarinen might say 'Luovuus on vastakohta ... atrofia?'

Possibly. That's if you're not cynical about Google Translate.

Type text or a website address or translate a document.

Cancel

English to Finnish translation